If you’ve never met a cake recipe you couldn’t master and love dreaming up new things to do with frosting, it might be time to add a few cake- and baking-themed antiques to your collection. From charming travel tins to old-fashioned kitchen gadgets, here’s a look at the cake and baking items most popular with collectors today—and what they’re worth on the resale market.
Glass Cake Stands
Evolved from the circular silver salver trays of the 1600s, pressed-glass cake stands began appearing in American markets in the mid-19th century as part of tea rituals. Later, in the mid-20th century, they functioned as showpieces for sliceable desserts made at home, thanks in part to newly popular boxed cake mixes.
What It’s Worth: Today, pastel-hued pedestal stands from the latter era by makers such as Imperial Glass Co. (green, center), Anchor Hocking (peach, bottom), L. E. Smith Glass Co., and Mosser Glass (pink, right) typically sell for $30 to $300; prices increase with age and size.
Spouted Mixing Bowls
With early examples dating from as far back as Mexico’s Mesoamerican Tlatilco era (1200 B.C. to 900 B.C.), spouted stoneware bowls have been used for mixing and pouring batters and other concoctions for centuries.
What It’s Worth: Spongeware and striped versions from the 1960s through the ’80s are plentiful on today’s second-hand market and typically sell for $20 to $60 apiece. Look for makers such as McCoy Pottery (pink-and-blue-striped) and Roseville Pottery Co. (blue spongeware), and note that older examples tend to be shallower and have wider spouts.
Frosting Spatulas
Used to cover confections with an even layer of icing, frosting spatulas—also known as spreaders—trace their origins to the broad-bladed “spathe” of ancient Greece. Today, wooden-handled examples produced between the 1930s and the ’60s by companies such as A. & J. Manufacturing Co. are coveted by collectors for their simple charm and cheerful colors.
What It’s Worth: Typically selling for $5 to $25 apiece, rarer offset spreaders (green, top left) and promotional ones (center), along with less common yellow and cream colorways, often land at the higher end of the price range.
Pastry Tube Sets
As upper-class hostesses around the world clamored for increasingly elaborate desserts in the mid-1800s, professional chefs in Italy and later in France began using piping bags affixed with cut metal tips to add intricate icing ribbons to cakes.
What It’s Worth: Made available en masse for home chefs in the mid-20th century, pastry tube and cake-decorating sets by brands such as Ateco (pictured) and Mirro now serve as nostalgic nods to the era and can be found for $10 to $25.
Cupcake Liner Packaging
The first documented reference to cupcakes, described as “a light cake to bake in small cups,” appeared in 1796 in Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery. But their individual food-safe paper baking liners were not widely available commercially until after World War II; they came about most notably when Virginia’s James River Corporation shifted from producing wartime materials to making paper goods.
What It’s Worth: Coveted for both their playful packaging and their crinkled contents, boxes from the 1950s and 1960s add joyful color to any display and typically sell for $5 to $30 apiece.
Cake Carriers
Used to safely transport baked goods from home kitchens to their destinations, cake carriers (a.k.a. cake keepers) of the 1950s and ’60s were typically made of tin and fitted with metal carrying rods before plastic versions took over in the 1970s. Often stored atop the refrigerator, these prettily patterned pieces now make a charming display on open shelves or above kitchen cabinets.
What It’s Worth: Expect to pay $20 to $70 for midcentury examples, with prices rising according to age, condition, and design rarity. A wood base (top left) usually signals an older model, sometimes dating back to the 1920s or ’30s.
Egg Beaters
Before electric mixers became a kitchen mainstay in the mid-1960s, these small-but-mighty tools, often referred to as egg beaters and featuring colorful wood or plastic handles, made it easier to beat eggs, blend dough, and whip cream. Look for brand names like Maynard and Flint, and for some extra-special pink, green, and orange handles, search for devices made with Bakelite. These manual hand mixers have been collected for some time and even have a collector’s group you can join. In the last 10 years, they have expanded to collecting vintage electric mixers from the ’50s and ’60s.
What It’s Worth: The manual eggbeater/hand mixers still sell in the $8 to $20 range depending on the style, but the electric mixers can sell for as much as $40 if working and in the box.
Flour Sifters
Invented by Ohioan Jacob Bromwell in 1819, the flour sifter helps home cooks keep clumps out of their baking batters. Produced en masse starting in the 1920s, early models used a single sieve and a simple turning crank, while those made after World War II by brands like Foley’s Sift-Chine (center) often had more complex handle mechanisms and multiple screens. Today, vintage sifters of all sorts look spiffy on display.
What It’s Worth: Expect to pay $5 to $50 each, with larger sizes and rarer colorways like blues, pinks, and greens commanding higher prices.
Start Your Collection!
The following dealers, some of our favorite resources when it comes to vintage bakeware, generously loaned pieces to be photographed for this story:
