The Ultra-Rare Holiday Pyrex Pattern Collectors Fantasize Of Finding At The Thrift Store

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In the 1950s, colorful Pyrex was everywhere. Corning Glass Works introduced color to its heat-resistant glass cookware in 1945, and the brand launched vibrant new designs and shapes each season. One particularly popular product was the Cinderella mixing bowl, which debuted in 1957. The bowls featured flared sides that served as both handles and pouring spouts. With their retro illustrations and convenient nesting design, the vintage bowls can be easy to find and worth collecting, but one particular design can command more than $1,000 because of its rarity. Made especially for employees of the Corning Glass Works factory in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, the commemorative bowl was given as a holiday gift sometime in the 1970s. Since it was designed only for employees and never sold as part of Pyrex's lineup, the bowl has become one of the most sought-after styles for vintage Pyrex collectors.

The bright green 2-quart bowl has a pattern of red ribbons and white holly leaves on one side and the phrase "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" in red cursive on the other. One recently sold on Ebay for $650, while another, which still had its clear lid, sold for $1,800 in 2025. Even more valuable is a rare variation on the "Merry Christmas" design, with orange leaves. It's believed to be from a test batch before the company decided on white leaves.

Discontinued Pyrex patterns like "Golden Poinsettia" and "Reindeer Snowman" can command hundreds of dollars secondhand, but commemorative Pyrex products are even more valuable. Some commemorative products were made to celebrate a new product launch, while others were designed for trade shows or, in the case of the "Merry Christmas" bowl, for employee events. Since they were produced in small quantities and never put on the market, these rare styles are hard to find, driving up their value to collectors.

If you've found a vintage Pyrex "Merry Christmas" bowl and want to confirm it's authentic, you'll need to decode the embossed stamp on the underside. A vintage Pyrex product usually has a stamp that's round, not linear, and the word "PYREX" should be in uppercase type. It should also include its model number. For example, all Cinderella bowls bear the model numbers between 441 and 443. Finally, Pyrex began to add the product's metric capacity to this mark in the 1970s, so look for the size in liters in the upper right of the stamp. If your bowl is blank or has a sticker label, unfortunately it's not genuine Pyrex.