Langenberg / Beaver Brands

[Blare]

Nice hat! Great Find....

But "Beaver Brand" was after the 70's and replaced the "Lion Hats" that was Langenberg's signature hat line. In fact the earliest trade mark I have found for "Beaver Brand" was 1980.

Interesting is that the early Beaver line used the exact same quality designations and logo's of the Lion line simply substituting "Beaver" for "Lion". At the beginning of the thread I wrote a history of all I could find.... https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/langenberg-beaver-brands.101868/post-2740832

I feel like I have seen on occasion a few Beaver Brand hats (not mine) that I just have a hard time believing (not saying I don’t believe you… just more of a “wow”) were manufactured in the 1980s or later. It may just be more a testament to their manufacturing processes not changing a whole heck of a lot from the 50s through to 2000. As you are correct they kept the same sweat die toolings through much of their hat production… even much of their store brand hats are easily identifiable as Langenberg products as we see in examples through this thread.

 

[M Hatman]

Thanks for reminding me. Yes, I think I read what you put together, but wasn't thinking about it when I made this post. I don't know who's right or wrong, date wise. I was just going by my general impression that, from what I've seen, it looked to me like all the hatmakers had stopped using the type of mfg or reorder tag in my hat by sometime in the 1960's, if not earlier. Am I wrong about that?

If you mean the generic black and white blocking tag...I have seen those used well into the 70's by some hatters (especially on custom, which Langenberg really specialized in) and were available through cleaning and hat supply houses still up through the early 90's.
So, really hard to tell just based on that.
Remember when Beaver entered the market it replaced Lion entirely, they did not co-exist as the beavers co-opted all the quality designations and logo designs of the Lions.
And if you look back through the thread I have a Lion from the mid to late 60's, so certainly none (beavers) before then. Personally I believe beaver was introduced early to mid-70's or so.......with the trademark being recorded later as an afterthought in 1980, perhaps when they did the entire redesign of the beaver logo.
In any event your hat looks to be one of the first "Beavers".

 

[MikeinRome]

If you mean the generic black and white blocking tag...I have seen those used well into the 70's by some hatters (especially on custom, which Langenberg really specialized in) and were available through cleaning and hat supply houses still up through the early 90's.
So, really hard to tell just based on that.
Remember when Beaver entered the market it replaced Lion entirely, they did not co-exist as the beavers co-opted all the quality designations and logo designs of the Lions.
And if you look back through the thread I have a Lion from the mid to late 60's, so certainly none (beavers) before then. Personally I believe beaver was introduced early to mid-70's or so.......with the trademark being recorded later as an afterthought in 1980, perhaps when they did the entire redesign of the beaver logo.
In any event your hat looks to be one of the first "Beavers".

I remember now. Right after I bought this hat, I read the entire thread and saw your post about the 1980 date and so decided I was getting a post 1980 hat. But when I got the hat and saw that tag, I forgot what you'd said, I guess. Anyway, I didn't know those tags were still used anywhere near that late in time.

 

[deadlyhandsome]

Hales & Hunter Co. (NOT my hat):

 

[deadlyhandsome]

Arizona Hatters (NOT my hat):

 

[MikeinRome]

The Kingsbury Hat, 15X Pure Beaver Quality, that's for sale on eBay now. It's listed as a Rand's hat, but was sold or worked on at Rand's and has a Rand's liner.

 

[BobHufford]

Saw a couple of “hat grabbers” (used in stores to pull hat boxes off of high shelves) go at auction.