History detectives wanted

[tonyb]

So here's a shot of the Stetson Fifteen I bought from Nick Charles:

It's a considerably darker brown than it appears in the photo. I'd peg the condition somewhere between very good and excellent. I was tempted to clean it in naptha but after giving it a thorough brushing I determined it didn't really need it. It stretched up from its original 7 1/8 to a 7 5/16 (or something like that) without a fight.

What I wish to know is how old it might be. The mode-edge brim is just a whisker under 3 inches. (During what era did Stetson make the mode edge? How 'bout that pleated bow?)

Here's some interior shots, posted in the hope they'll supply clues:

And here's the retailer's stamp:

Perhaps Maj. Nick Danger, who is perhaps the closest thing we have to a resident Cleveland expert (he's come through for me before), can tell me when Baer Hats went out of business (assuming that they are indeed defunct) or perhaps steer me toward a source with that information.

It's a great hat, fits me well, and has provoked your standard "nice hat" comments twice in the less than 24 hours it has been in my possession.

 

[Art Fawcett]

Tony, this hat screams late 40's to me. Can't pinpoint why exactly for you, but it does. Maybe we can entice JP to do the research on the Mode Edge.

BTW...nice hat!!

 

[Matt Deckard]

My guess late 40's early 50's.

Plastic on the top of the lining and the logo used by Stetson. I find Stetson using the numbers like 15 20 25 and so on throughout the late 40's and 50's.

Dimentions of the hat, crown and such... my best guess is late 40's.

 

[MattC]

Plastic cover

Matt--Stetson made hats very like this with basicly the same liner and the same sweat but with a goldish, yellowish semi-clear plasic cover over the logo on the liner. I have always thought that predated the clear liner...or actually it went from the yellowish, to a semi-opaque, to the later clear plastic. Your view?

 

[Brad Bowers]

Tony, this hat screams late 40's to me. Can't pinpoint why exactly for you, but it does. Maybe we can entice JP to do the research on the Mode Edge.

Yes, JP, let us know what you find! Just guessing here, but I bet the names Mode Edge, Guild Edge, and the like, all show up 1946 or later, as Cavanagh's patent would have expired out by then.

And did you get a deal on a swell hat!

Brad

 

[fedoralover]

A Dead Ringer

I have one almost exactly like yours on the outside. Except mine says Stetson Royal Deluxe on the inside. Yours is a Stetson 15 meaning it cost 15 dollars when it was originally sold. Mine has the original price tag of $12.50 on the inside. But mine has the pleated bow, wind trolley and Mode edge just like yours. The felt is very soft and floppy. They are great hats. Enjoy.

This is the liner on mine.

fedoralover

 

[tonyb]

Yes, where is that JP? Could it be that he has something more urgent and/or entertaining to do than help me figure out how old this hat is? The nerve!
I'm growing more fond of this hat by the hour. It may not be the "finest" lid in my collection, but it could be the most irreplaceable. The proportions are generous and elegant (yes, it does have that '40s look, doesn't it?), the crown has little if any taper, and the bow treatment and mode edge are among the things that just aren't done anymore, at least not by anyone I know of.
Its style aside, I'd guess it was made in the 1950s. I know that Stetson was still making mode edged brims at least as recently as 1957 (I have almost irrefutable evidence that my mode-edge Stetson Ambassador was made that year), and the liner and the sweatband are much like other '50s Stetsons. I want to believe it's older than that because, well, it looks older, and each passing year further convinces me that older is better, at least in regard to gentlemen and their hats.
Anyone (JP?) know what Stetson called this model? It has a pair of those paper stickers hiding under the sweatband. One of which reads, in part: TO REORDER MENTION NUMBER B64838. That number, minus the B, is also stamped on the underside of the sweatband.

 

[tonyb]

Thanks, fedoralover. Mine isn't particularly soft and floppy (the hat, I mean), so perhaps it had more stiffener in the felt when it rolled out of Philly, or maybe it has rarely if ever had any stiffener washed out of it through cleaning.
Great color, by the way. Is that pretty much how it looks live and in person? As I noted earlier, mine is considerably darker than it appears in the photo.

 

[fedoralover]

No, it's actually a sage green color. It goes well with anything brown. I always thought it was late 40s to very early 50s. The style is almost exact to yours. I have an Open Road with that circular medallion logo with the 3X on the top just like yours does.

Yours looks like it came right off the shelf new.

fedoralover

 

[tonyb]

Yeah, I, too, have a coupla-three old Stetsons with that circular 3X logo. For some reason, that says "1950s" to me, but I could well be wrong about that.
They sure don't make 'em like they used to, eh? For the life of me, I can't understand why the makers of the new mass-produced hats use such crummy leather for their sweatbands. Really now, how much more could it cost to use a higher grade of leather? It's not like there's much of it in a hat, after all. They've probably determined that they can sell the hats for the same amount with the inferior sweatbands (and inferior everything else, truth be told), so they go the cheap route. But that seems awfully short-sighted. If you want to sour a man on hat wearing, have him shell out something north of a hundred bucks on a hat that will look like hell after a few exposures to rainy weather. It will surely dimple and taper. The poor newbie won't have the experience (nor the vocabulary) to clearly articulate why he doesn't like his hat as much as he used to, but he will nonetheless know that he doesn't.
I've been told by someone in a position to know that higher-quality materials (felt bodies, leather, liners, ribbons) aren't prohibitively expensive. The greater expense in getting hats to market, I would guess, is in labor and packaging and shipping, as well as other overhead costs, such as the physical plant, which would remain the same whether the manufacturer was producing junk or quality goods. Yet the mass producers continue to scrimp in the very areas where they shouldn't.
Now, where's that JP?

 

[fedoralover]

I know that circular logo dates back to the early 50s from a hat I bought that had a date attached to it. I thought it predated the rectangular one in use now, but apparently they coexist in the same time frame. I saw another hat that was dated to the early 80s, which was a gift hat and it also had that same circular logo. So it's hard to date them strictly by the logo.

fedoralover