About 5 years ago, I purchased my wife a brand new pot and pan set from Sams Club for about $150. It came with a couple skillets (8" and 10") and a 14" saute' pan as well as the shallow ribbed pan for burgers (I guess, never really used it much) along with 3 sauce pans, a dutch oven and a stock pot. And that is what we have used for the last 5 years. All Tramontina and all non stick (because if you don't over heat them, they will not release toxins. And we never overheated them... until I did haha.
The two pans we used the most were the 8" and 10" skillets. 8" for eggs and 10" for omelets. Well, since those were used almost every day, sometimes multiple times, they do wear out over time. And 365*5 is a LOT of uses.
The 8" still works quite well, but it is definitely showing its age and you have to give the pan a good shake to break the egg loose from it. But, it still works.
The 10" however, I treated a little differently. Not on purpose though. The way I would do it is if the pan was on the stove, and it was dirty, I would just put a little oil in the pan (tsp maybe) and heat it up and wipe it out with a paper towel. And that is what I did on the pans last good day, but I can't remember what came up, but I had to walk away from the stove for a bit and with the pan on high heat (glass top range), it went from hot oil to clean the pan, to hot oil breaking down into a polymer like I was seasoning a cast iron or carbon steel pan.
When you put that coating on top of the new age teflon, it doesn't act as it does on the steel/iron pans. It does the opposite, it almost creates the perfect substrate for food to stick, worse than straight stainless steel. So it was at this time that we decided that we needed a new set of pans, but the ones we found were $250+ for a set (still cheap for tri-ply), which we didn't have and still don't.
So instead of replacing the entire set at this time, we just found and purchased two of the pans that we needed, the 8" and the 10".
they came in the other day and today was the first day that we could use them (I could use them). So what do you make as the first meal in a new pan after the holidays? A Ham, egg and cheese omelet of course lol.
Let me just say, I forgot just how good these pans were when they were new. The oil from browning the ham is all I needed in that pan. Man I missed that. And even though the 10" came in with a little rash on it on the top lip, I'm still happy with the pans since both of them were only $35! Best money we have spent in a long time.
Now I just need to come up with the money for the other set so that we can toss these non stick pans that absolutely do not need to be non stick.