Why are Lids - Covers - Toppers so expensive?

This is a #5 Wagner Ware skillet with matching lid. The underside looks the same as the underside of the Wagner Ware dutch oven below.

Why are lids so expensive? The answers are obvious if you think about it. Not all skillets came with lids. In fact most skillets didn't come with a lid. Over the years as the available lids have become broken; the handle on top of the lid is the weak spot if the lid is dropped, the price of the remaining lids have increased in value. Most times the lids are worth more than the skillet.

I have seen on ebay where sellers separate the lid from the skillet and list both separately. I feel that separating a lid from the skillet and selling them separately is a crime; not a crime that they should be arrested for but just a crime against sensibility. The reason they separate the lid from the skillet and sell them separately is that the lid is worth more by itself than when it is sold with the skillet. Does the lid being worth more by itself than with the skillet make sense; no not at all.

I am always on the lookout for lids. I have a few on my list to complete items that I own and would like to put up for sale. What I have fought doing but is done by a number of top sellers on ebay and elsewhere is sticking any old lid on a chicken fryer or dutch oven and selling it for enormous amounts of money! The temptation is great to sell skillets and dutch ovens with mismatched lids but my conscience wouldn't allow it.

The most common mismatched item is a dutch oven because a dutch oven isn't much good if it doesn't have a lid. Commonly what you see for sale on ebay by top sellers is a Griswold or Wagner dutch oven matched up with a Lodge lid. Why? Again Griswold and Wagner are worth much more money than the Lodge and Lodge lids are readily available (because they are still manufactured and Lodge doesn't put their name on their lids) where Griswold and Wagner lids are not readily available.

These sellers then turn a virtually worthless piece of old cast iron into a valuable piece of cast iron but not really. These unscrupulous sellers then sell to unknowledgeable or uneducated buyers. These poor uneducated buyers then think they have bought an original Griswold or Wagner when in fact they have been duped into buying something worth a lot less than they paid for it. To identify a Lodge lid look at the underside and see the drip points which are called nipples (see earlier post Why Cast Iron?) and much older Lodge or another manufacturer Birmingham Stove and Range (BSR) have inverted nipples.

Below see some items for sale in my store that have lids that actually match the skillet or dutch oven!

This is an unmarked Wagner Ware dutch oven with a Pyrex lid - this is the correct lid for this dutch oven.

This is a Wagner Ware dutch oven with matching lid and a view of the underside of the lid.

This is a Griswold Iron Mountain #8 skillet (deep skillet) with matching lid and a view of the underside of the lid.