Other then passed down cast iron where do you guys get yours? I have one that's was my great grandmas and was passed down to my grandma then to my wife it's a nice skillet. We use it for bg's in the mornings mostly. I thought I've read most cast irons newly made aren't worth a shit, am I wrong ?
Modern Lodge is decent. About the best you'll get unless you track down one of the few "modern" small production guys. Not many of those.
I inherited a few skillets and corn bread muffin pans from my maternal great-grandmothers and grandmother. I've found a few other pieces at garage sales, estate sales and antique stores. Antique stores usually want an arm and a leg for so-so stuff.
My most recent score was a very vintage Griswold #8 hinged double fryer for $50
at a "do-it-yourself" estate sale - no professional estate sales people running it - just a big garage sale where "everything went". The only problem with the fryer is that it is going to take FOREVER to re-season.
The guy was mid-60s only child bachelor whose idea of cooking is to order pizza. He was selling his mother's stuff and had a friend SAND-BLAST all the cast iron to bare metal to "make it look like new".
He said that his mother must have not been paying attention to her cooking as she got older because all of it was "burned black".
It is definitely all shiny now. Probably gonna take AT LEAST 5 or 6 seasoning runs to make it decently usable. I probably should have scarfed up the skillets as well, but I already have several users.
I found a very rusty/crusted small (7") #5 out in the old workshop in the back of a drawer today. I think my grandfather must have been using it to melt stuff in the shop. That one's gonna have to go through the electrolysis process to clean up the rust.
You can get some stuff kinda cheap on fleabay if you're patient, but you have to watch out. Some of the "vintage" stuff is recently manufactured (1970s or newer) overseas.
castironcollector.com has a ton of info about cleaning up rusty/gunked iron. They also have a few pages dedicated to identifying the old makers and the "non-collectibles". Some of the non-collectible stuff is decent enough to use on a day-to-day basis, but you have to watch out. The quality of it sucks and a lot of the Chinese import cast-iron is made with questionable quality recycled steel and or pot-metal.