Below: Lids, widemouth, works out to about $0.27 per lid, available at one out of five of my local Wal-Marts on 5/18/21. Source: Walmart.com
Below: Bands-and-lids, widemouth, works out to about $0.46 per lid, available at four out of five of my local Walmarts on 5/18/21.
In case you haven’t heard, this is now the second year in a row in which lids for home canning have been hard to find. And, judging from the traffic that my original post (Post #G21-003) is still getting, as we move into canning season, more people are now finding that out and/or the shortage is getting worse.
I assumed that this lid shortage would go away once the only U.S. lid manufacturer (Ball/Kerr/Golden Harvest) started shipping for the 2021 canning season.
That was incorrect. New supplies are being shipped, and yet lids are still hard to find.
We now have what I’d term a “soft” shortage. At least around here. You can buy them, but you need to know where to look, you may not find them on any given day, and you may have to resort to paying more for, say, bands-and-lids than you would pay for lids alone.
In earlier posts, I actually went to check the shelves, e.g., Post #G21-020. For this one, I think I have an easier barometer of the state of the shortage in this area. I’m just checking all my local Walmarts, via the Walmart website.
Above, you see the difference that 19 cents per lid makes. Lids are in stock in four out of five stores, if you’re willing to buy them as boxes of bands-and-lids for roughly $0.46 per lid. And lids are out of stock in four out of five stores, if you have to buy them as lids alone, for roughly $0.27 per lid.
And so, it continues to be a “soft shortage”. You can find lids almost anywhere if you are willing to pay a premium. But if you insist on paying no more than the “normal” price for them, you may have a hard time finding them.
