Wagner Ware Sidney -O- No. 2 Cast Iron Skillet
The Wagner Ware Sidney -O- No. 2 is one of the hardest finds in the complete set — genuinely rare in the market in any condition, produced in smaller numbers over a shorter window than any size above it. This example carries the stylized Wagner Ware Sidney -O- logo at 12 o'clock and the size numeral '2' at 6 o'clock, with no catalog number anywhere on the base. This is the documented standard configuration: the only known No. 2 with a four-digit catalog number is the pie logo version. A size-number-only No. 2 with the stylized logo dates to c. 1922–1924 — after the iconic looped W was introduced and before or at the moment the catalog numbering system was being established across the line. It is the smallest skillet in the standard Wagner line with a stylized logo, smooth-bottomed as it always was, from the earliest documented era of the most famous American cast iron mark.
Wagner Ware Sidney -O- No. 3 Cast Iron Skillet
The Wagner Ware Sidney -O- No. 3 has something specific to say that no other size in the line can say: it was never made with a heat ring. The seller who listed this piece described it as "with Heat Ring" — a misidentification. The Cast Iron Collector Forums are explicit on the point, and the smooth, flat base visible in the photographs confirms it. Catalog number 1053 N identifies this piece as a smooth-bottom No. 3, fourteenth mold pattern, produced somewhere in the span of 1924 to 1959 during which the No. 3 was made continuously in the only configuration it ever had. The SSC collection record corrects the seller's error and documents the piece as it actually is.
Wagner Ware Sidney -O- No. 8 Cast Iron Skillet
The No. 8 is Wagner Ware's flagship size — the most produced skillet in the Sidney line, the size featured in Wagner's advertising, the piece that appears in every antique market in America. What makes this particular example worth documenting is its pattern letter. Catalog number 1058 T carries pattern letter T — the twentieth letter of the alphabet — meaning at least nineteen sand mold patterns for the No. 8 had been produced, used until worn, and replaced before this one was cut. No other size in the Wagner Ware Sidney -O- line accumulated pattern letters at this rate. The T is not a date code. It is a production volume document, recording in a single letter the extraordinary scale at which Wagner manufactured its most popular size. This smooth-bottom example, c. 1935–1959, is the No. 8 in the SSC complete skillet set.
Wagner Ware Sidney -O- No. 10 Cast Iron Skillet
The Wagner Ware Sidney -O- No. 10 smooth-bottom skillet, catalog number 1060A, represents the later collector era of Sidney production — cast after Wagner eliminated the heat ring from the standard No. 10 pattern, and before SIDNEY -O- was removed from the logo after 1959. At 11¾ inches across the top rim it is a large household size, a genuine working pan built for family cooking rather than institutional volume. Two features of the base make this example particularly worth documenting: the smooth bottom that places it firmly in the c. 1935–1959 window, and a non-standard rotation of the logo position — a pattern-specific characteristic of the 1060A mold recorded here as part of the SSC collection record.