I've been looking for Cast Iron...

[Tom W.]

I've been looking for Wagner and Griswold Cast Iron pans for some time now. Last weekend my fiancee and I went to a big consignment store and I found some Wagner pans and a nice 6 qt. Dutch oven , all at fairly reasonable prices, and all in fine shape. Being somewhat low in funds, I'm hoping that next weekend they will still be there and I'll pick up one or two. I do wonder if a lid from Lodge will fit the Wagner D/O, as it is missing the top.

There was a really nice Griswold waffle maker there, the first I've seen in many many years. It was somewhat pricy, though...

[WILCO]

I do wonder if a lid from Lodge will fit the Wagner D/O, as it is missing the top.

http://www.griswoldandwagner.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl

[Le Loup Solitaire]

Hope that you can latch on to what you found. Its hard to state which brand is better, G or W...they're both good. You need to measure diameter of the DO and then the dia of the Lodge lid. Another source of CI is E-Bay...One auction is titled Griswold Cast Iron and the other is Wagner Cast Iron. Both are 15-30 pages long and filled with lots of common pieces...the term common as opposed to rare. The common pieces usually start out as reasonably priced and generally don't get into the crazy range...sometimes what you want can go for low prices. Its like the lottery, "Ya never know". Rare and hard to find stuff goes for big bucks...lots of sniping in the last 10 seconds. Tops for DO's are there too...7's, 8's, and 9's are the most common. Until you get whatever you want you'll have to watch the action regularly, but in a way its better than beating the bushes all over town to yard/garage sales, especially with the price of gas these days. One word of advice; watch out for cracks in pieces. You should have return rights if there is an unadvertised defect. When you pick up a piece, tap it with your key ring or a knife blade....if it rings then you're ok. If it gives off a flat sound there is a crack somewhere. Good luck on your hunting. LLS

[WILCO]

Its hard to state which brand is better, G or W...they're both good.

At one point in time, both companies were HQ'ed in the same building, across from each other in the same hallway.

[WILCO]

At one point in time, both companies were HQ'ed in the same building, across from each other in the same hallway.

http://www.wag-society.org/

http://www.griswoldcookware.com/history.htm

[Le Loup Solitaire]

In the mid fifies Griswold stopped producing CI and after a temporary receivership, was bought out/up by Wagner. After a couple more years Wagner, still owning the rights to Griswold then folded up shop and everything came under the ownership of General Housewares Corp (GHC). GHC continued to produce cast iron and several of the pieces that they produced actually had both the logos of Griswold and Wagner on the pieces. Weird but true. The casting quality was ok, but not quite as good as what either company had originally produced. The finish of the cooking surfaces was/is a little grainier. Cooking quality remained the same. I have two pieces; a dutch oven (came with a glass lid) and a muffin/popover pan (same design with 11 cups) that bear both logos. The GHC production continued thru the sixties and into the early seventies. It appears to have stopped somewhere around that time. LLS