walmart,target,kmart most any retail place will have them quite reasonable.I wouldn't buy used unless you can get them for next to nothing.Look them over very carefully for any chips,hairline cracks etc.
Yep, give them the old 5 point inspection and make deals with the shopkeep. The old lady typically offers less than 10¢ a piece if she takes the lot of them.
Note: I purchased some of the Walmart brand "Mainstays" last year as the "Ball" mason jars were out of stock. Upon further inspection I noticed air in the glass, I still used them to can (water bath), but refused to use them with the pressure canner. Just an FYI.
I buy mine at the end of the season from box stores. Jars only have so many "cycles" in their usable life. If you buy them used...buy them VERY cheap...even if they visually look fine they might already have a lot of miles on them.
90% of my jars came from estate sales. Seems nobody is interested in bidding on them. I was getting box lots, 20-25 jars per box, for $0.50. I stopped buy them because I have nearly 2000 jars and that's more than I can fill. Over the last 7 years I've had 2-3 jars break in the canner. I credit that small failure rate to the fact that they are old and made to last.
Thanks guys! We have been looking everywhere as we can. Dollar General down the road from us has 12 packs for $7 so we may buy those although we are still looking for the little jars. I saw some that looked like they might be 8 oz jars on a canning video which would be perfect for jams...
The regular grocery store has them here. They aren't inexpensive though. I think I paid more than the $7.00 you saw for a 12 pack that my daughter used for her science project.
That's the thing, though. $7 repeatedly for as many jars as most people can-- that's a small fortune and it certainly doesn't save you money. Once you have your jars,'the canning hobby starts to pay for itself.
I've had several new jars break on the first boiling -very frustrating. Now I bring the boiling bath up and sterilize the jars in the water prior to packing them - weeds out the bad ones.
Half pints are tooo dang small for jams in this house. Once I open a jar, it is gone in two days Sometimes less. I like the wide mouth 1.5 pint jars, the 'in between' size, we picked up at TSC last year. Perfect for freezer jam. The end of season sale was pretty good, but they're probably $9-10 now. We bought a quart of honey from the local guy the other day, and I was happy to have another quart jar. Until I looked closer. Not a mason jar, and says 'CHINA' on the bottom My sister get some kind of pasta sauce in a mason jar. It isn't a full quart, but probably 24-26 ounces. I've used a bunch of them without issue. My mom used to use Miracle Whip jars for stuff that didn't go in the pressure canner, like fridge pickles. Took a ring and lid, just like a regular jar. Unfortunately, they are all plastic now. And speaking of lids, we buy peanut butter at Trader Joe's, the all natural, peanuts and salt kind. We save the lids, as they fit on narrow mouth jars. Handy when you have a partial to put in the fridge. Joe's coconut oil is the same, too, but we get gigantic jars of that at Costco now.
We picked up a bunch of white plastic lids at Walmart-- 1.97 for 8 of them. Come in both wide mouth and regular.
My wife canned something call "lemon curd". If you like lemon, you will love this. I put it on a toasted English muffin. We also made apple butter. That I like with cornbread. Smokey got us motivated again. As usual, we made too much. Also now don't care for the store stuff. We made some really good salsa, and our relish can't be beat by the store kind. Some of our stuff is three years old and just as good as the first year.
