eBay hat, is it as old as seller claims? Opinions please

[DJH]

I think I'll just go ahead and buy it, seeing how I'm about to come into a whole pile of money, on account of that nice fellow in Nigeria who's about to send me several hundred thousand in appreciation for my forwarding him enough dough to clear up some minor bureaucratic problems he was having in obtaining his inheritance.

Wait a second, I thought you were the seller??

 

[tonyb]

Wait a second, I thought you were the seller??

Busted.

 

[John in Covina]

I had a hard time seeing the color of the sweat band. From what I recall for along time the old hats had the brown leather sweat band and they went to black leather in the fedoras but I don't know about cowboy hats. I think the switch from brown to black occurred in the late 1950's or early 1960's but don't know for certain.

 

[T Rick]

Well, I stand corrected then. Maybe I'm a bit jaded, but I've had my share of dealings with bogus listings for various items. FWIW, I've contacted many with erroneous listings also, and gotten similar results to that posted above (the majority will thank you for your help, and revise the ad accordingly). Good to know I'm wrong in this case, always glad to see honest people on eBay.

 

[Derek WC]

What do you mean, honest? It still says it's from the 20's.

 

[T Rick]

What do you mean, honest? It still says it's from the 20's.

Well, I didn't go back to the ad. Since stated above it'd been changed, I thought that was corrected. Guess not. Oh well, as stated, to police eBay in whole in any specific category would be a full time job (more so in fact in most cases). "Let the Buyer beware" certainly applies there as much as anywhere.

ETA: Ah, but it has changed. It now says 1920's style. Can't see where it says it's from the '20s now.

 

[John in Covina]

What do you mean, honest? It still says it's from the 20's.

I think they changed it to 1920's Style which could mean almost anything.

 

[Dinerman]

And to be fair, stylistically, it's dead on '20s.

 

[Derek WC]

Yes, I suppose. I don't know a whole lot of hats so I'd be one of those more likely to step on the tripline.

 

[randooch]

Shouldn't this discussion be in the Ebay section?

 

[Neophyte]

Shouldn't this discussion be in the Ebay section?

Well I wasn't gonna say anything, but...yeah.

 

[John in Covina]

It 's a hat first, ebay second.

 

[tonyb]

As Katha Pollitt observed recently in a column about Greg "Three Cups of Tea" Mortenson's knowing exaggerations and distortions in his "nonfiction" book, people tend not to look too closely at a story they like to hear. In the case of this eBay seller, he had good reason to want to believe his hat dated from the 1920s, and (to give him the benefit of the doubt) that's what he did believe, until he was shown good reason not to.

At an antique shop I bop into on occasion, there was (is?) a framed poster for sale (the proprietor frames posters and old ads and such, so that he has some relatively small-dollar items in inventory) featuring a photo of the Space Needle and the arches at the Pacific Science Center, an iconic Seattle image if ever there was one. It's a United Airlines poster dating from the 1980s, I'd guess, and certainly not earlier than the late '70s. The fellow in the shop said he believed it dated from 1962, the year of the World's Fair, the event for which the Space Needle was the centerpiece and the lasting symbol. But he acknowledged to me that he thought that mostly because that's what he wanted to think. Of course he wants to think that. The 50th anniversary of the World's Fair is next year, and that midcentury modern stuff is hot, hot, hot right now, and that all points to potentially big prices for items of that nature. I pointed out to him that the United Airlines logo on the poster was considerably more recent than 1962, and that the Space Needle didn't get that white and gold paint job until long after the fair. He said, huh, I suppose you're right about that, or words to that effect.

Outright dishonesty? Not really. Willful ignorance? Well, yeah, a good case could be made for that.

P.S. I'm bracing for a tsunami of dubious claims, with the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World's Fair on the rapidly approaching horizon. At another nearby junktique store, a few days ago, I inquired after a set of six Eames stacking shell chairs -- blue ones, the Real McCoy, by the looks of 'em. The shopkeeper said he wanted a hundred bucks a pop for them, which is a very reasonable price for real vintage Eames stacking chairs in nice condition. The seller told me they came from the Seattle World's Fair. I didn't utter a word in response to that claim, but I'm sure my facial expression spoke volumes, for the seller quickly followed with, "well, that's what the guy I got 'em from told me."

 

[HatsEnough]

Yeah, even museums fall for it. I was in a small museum in South Indiana a couple of years ago and they had a whole display of items marked "civil War" this or that. Unfortunately for them, every single item was Span Am war or later. But they had a discussion of the civil war and the local area and they needed civil war stuff which they apparently had none of in their collection. They really, really wanted that stuff to be civil war era.

 

[John in Covina]

At an antique shop I bop into on occasion, there was (is?) a framed poster for sale (the proprietor frames posters and old ads and such, so that he has some relatively small-dollar items in inventory) featuring a photo of the Space Needle and the arches at the Pacific Science Center, an iconic Seattle image if ever there was one. It's a United Airlines poster dating from the 1980s, I'd guess, and certainly not earlier than the late '70s. The fellow in the shop said he believed it dated from 1962, the year of the World's Fair, the event for which the Space Needle was the centerpiece and the lasting symbol. But he acknowledged to me that he thought that mostly because that's what he wanted to think. Of course he wants to think that. The 50th anniversary of the World's Fair is next year, and that mid-century modern stuff is hot, hot, hot right now, and that all points to potentially big prices for items of that nature. I pointed out to him that the United Airlines logo on the poster was considerably more recent than 1962, and that the Space Needle didn't get that white and gold paint job until long after the fair. He said, huh, I suppose you're right about that, or words to that effect. Outright dishonesty? Not really. Willful ignorance? Well, yeah, a good case could be made for that.

It has to do with the way we think / reason. We are predisposed to look for connections and patterns. It shapes our perceptions and it can be a way to fill in steps so that one will make a leap to make a connection. I think it has similarities to instances of synchronicity. If you have ever had a day where something keeps coming up. It is like you wake up and think about Hire's Root Beer, then on TV you see unexpectedly a Hire's Root Beer commercial, there is a display of Hire's at the store and friend brings some over. We can tend to read into it more than there is. You think of a friend that you haven't heard from in a while and they call. Just as people look to see signs that portent the future but after the fact. The buzz is building for the anniversary and the poster is there so one jumps to connect. As you said wishful thinking.