How to Identify Vintage Cast Iron

Identify an old pan in three passes, in this order: how it was cast, what is written on it, and what the number means. The order matters, because the casting method dates the pan whether or not anyone marked it, while a logo without a casting check will happily send you a century wrong.

Everything below comes from two collector authorities rather than from folklore — the Cast Iron Collector reference and the Wagner and Griswold Society, which maintains a research database. We have handled no vintage pans ourselves and we are not appraisers; here is exactly what we do. What follows is how to read a pan with your own eyes against the published record.

Pass one: turn it over and look at how it was cast

This is the single most informative thing about an old pan and almost nobody checks it first.

A sprue mark— described by the reference as “the small round imperfection left on the bottom of such castings” — comes from a vertical channel poured into the top of the mould and broken off afterwards. It is “seen typically on castings from the mid 19th century and earlier”. If you find one, you are holding something genuinely old.

A bottom gate markis a raised line left where the gate channel met the mould cavity at what became the bottom of the pan. The reference notes it “was sometimes seen impinging on manufacturer markings on the pans’ bottoms” — which is exactly why an early pan can be hard to read. Bottom gating belongs to the era before the change below.

A smooth bottom with no linemeans side gating: “Late 19th century foundry technology overcame the shortcomings of the sprue and bottom gate methods by moving the gate to what would become the outer edge of the top lip of the pan.” Multiple gates connected by runners filled the mould more reliably, and the rough edge left on the lip could then be ground off by moving the pan across a fixed grinding wheel. Nearly every collectible Griswold and Wagner skillet is side gated.

A heat ring— the raised rim around the bottom circumference — is a wood-stove feature, and the reference gives its three purposes plainly: a seal of sorts between the pan and the stove eye, added stability for bottoms that were not perfectly flat, and a way to reduce hot spots. Treat it as strong supporting evidence of age rather than proof on its own.

Pass two: read the markings, then date the brand

Brand names on cast iron have date ranges, and the ranges are what convert a name into a decade. These come from the Cast Iron Collector’s list of notable US hollow ware manufacturers.

Griswold Manufacturing Co., Erie, Pennsylvania (1885–1957). Its brands are dated: Erie 1880–1905, Griswold’s Erie 1907–1909, Griswold 1909–1957, the Victor economy line 1900s–1930s, the unmarked Iron Mountain line in the 1940s, Good Health as a store brand in the 1920s–1930s, and Best Made, Puritan and Merit made for Sears Roebuck in the 1920s and 1930s. A pan marked simply “ERIE” is therefore an early Griswold, not a different company.

Wagner Manufacturing Co., Sidney, Ohio (1891–1959). Wagner 1891–1930s, Sidney 1905–1929, Wagner Ware 1914–1959, the National economy brand 1890s–1930s, Long Life as a 1930s store brand, and Montgomery Ward/Wardway in the 1930s.

Lodge Manufacturing Co., South Pittsburg, Tennessee (1910–present).Yes, your modern Lodge is from a foundry older than most collectibles. Its historic brands include Chef’s Choice, Friar’s Friend and Plantation Ware, plus Maid of Honor for Sears Roebuck — and the reference notes a genuine dispute there, since some incised-mark Maid of Honor pieces do not appear to be Lodge at all.

The other names worth knowing.Birmingham Stove & Range (1902–1990s), with its Red Mountain line in the 1930s–1950s, Century 1950s–1992, Pioneer in the 1970s and Lady Bess 1970s–1990s; Favorite Stove & Range of Piqua, Ohio (1916–1935), which also made Piqua Ware, Miami and Puritan for Sears; Martin Stove & Range of Florence, Alabama (1917–1953); Sidney Hollow Ware (1888–1897); Vollrath (1884–1960s); and Wapak Hollow Ware. Our Griswold and Wagner pages go deeper on the two names that drive the market.

Pass three: the number is not a diameter

The large numeral on the handle or the bottom is the most misread mark in cast iron. It is a wood-stove “stove eye” size— pans were made to fit the openings in the tops of wood-burning stoves, and when gas and then electric ranges took over, the numbering simply stayed.

A 1924 Wagner Manufacturing Co. catalogue gives these bottom diameters for its regular skillets: #2 at 4-7/8 inches, #3 at 5-1/2, #4 at 5-7/8, #5 at 6-3/4, #6 at 7-1/2, #7 at 8-1/4, #8 at 8-7/8, #9 at 9-3/4, #10 at 10-1/4, #11 at 10-7/8, #12 at 11-3/4, #13 at 12 and #14 at 13 inches.

And those figures were not an industry standard.The reference is explicit: a 1918 Griswold catalogue lists roughly the same dimensions but differs at the #3, #4, #13 and #14, and a Martin #3 skillet is the same size as a Wagner #2. Some makers deliberately cast their pans a fraction wider than a competitor’s so they could advertise them as larger. Birmingham Stove & Range, late in its life, downsized some pans to double the efficiency of its automated moulding line and altered others to take third-party glass covers.

So measure the pan rather than trusting the number, and expect a vintage #8 to be smaller than a modern 10-inch pan. Our skillet size guide explains the modern equivalent, where Lodge publishes 5.66 lb for its 10.25-inch and 3.44 lb for its 8-inch.

A letter after the number — 3B, 8CX, 710D — is a pattern letter, and it means nothing about quality or date order. Popular sizes needed several working patterns so pans could be cast in batches, and each pattern was lettered so the foundry could identify which one was producing defective castings. No letter at all is equally ordinary.

Before you buy: the four checks that matter more than the mark

A correctly identified pan that is cracked is worth nothing, so do the condition pass before the romance pass.

Flatness. Set it on a known-flat surface and press the rim at four points. Any rock means the pan is warped, which is unfixable and ruins it for a glass or induction cooktop.

Cracks. Look hard where the handle joins the body and around the rim. Hairline cracks are the main reason old pans are cheap, and they spread with heat.

Pitting. Surface rust comes off; pitting is iron that has gone and it leaves a cooking surface that never comes good. Run a fingertip over the floor rather than judging by colour.

What the mark is worth.A dated brand matters to collectors and barely at all to cooks. If you want a smooth pan to cook in rather than a piece of history, buy a modern machined one with a warranty — the made-in-USA roundupcovers those — or a new Lodge classic, which is from a 1910 foundry and costs less than a cheap vintage #8.

Restoring one you have decided to keep

Assume any pan that has been stored in a shed needs rust removal and a full re-season, and budget an evening rather than ten minutes.

For spot rust and tarnish, Lodge’s own Rust Eraser is a small abrasive block — it states 3.56 x 0.94 inches and 0.15 lb, that it “provides precision when removing surface rust and tarnish”, that it also works on knives, tools and grill grates, and that it is not for use on hot cookware. Lodge also prints the sentence that governs every restoration, and we quote it rather than soften it: it “removes rust down to the bare iron, requiring reseasoning of your cookware”.

Then re-season to Lodge’s published method — wash, a very thin film of oil, bake hot to polymerize — two or three times, and cook something fatty in it. For badly neglected pans, Lodge publishes a dedicated restore-and-season procedure, and our rust guide and re-seasoning guide follow it step by step.

Where identification honestly stops

It is worth knowing the ceiling, because a lot of forum confidence exceeds it. On older unmarked pieces — and the reference singles out “particularly those with bottom gate marks” — the answer to who made a pan “is almost always, ‘We’ll never know.’” Many small 18th and 19th century foundries marked nothing at all, served local markets, and copied each other freely.

Twentieth-century unmarked ware is a better prospect, and for a reason that has nothing to do with mystery: major foundries deliberately produced unbranded versions of their own pans for hardware and department stores, and store brands for retailers such as Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. Those pans often match a known pattern exactly, which is what the collector databases exist to check. If you want to go further than this page, the Wagner and Griswold Society’s research database and the Cast Iron Collector’s trademark and pattern pages are where the actual work has been done.