The 20-Year Club: What Reddit Owners Have Actually Kept the Longest

We searched 12,665 first-person ownership claims across 8 million Reddit comments (2008–2025) for one thing: people saying how long they have actually owned something. 2,251 of them had passed twenty years.

What we actually measured

This is not a survey and it is not our opinion. We parsed every comment we hold from the durability-adjacent subreddits — r/BuyItForLife, r/castiron, r/headphones, r/espresso, r/onebag, r/VacuumCleaners, r/chefknives and others — looking for a narrow, specific thing: somebody stating in the first person how long they have owned a particular object. Not “I hear these last forever.” An actual number attached to an actual thing they own.

That gives 12,665 usable claims. Here is how long people say their things have lasted:

The interesting part is the cliff after fifteen years. Reaching a decade is common — plenty of things manage it. Past thirty years the field narrows sharply, and past fifty you are almost entirely looking at cast iron, hand tools and inherited kitchen equipment.

The brands people have owned the longest

Ranked by how many people reported owning one for twenty years or more.

What stood out

Wagner has the highest average reported ownership at 46.0 years — though off only 5 claims, so treat it as a signal rather than a fact. Griswold follows at 43.7 years. The pattern underneath both is the same: the long reports are about older, simpler, repairable things.

Lodge — 55 claims, 32.5 yr average

Nothing else in the dataset combines this much volume with this much age.

“Honestly, it's swag at this point. I've been using the same 10" Lodge cast iron for 30 years, and yeah, sometimes I want to move up to 12, but it will be another Lodge for fifty bucks, instead of paying for a name.”
— r/castiron, 64 upvotes

See our Lodge pick →  ·  Full cast iron cookware ranking →

Miele — 29 claims, 24.4 yr average

Almost all of it is the canister vacuums, not the newer cordless line.

“My grandma has had a washing machine from Miele that has been working for over 25 years without a hitch”
— r/BuyItForLife, 7 upvotes

See our Miele pick →  ·  Full vacuum cleaners ranking →

Wusthof — 27 claims, 24.9 yr average

The lifetime warranty comes up repeatedly in the long-ownership comments.

“Wusthof's are best in the world IMO. Between professional career and personal use I have owned a grand total of 2 chef knives and 1 pairing over the past 27 years. I only replaced the first chef due to theft. Enjoy!”
— r/BuyItForLife, 64 upvotes

See our Wusthof pick →  ·  Full kitchen knives ranking →

Vitamix — 27 claims, 23.2 yr average

The 5200 in particular — a design that barely changed for two decades.

“Vitamix. Bought it like 20 years ago for 3-500 I can't remember how much. But at the time I was like this is incredibly wasteful. It's a fucking blender. That thing is amazing.”
— r/BuyItForLife, 19 upvotes

See our Vitamix pick →  ·  Full blenders ranking →

Sony — 21 claims, 23.8 yr average

Spread across decades of very different products, so read this one loosely.

“I used a pair of Sony MDR V5's for about 25 years and they still look better than that.”
— r/headphones, 7 upvotes

Full headphones ranking →

Rancilio Silvia — 19 claims, 21.2 yr average

Remarkable for a single model: more long-term reports than most whole brands.

“Nice! I've had my Silvia for 21 years now and it's still going strong. Once our mortgage is paid I plan to upgrade to this model Silvia.”
— r/espresso, 19 upvotes

See our Rancilio Silvia pick →  ·  Full espresso machines ranking →

Victorinox — 17 claims, 25.2 yr average

The cheapest thing on this list by a wide margin.

“Yup. Restaurant supply store, pick up some Victorinox Fibrox knives. Some of the ones I have, I've had for 20 years. Cook's Illustrated recommends these too.”
— r/BuyItForLife, 15 upvotes

See our Victorinox pick →  ·  Full kitchen knives ranking →

Le Creuset — 16 claims, 33.1 yr average

Fewer owners than Lodge, but the ones who have it have had it far longer.

“My first Le Creuset (20+ years ago), I had no idea wtf was i supposed to do with it. So… chainmail was one of the approaches. Many years later, some Barkeeper friend (or le Creuset own cleaning liquid), and that DO is still fine . So I'd say it's worth a try.”
— r/castiron, 97 upvotes

See our Le Creuset pick →  ·  Full cast iron cookware ranking →

Henckels — 12 claims, 28.8 yr average

Older German-made stock; the comments distinguish it from newer lines.

“I started with a 10" Henckels Pro S Chef's knife almost 30 years ago and it is still my daily knife. Since then, I had picked up the 8" chef's knife, bread knife, paring, utility, boning, and slicer. But I use the Chef's knives the most. Great choice!”
— r/chefknives, 18 upvotes

Full kitchen knives ranking →

How we cleaned the data

Self-reported internet data is messy, and we would rather show our work than have it picked apart. We discarded 729 comments whose numbers looked like durations but were not:

• hypothetical lifespan — 318 comments. e.g. “these might last 100 years”
• joke — 159 comments. e.g. “Read this as ‘I have had it for 240 years’”
• company age — 138 comments. e.g. “Lodge has been around over 100 years”
• speaker age — 84 comments. e.g. “50 year old man here…”
• warranty term — 30 comments. warranty length, not ownership

We also dropped 26 claims the product could not possibly support. A Rancilio Silvia cannot have been owned for sixty years — the Silvia launched in 1997. Every brand here is capped at how long it has actually existed. The largest single group we removed was twelve people reporting twenty-plus years on an Instant Pot, a product that did not exist before 2010.

The limitation we cannot fix: survivorship bias. People write about the pan that lasted thirty years, not the one that warped in year two. These figures describe what survives and gets talked about — not what share of units survive. Mention counts also track how much each subreddit talks about a category at all, so cast iron is over-represented relative to, say, luggage. And a brand appearing here is not an endorsement of what it sells today; Craftsman is the clearest example, where every long report concerns tools made decades ago.

Related

• The most-recommended buy-it-for-life products across 8 million comments
• Best cast iron cookware, ranked by owner data
• Best kitchen knives, ranked by owner data
• Best vacuum cleaners, ranked by owner data
• Best espresso machines, ranked by owner data