9 Virginia Antique Shop Finds Worth More Than the Price Tag

A seven-inch vinyl single, the kind that sells three for $10 in a used record bin, once sold at auction for more than $15,000.

It contained a detail invisible to anyone who didn’t know to look for it.

These are the antique shop finds in Virginia that can be worth way more than their price tag.

1. Griswold Cast Iron Skillets

Griswold cast iron skillets turn up in nearly every Virginia antique shop, usually stacked in a bin and priced like scrap metal.

Many of them earn that low price.

But a Griswold marked with the company’s short-lived “Erie” spider logo doesn’t.

An Erie spider-logo skillet sold at auction for $10,000 in August 2024, and a plain-looking Griswold No. 1 skillet from that same sale brought $9,500.

Griswold stamped the spider mark raised instead of recessed, so it rubbed off fast against a hot stove eye, and the company pulled the design within about two years of introducing it.

Few intact examples survived.

Every other Griswold skillet on a shop shelf looks nearly identical at a glance, an oval frying pan with a logo stamped in the center.

The mark is what separates a $20 pan from a four-figure pan.

2. Shenandoah Valley Stoneware

Shenandoah Valley stoneware carries some of the biggest surprises of any category sitting in a Virginia antique shop.

A cobalt-decorated stoneware ring flask made in Loudoun County by potter George Duncan in 1827 sold at auction for $204,000 in 2023, a record for Virginia-made stoneware.

Nine years earlier, a crock decorated with prancing horses, made by Samuel Bell in Winchester, sold for $92,000 and briefly held that same record.

The record fell twice.

Both pieces started out as ordinary farm crockery, made to hold butter, cider, or preserves, the same kind of vessel still lined up on Shenandoah Valley shop shelves today.

Specialist auction houses like Crocker Farm and Jeffrey S. Evans and Associates in Mt. Crawford track this material closely, and a stamped maker’s name or cobalt decoration changes a piece’s value fast.

A plain, unmarked crock might fetch $40 in a Staunton or Winchester shop.

A crock stamped with a Rockingham County potter’s name and a folk-art bird or flower can bring hundreds or thousands more.

3. Sterling Silver Flatware

A lot of Virginia shops treat sterling silver flatware like scrap, pricing it by weight and nothing else.

That math undersells it.

A standard five-piece place setting holds roughly five troy ounces of silver, worth a little over $300 at today’s silver price for the metal alone.

A setting in a desirable pattern typically sells for close to double that melt value, and a prestige maker pushes it further still.

Replacements, Ltd., a major dealer in discontinued silver and china patterns, currently lists a 40-piece set in Gorham’s Strasbourg pattern for just under $6,000, and a 157-piece Tiffany and Co. Lap-Over-Edge set for nearly $48,000.

Nobody prices that by the ounce.

The maker’s mark stamped on the back of the handle is the detail worth checking before anyone sells a set for its weight.

4. Signed Costume Jewelry

Signed costume jewelry holds one of the biggest gaps between price and value in a Virginia antique shop’s cheap jewelry case.

Miriam Haskell, one of the most sought-after signed makers, still turns up mixed into ordinary rhinestone jewelry cases at antique shops and shows, priced like everything else around it.

A collector once brought a box of costume pieces to Antiques Roadshow, bought over 20 years for $25 to $160 apiece.

The appraiser valued the whole collection at $20,000.

One name did that.

Collectors identify Miriam Haskell pieces by hand-wired construction instead of glue, baroque pearls strung on silk, and a block-style signature mark the company started using in 1938.

A shopper who checks the back of a brooch before checking the price sticker finds a Haskell piece first.

5. Rare-Pattern Vintage Pyrex

Vintage Pyrex fills half the glassware shelves in a typical Virginia antique mall, and many pieces sell for grocery-store money.

A handful of patterns break that rule completely.

A “Lucky in Love” casserole dish, decorated with a four-leaf clover pattern Pyrex made as a limited 1959 promotion, set a Goodwill auction record when it sold for $5,994 in 2017.

The Corning Museum of Glass calls it one of the most elusive Pyrex designs the company ever made.

Pattern is everything.

A complete set of four Butterprint “Cinderella” mixing bowls in the orange pumpkin colorway sells for $800 to $1,500, even without the clover pattern’s fame.

Many Pyrex pieces sell for the pattern printed on the outside.

That’s exactly where the rarest pieces sit unnoticed, priced like everything around them.

6. Original-Era Fiestaware

Original-era Fiestaware, made before World War II, sits on Virginia shop shelves priced right alongside newer reissues.

That's the mistake.

A mint-condition red Fiestaware plate from the 1930s can bring $1,600 to $2,500, largely because the red glaze used uranium oxide that federal restrictions limited during World War II.

A covered onion soup bowl made between 1935 and 1937 sells for $1,200 in common colors and can top $8,000 in turquoise.

A plain yellow fruit bowl from the same era goes for around $40.

The same maker priced these pieces worlds apart.

7. Pre-1965 Silver Coins

Pre-1965 silver coins turn up constantly in the coin trays and cigar boxes Virginia antique dealers set out near the register.

Every dime, quarter, and half dollar the U.S. Mint struck before 1965 is 90 percent silver.

At today's silver price, a single pre-1965 quarter is worth around $11.50 just for its metal, roughly 46 times its 25-cent face value.

That's before checking the date.

Certain dates and mint marks are worth far more than melt.

A well-preserved 1903-O Morgan silver dollar, a date numismatists watch closely for condition, has sold at auction for tens of thousands of dollars.

Whoever last cleaned out a relative's dresser drawer priced that dish of "old coins" at a dollar apiece, not a numismatist.

8. Rare Vinyl Pressings

Rare vinyl pressings sit inside ordinary record bins at Virginia antique malls, priced the same $3 to $8 as everything else in the crate.

Pressing details are what separate the bin from the vault.

A Beatles "Love Me Do" seven-inch promotional pressing sold for $15,410.96, and a Sex Pistols "God Save the Queen" single brought $15,060.24, according to Discogs marketplace data.

The crate keeps the secret.

A first pressing, a withdrawn promo copy, or a tiny print run is what a shop's flat per-record pricing almost never accounts for.

9. Depression Glass Patterns

Depression glass sells for pocket change at many Virginia shops, a leftover habit from the 1930s, when movie theaters and oatmeal makers handed out free glass to shoppers.

Some patterns never lost that cheap reputation.

Others did.

A pink water pitcher in Macbeth-Evans' "Sweetheart" pattern can sell for several hundred dollars, and icy blue goblets in Hocking's "Mayfair" pattern can bring several hundred dollars for a full set.

A common green cake plate from the same decade sells for around $36.