What a day. An impromptu road trip got us to a spot I know has some Pyrex. Passed over a couple of pieces I might otherwise have bought if I didn't have them already. Saw a Bluebelle 402 and thought $18 a more-than-reasonable price. Until I got it into better light. Put it back. Next stop, that place you pass by because you've never found any Pyrex there. I applied my "you need to stop there, anyway" rule and did. Got this set for an unbelievable $30. Granted, it took about 30 minutes of BKF, but I managed to slog through it.
Pyrex Passion author Michael Barber recently wrote on his blog about being asked if he had noticed variations in the decoration of the Friendship 473 round Cinderella casseroles. Like perhaps most of us, he had not. But a quick check of his collection verified it was true. The birds at the opposite ends of the decoration have either a single red "flourish' or a double orange one above each. Since the lids for the Friendship casseroles were changed from decorated clear glass to decorated opal during the pattern's production, it might be tempting to assume a change in the pattern on the dish coincided with that. I was able to find another instance of this curiosity, but am afraid it really provides no answers, just more questions.
The photo above is from the 1973 Pyrex Canada catalog, showing all decorated clear glass lids. You can see that each round casserole set contains a different variation of the 473. Curious is that a replacement parts listing in the same booklet lists both clear and decorated opal lids as being available for the round casseroles. Even more curious, it lists only opal lids for the oval casseroles.
Two years of patience and a couple of instances of plain old dumb luck got me this AH 500 set for under $50. This set is one of the more difficult to find/complete because, even though Autumn Harvest was marketed 1979-1986, refrigerator sets were discontinued after the first half of 1981.
