Why We Keep the Odd Bits

Why We Keep the Odd Bits

Every now and then, somebody looks at one of our listings and probably wonders why on earth we are keeping it.

A casserole lid with no casserole. A gravy boat stand without the gravy boat. A lone saucer. A butter dish base. A teapot lid. A sugar bowl lid with no sugar bowl in sight.

In most shops, these things would probably be written off as incomplete.

In replacement china, they can be exactly what somebody is looking for.

One Person's Spare Is Another Person's Missing Piece

The funny thing about discontinued tableware is that breakages rarely happen neatly.

The lid survives and the casserole breaks. The gravy boat gets chipped but the stand is fine. Six cups become five while all six saucers carry on living their best lives.

That leaves lots of perfectly useful odd pieces floating around the pre-loved market.

Rather than treating them as useless, we try to look at them from the other side. Somewhere, somebody may own the casserole with no lid. Somebody else may have the gravy boat with no stand.

Why We Catalogue Them

Keeping odd pieces only works if customers can actually find them.

That is why we catalogue spare lids, stands, bases and other incomplete pieces separately where it makes sense to do so. They may sit on the shelf for quite a while, but that is not unusual for replacement china.

The person who needs that particular lid may not need it today. They may need it after Christmas dinner in 2028.

Our job is simply to still have it when they come looking.

Not Everything Has to Be a Complete Set

There is sometimes an assumption that pre-loved china is only worth saving if the whole set is intact.

We rather disagree.

A single saucer may not look exciting, but if it replaces the one somebody broke from a much-loved tea set, it suddenly becomes very useful indeed.

The same goes for lids, stands, cruet pieces, casserole bases and all the other slightly orphaned bits that would be easy to overlook.

A Different Kind of Matching

There is also something rather satisfying about seeing two pieces reunited.

A lid bought from one charity shop may eventually end up on a casserole that has spent the last thirty years in another part of the country. A gravy boat and stand may have taken completely separate routes before becoming a pair again.

It is one of the odder pleasures of the replacement china business.

So Yes, We Keep the Odd Bits

Not every incomplete piece is worth keeping, of course. Condition, demand and whether we can identify it properly all matter.

But if something is usable, identifiable and potentially helpful to somebody trying to keep an existing set going, there is a good chance we will hang on to it.

Because in replacement china, the piece that looks least useful on its own can sometimes be the most important piece in somebody else's cupboard.

You can browse our current range of discontinued china and replacement tableware on the MrPottery website, including spare lids, stands and other useful oddments when we have them available.