Brad Bowers
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 4,187
Dreispitz said:I did not find a union lable - even not after thorough palpation - but another tag. That might be the giveaway. Do you have record of similar lables of the time or does the code give any evidence?
The fold in the liner and the border of the centre medallion are certainly noteworthy. The stamp on the sweatband si not really legible, I must regret.
The reorder label you found is pretty standard for Hat Corp. hats through two or three decades, and maybe more. The codes don't really give an idea of the date of manufacture. However, a couple of things ARE different about it.
First, the height of the crown is not printed. Usually, the crown height is printed to the right of the block number, but it's not present on yours. Perhaps this is a clue to an earlier rather than later hat, or perhaps not.
Second, the size fraction is different. From my hats here at home, it seems that on at least mid- to late-'50s hats and beyond, the fraction is a smaller size stacked fraction, where the fraction height is the same height as the normal 7. Yours uses a virgule for a level fraction in the same size typeface. Quite different. It could also possibly indicate an earlier hat, as maybe at a later date they either made or purchased the special fraction for their printing machine.
Is the "7" in your "7 3/8" hand-written, or is it printed using a very large typeface?
The side seam on the liner is unusual for a later hat but fits in with an earlier hat. However, it's also possible it was reserved for the more expensive hats, the 25s on up. Same thing with the special piping around the liner tip. Both of the feature are not on later hats, at least not on the cheaper Cavanaghs.
We know it's not an early Cavanagh, and evidence suggests that it's not a post-'46, so I sort of want to classify it being from 1940-1946, roughly.
So what is the height of the open crown?
Let's see it on you!
Brad