Oneta No. 9 Cast Iron Skillet
If you couldn't afford Wagner, you bought Wapak. If you couldn't afford Wapak, you bought Oneta. Made in Wapakoneta — the town between Sidney and Piqua, Neil Armstrong's hometown — this budget skillet is now harder to find than the premium brands it once undercut. The cheap things get used up. The survivors are scarce.
Buckeye Iron & Brass Works 2” Fig. 671 Cleanout Cap
This cast iron cleanout cap was produced by Buckeye Iron & Brass Works of Dayton — the foundry the Wright Brothers walked into when they needed an aluminum crankcase for the engine that would fly at Kitty Hawk. Some of the best stories in American cast iron are not on skillets. They are on the workpieces that built the infrastructure.
The Madison Foundry Co. Enameled Mini Skillet Ashtray
Madison Foundry didn't make skillets. They made manhole covers. This mini skillet ashtray was their calling card — a promotional piece that sat on a city engineer's desk, catching ashes and advertising the Cleveland foundry that cast the iron beneath the city's streets. Five Cleveland foundries now in the SSC collection.
Superior Foundry Inc. Cast Iron Melting Scoop
Finding one piece from Superior Foundry is hard. Finding two is what happens when you know what to look for. This melting scoop carries the same Cleveland mark as the miniature bowl — and its original working patina tells the story of a tool that actually melted metal in a Cleveland workshop.
The Cleveland Foundry Co. Star & Sunburst Sad Iron Trivet
In 1888 they were casting trivets. By 1921 they were Perfection Stove Company. This star and sunburst trivet — patented 1891, just three years after the Cleveland Foundry Co.'s founding — is where one of America's great heating appliance brands began. Twelve dollars and fifty cents.
Foster Stove Company No. 8 Chicken Fryer
This deep-sided No. 8 chicken fryer from Foster Stove Company of Ironton, Ohio completes the Favorite corporate lineage in the SSC collection — from Columbus Hollow Ware through Favorite Piqua Ware, Miami, Puritan, and now Foster.
Ahrens & Arnold No. 3 Skillet — Wapakoneta Mark
Ahrens & Arnold operated in Wapakoneta, Ohio, for only a few years in the late 1920s — founded by former Wapak Hollow Ware employees after that foundry's closure, documented in almost no historical record, and known to collectors today through a handful of surviving pieces. This No. 3 cast iron skillet carries the full A&A marking layout in exceptional condition: the CAST · IRON · SKILLET arc with raised dot word separators, the AA arrow emblem, and the WAPAKONETA / OHIO. origin text with its characteristic terminal period — every authentication marker present and clearly legible. One of the rarest named makers in the American cast iron corpus, now documented in the SSC collection alongside its Wapak Indian Head No. 3 counterpart to tell the complete Wapakoneta story.
Wapak No. 3 Skillet — Indian Head Mark
Every Ohio foundry in the SSC collection marks its iron with text or geometry — an arc, a cartouche, a diamond. Wapak chose a face. The Indian Head medallion centered on this No. 3 base — a Native American figure in feathered headdress, cast in profile, surrounded by the company inscription — is the most visually distinctive mark in the Ohio foundry corpus. This No. 3 carries it in exceptional condition: headdress feather detail preserved, facial profile clear, inscription readable. It is the finest-condition marked piece in the SSC collection, the first Wapak entry, and the highest single-piece acquisition to date. Some iron earns its price