Is Your Pyrex Actually Vintage? Here's How You Can Check

It seems with the rise in thrifting and endless chasing of vintage dishware in the hopes of fetching a high-resale price, consumers want to fill their kitchens with items that make their homes feel as good as their best memories. As wonderful as nostalgia can be, learning to decipher authentic vintage from contemporary reimagining is a skill in its own right. If, like many of us, you find the storybook-like designs on vintage Pyrex call to you, here's how to know what you're looking at.

Thankfully, it's easy to tell whether a Pyrex piece is old or new. Vintage Pyrex and modern Pyrex both have the logo printed on the bottom of the dish. The main difference between the two is that a vintage piece will have the word Pyrex printed in all capital letters, while a newer piece will have the same word but in lower-case letters. Pyrex is certainly a vintage kitchen item that's making a comeback, but before deciding it's just another trend, understand that there's a lot more than cute imagery that makes a well-loved Pyrex dish so valuable.

Don't let the dainty illustrations and lovely color tones fool you, Pyrex dishes were made to withstand whatever a kitchen throws at them. Vintage Pyrex simply offers a level of durability that every kitchen should aspire to. The earlier versions were made with a type of glass known as borosilicate. In 1915, the company that created borosilicate, Nonex, launched the cookware and called it Pyrex. This type of glass was created to handle the extreme temperature fluctuations which often happen in a kitchen. For example, a dish being transferred from freezer to oven (or vice versa); leading to thermal shock. Thermal shock can happen with rapid changes in temperature. It can cause so much stress on a dish that it cracks or shatters.

The company moved from borosilicate to soda lime glass in the 1950s. This removed a lot of the thermal shock prevention, making it totally worth it to seek out vintage Pyrex. New Pyrex is still durable and can be decorated with lovely imagery, but if you're seeking the benefits of extreme temperature resiliency which comes with borosilicate, you'll have to keep it old school. The next time you find yourself wandering an antique mall or endlessly scrolling an online marketplace, it may be worth your while to keep an eye out for any vintage Pyrex to add to your kitchen toolbox.