Right now Walmart is the cheapest place for me at $1.50 for regular lids and $2.19 for wide mouth. They are sold in boxes of 12.

But prices change locally as the season progresses and then fall at clearance sales at the end of the season. The various dollar-type stores often have boxes for $1.00 at season end and I stock up then, Big Lots is also good but they are seasonal, and if you have a local Amish/Mennonite store you can buy them in bulk sleeves at great prices.

During the season you'll find some great bulk deals on lids on eBay but you have to act fast on those and check the listings daily.

Online you can make bulk purchases of sleeves (320 lids) at Lehmans and other sources but the shipping usually raises the per lid price to higher than I can buy them locally.

Your Walmart, if out of them, will quickly restock. Right now you are competing with all us other canners for spring lid buying and we have been grabbing them off the shelves for the past couple of months. :)

Dave

You must be right. And that was their last canner as well. I'll give it a few days and go look again, thanks for the info.

I have a few more questions:
If one buys a bunch of lids, and doesn't can enough to use all of them, they can keep until the next year?
Are sizes standard, if you buy Kerr lids will they fit Ball jars?

When you process a jar of food and then remove the band, when you go to open the jar later by prying the lid off, do you ever nick the jar?

If one buys a bunch of lids, and doesn't can enough to use all of them, they can keep until the next year?

Yes, properly stored they are good for many years.

Are sizes standard, if you buy Kerr lids will they fit Ball jars?

Yes. So will Golden Harvest and Good Housekeeping. All are standard now days as all the brands except GH are made by the same company. Jarden Altrista owns all Ball, Kerr, Golden Harvest. The Good Housekeeping ones are made in China but to the standard sizes.

When you process a jar of food and then remove the band, when you go to open the jar later by prying the lid off, do you ever nick the jar?

You can if not careful. It depends on what you use to open the jars. The flat end of a church key (bottle opener) works best. Sealed lids will overlap the edge of the jar by a couple of millimeters so there is an edge to use. But attention and a bit of care is still needed.

Be sure to use some of this pre-canning time to do alot of reading of all the FAQs at NCHFP. You'll find they cover many of the common and basic questions in more detail.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: NCHFP FAQs

I have been buying them in sleeves from a local Mennonite market, but found them at Lehman's hardware in bulk in Kidron, Ohio. Lehman's has a walk-in retail store in at least two locations in Amish country, but they do have a website. I just order about four hundred at a crack (about enough for one harvesting season). The postage wasn't out of line at all and they were still under local prices anywhere else. But then again, I use a lot of non-electric items and usually have a large order for them at least once or twice a year and that makes shipping more palatable. BTW/....... I found the quality of the lids very good. Better than the last batch of Ball lids I bought locally.

The Lehmann's is a great site, lots of stuff to drool over. What was wrong with you Ball lids? And (I know this is a newbie question) how do you tell quality? You just use the lid once, right?

Once you get into the canning habit, you'll find yourself checking store shelves for closeouts and reductions all year long. Late-summer and early-fall I often see seasonal supplies reduced. They just fly off the shelves, though, especially the lids, so you can't dither about getting to the stores.

Most of these suppliers are very seasonal, but over the holidays you will often see canning supplies due to the "gift in a jar" contingent. But those are seldom reduced in price.

I think many of us have found the quality varies even in the "standard" brands like Ball. One year you'll buy a bunch and they're great, another year not so much.

Generally, though, from my experience all the lids are pretty much the same and even with the cheaper Golden Harvest I haven't noticed a difference in reliability.

Where you do have to be extra-careful is with the lids coming off the jars in new cases. Because those cases are shrink-wrapped, not boxed, a lot of times there's damage in stacking on the pallet or during shipping. I check any lids which come with jars with extra care. Rings also. It hurts, but I discard dented or creased lids. Same with dented rings.

I've also noticed new Better Homes & Gardens canning supplies at Walmart. I guess they're jumping on the revived interest in home food preservation. I haven't used their jars and lids, so have no idea as to how they compare.

Carol

One thing I noted was the seal on the last batch of Ball lids were inconsistent and narrow. I had two or three failures when canning with them.......and I very, VERY seldom have a failure.

Walmart here was not that cheap. I ordered a lot of them from Lehmans. Should get them in the next day or two. I got over 1,000 of each size. Lids will last about 7 years. I have had some even older that worked fine. I am tired of running to the store for lids. Figure this will save on gas money. I usually get them at BiMart on sale, but they limit how many boxes you can get. Thus, with going back and forth to the store, I will save time, as well as gas money.
There is also Filmore container, but their shipping was more than Lehmans.

In regards to the Better Homes and Gardens jars, here's my experience. I bought a box of these jars with lids for apple butter to give at Christmas time. They worked great - no sealing issues - but I did notice that they were slick (almost greasy) when I took them out of the box. Not a big deal because I always run them through a dishwasher before using but it was enough of an "ick" that it made an impression. I am assuming its something with the manufacturing of the jars. I bought them because they were the cheapest jars WalMart had at the time and I wasn't willing to lose any of my good jars! Hopefully it's a one time thing but I thought I'd share my experience since the topic came up.
jennifer

Yuck! I have a couple of pieces of glass that always end up a film after sitting for a while after they've been cleaned. That does not inspire confidence.

I grabbed a case of ball half-pints at the publix the other day. It had a big sticker on the top that says:

"American Jars for American Jobs - Made in the USA for 125 years."

I hadn't seen the BH&G jars but now it makes sense. I'll have to make sure I get some more Ball jars when the commissary gets them in. I was just thinking I should check Big Lots. I like the Golden Harvest jars.

Jennifer

After reading your post I took my BHG jars back. There's another local store that has Ball jars or at least they did a couple years ago, I'll try them.
I found some reasonable lids on Ebay so I got....a bunch(too many for a newbie but they will be an incentive to get going) both wide and regular.

Ok,my lids from Lehmans came today ! My goodness, do you know how heavy 2,000 approx. lids weigh ?
I do not know where I will store them, but I have them. Was nearly $500 for these. That is going to be a lot of canning work. Hope we have a good crop of tomatoes this year as I need to can a lot of them. Last year we did not get any tomatoes at all. Not one was edible.
The lids are plain gold, no writing, no white coating inside. Just plain and with a red rubber type gasket.
I think it is the white coated ones with the BPA.

Linda Lou

Did Lehmann's ever address the BPA question in their bulk lids? I don't remember seeing on their site any specific disclaimer on that for the bulk lids in particular, but of course I was so overwhelmed with the wonders of all the stuff they had that maybe I wasn't paying enough mind.

Mine (from Lehmans) are plain metal.....no white plastic coating, no PBA.

I didn't go looking for this conversation, it just sort of popped up when I did a search on lids a couple days ago.

Here is a link that might be useful: BPA/lids

The Big Lots near me had jelly jars and standard size lids when I stopped in today. No pints, quarts or wide lids though. I bought some jelly jars.

Lucille, they said they can't say exactly what is in the lids. If there is any BPA it would be in the sealing compound, not on the lids, since they are not the white ones. I seem to understand they used to sell white coated ones, which did have BPA. I am really not concerned with these that I got.
If they had come from China, then I would worry. Said these are made in USA.

Is there a clear coating (instead of white) on the inside of the other lids? I read that there are many other compounds than bpa that we should be worried about but bpa is the one getting the press.

I forgot to mention that the cases of jars were $7.25 and the box of lids were $1.50. Interestingly enough, I didn't see any canning jars at walmart. Maybe they are hiding them somewhere.

There is no coating that I can see at all. Just like the top of the lids, plain gold with the red plastisol seal.
Boy, with over 2,000 lids I am going to have to use them !