Bex Scott hosts one of her all-time favorite Pyrex and vintage collectors, Nate Smith of @MyVintageIs1976, on the show today. Bex and Nate talk about all things Pyrex from how they got started collecting and Nate’s favorite patterns to Pyrex swaps and overpriced pieces. Nate is a natural educator and happily shares his passion and Pyrex knowledge, which is vast, with all Bex’s listeners.

Nate, like Bex, started collecting in 2020 through the need to clear out family houses. Once started, he fell in love with Pyrex and dug into research and collecting on his own. While his husband doesn’t share his Pyrex collection love, he is incredibly supportive of Nate’s thrifting, reselling, and the revolving seasonal displays in their home. Nate lets Bex in on the best Pyrex finds he’s made, his most treasured complete collection, and the rare boxes he’s now searching out. They discuss their belief on why kindness and sharing knowledge with new collectors is the best way forward, investigate the differences between pieces named differently in America versus in Canada, and Nate shares his top tips for thrifting success. If you love Pyrex, and you must if you’re here, this is one conversation you won’t want to miss!

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Nate Smith on Instagram: MyVintageIs1976
• Colonial Mist
• Horizon Blue
• “Lady on the Left” Butterprint bowl
• Willow 473
• Penn Dutch Friendship box
• Mrs. Maisel
• “Pyrex Passion (2nd ed.)” by Michael D. Barber

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Contact Rebecca Scott | Pyrex With Bex: 

• Website: PyrexWithBex.com
• Instagram: @pyrexwithbex
• Contact Bex on her website

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Transcript

Bex Scott: [00:00:02 ] Hey everybody, it's Bex Scott and welcome to the Pyrex with Bex podcast where, you guessed it, I talk about vintage Pyrex, but also all things vintage housewares. I'll take you on my latest thrifting adventures, talk about reselling, chat with other enthusiasts about their collections, and learn about a bunch of really awesome items from the past. Subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you love listening to podcasts so you don't miss a beat.

Bex Scott: [00:00:31 ] Hey everybody, thanks for tuning in to the Pyrex with Bex podcast. Today I am super excited because I have one of my all-time favorite collectors of Pyrex and vintage on today chatting, and it's Nate Smith. You can find him on Instagram at MyVintageIs1976 and I was super excited when I came across your Instagram, Nate, because I love all the education you provide, all of the things that you sell. I wish I had enough money to buy all of them because they're adorable and I could see all of them in my house. But you were also the friendliest and most open to teaching people about what you know and helping new collectors, and I'm super grateful for that. So welcome to the show.

Nate Smith: [00:01:16 ] Thank you so much. It's my pleasure to be here.

Bex Scott: [00:01:19 ] Awesome. So I thought we'd start out with how you got into Pyrex and vintage collecting.

Nate Smith: [00:01:26 ] That's a great question. I had a lot of tragedy actually in 2020, and my sister and I were forced to clean out both my parents and my grandparents homes. My dad died in September and my grandmother died in October right after. And then my mother went into an assisted living at the time. So my sister and I were left with all this stuff and we were like, what are we going to do? So we just started digging in and having to clean out the houses. And that's in Kentucky and I'm in Texas now, so I would go as often as I could to go and help her out. But as we were cleaning out my parents home, we just kept coming across these beautiful bowls and casseroles in this huge variety of patterns, and my parents came by it, honestly. Me growing up too, if there was a wide spot in the road for a yard sale, if there was a thrift store, my mom would want to stop on the way to town. And just in case they put something out on the way back that she would want to stop on the way back. So she was a double stop thrift store kind of gal.

Nate Smith: [00:02:32 ] And a lot of these bowls still had the original $2 $4 dollar thrift store tags on them when she picked them up and my sister and I, we took a lot of stuff to the local thrift store just to donate back. But I couldn't take these bowls. I just kept circling back to them, and I just found them to be so beautiful. And so I asked my sister, can I take some of these back to Texas with me? I just want to research and find out a little bit more. And that deep rabbit hole kept going and going and going, and I started as to resell some of the things instead of just donating them. I saw value in them and I told my sister, like, I'm going to sell some of these. And then there were more and more patterns that I couldn't sell back because I didn't want to let go of them, because I started falling in love with them. And then a new collector was born.

Bex Scott: [00:03:31 ] That's awesome. And do you have family members that collect as well? Does your sister collect?

Nate Smith: [00:03:40 ] My sister has a pattern that she likes. She does the Colonial Mist, which is great because I don't care for it at all. Even though it's blue, I still don't care for it very much at all. But it was one of the last kind of opal ware patterns that Pyrex put out. And so it's pretty easy, still pretty common to find because it's one of the newer patterns. And so I've helped her complete her collections just in my own sourcing and thrifting and antiquing, I've been able to finish out her collection of Colonial Mist for her. But the next generation, like her kids and her kids' kids, no, I think we're pretty much it in the family. So, and none of my husband's side of the family really collects. So yeah, it's just me. I do enough for all of us.

Bex Scott: [00:04:30 ] That's like me as well. It's just me right now. We have two boys and a girl, and I'm trying to get our sons into it. I don't think I'm going to be successful, but maybe. Our daughter's only one so there's lots of years to get her into collecting and hopefully passing my collection on to her, because there's quite a bit of it.

Nate Smith: [00:04:50 ] Yeah.

Bex Scott: [00:04:53 ] And does your husband share your love of vintage as well?

Nate Smith: [00:04:57 ] No, not even a little bit. And like, he humors me sometimes and goes with me to the antique stores, but he will find himself bored pretty quick and will ask me for the keys to the car pretty quick because he can go up and down the aisles relatively quickly and just say, yeah, I'm done. But he humors me, like he never makes me feel bad about my collections. He never questions me about anything. So if anything, he is also like all-star drop stuff off at the post office. All-star I have a lot of boxes to box will you help me? Absolutely. So he's roll up his sleeves, all hands on deck when it comes to that stuff. But he's not himself a collector by nature.

Bex Scott: [00:05:51 ] Yeah, it's good to have that support on that side of things too, with the packing. And that can get to be a lot.

Nate Smith: [00:05:58 ] Yeah, I turn and burn it pretty quickly. Like I can't let it pile up because then my OCD and anxiety just kind of spirals out of control. So like if somebody buys something, I try my best to hurry up and get it out because if it piles up, then I can feel my anxiety increasing.

Bex Scott: [00:06:17 ] Yeah. I remember buying some little bluebirds from you and they arrived so quickly. I was very impressed. So you definitely do get things out the door quickly.

Nate Smith: [00:06:30 ] Thank you, thank you.

Bex Scott: [00:06:32 ] And what does your home look like for displaying your Pyrex and your other vintage items?

Nate Smith: [00:06:39 ] Yeah. Good question. So again, I'm very lucky to have a husband who gives me that kind of creative license, but under a watchful eye of control, which is also good. We live in Texas, so there is no basement. The land of basements is not in Texas, so there aren't a lot of basements here. So I just have to make do with what we've got. And so I have kind of a prized hutch collection of my Pyrex kind of in our sitting room. And then we have some display cabinets in the kitchen that I display pretty regularly. And then I have a rotating seasonal display as well. Other than that, it's usually put in a what I call my Pyrex closet that I use to rotate things in and out for display. And then I also have an inventory room, which is where all the things that I have in preparation for my upcoming Instagram sales or Pyrex swaps kind of lives. So no kids. So easy to just put that stuff in the extra bedroom.

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