You Need To Double-Check Your Cabinets For The '50s Pyrex Dish That's Worth A Fortune Today

Your mother or grandmother might have handed down her favorite recipes for tuna noodle casserole or Swedish meatballs, but what you should really be hoping for is that she passed down the dish she made those meals in — that is, if it's a Pyrex dish. Especially if it's vintage Pyrex and happens to have a valuable pattern on it.

Pyrex first saw the light of day (and the light of the oven) in 1915. Created by Corning Glass Works, it was designed to be highly heat-resistant. (It was initially created  to keep railroad signal lights from breaking when hot glass met with cooler outdoor weather.) Later, a Corning employee brought home a wet cell battery jar made from Pyrex materials which had been converted into a baking dish to try at home. Once his wife used it successfully for her cooking, it launched an entire cookware line.

While Pyrex dishes have been decked out in countless patterns over the years, one pattern in particular is garnering a lot of attention and high auction prices these days: the "Lucky in Love" design, dating back to 1959. Printed on a 1-quart round opalware glass casserole dish, Lucky in Love has green grass and clovers on a plain white background with pink hearts sprinkled around the center of the dish.

Though its history is as cloudy as opal-colored glass, the pattern may have been part of a limited-release Pyrex gift set meant to appeal to stylish shoppers looking for something to spruce up their kitchen. It could also have been a test pattern that flopped. Either way, very few pieces were ever produced.

Whatever slight imperfections that Lucky in Love (frequently dubbed the "holy grail of Pyrex") might have, they certainly haven't fazed collectors. If anything, the quirks only make Pyrex fans even more determined to get Lucky. The dish's rarity, limited production, uniqueness, and timeless aesthetic are what make it such a hot item on the online auction front today.

In 2013, a Lucky in Love piece sold on eBay for $2,600. The bidding had started at just $0.99. In 2017, someone (clearly unaware of its value) donated a Lucky in Love dish to a Goodwill in New York, which then put it up for auction on its website. After 19,000 views, one bidder scored the Lucky in Love dish for the "bargain" price of $5,994. Then, just this past April, another piece is rumored to have sold for more than $10,000.

The popularity of this item has led to countless knockoffs and spawned a whole line of products with the same design, including Christmas ornaments, jewelry, coffee mugs, and rugs. Corning decided to do a Lucky in Love 2.0 version in 2018, re-releasing the pattern on clear glass rather than the coveted opal glass of the original. The reboot never caught on in the same way and hasn't acquired as much value. You can get a bowl like that on eBay today for just $14.99. But if you really do have Grandma's vintage Pyrex in your kitchen cupboard, it just might pay for your upcoming summer vacation.