The Official Stetson 25 Thread

[wsmontana]

Sorry for the duplication from the new hats thread but I thought this might be of interest here. It is a new to me Stetson Beaver Twenty-Five in great condition with amazing dry-moldable felt (it takes just a few seconds to crease in a new style). Not sure but it may have LOT 7744 stamped inside the sweatband.

 

[carouselvic]

That’s the oldest 25 that I have seen

 

[Blare]

Sorry for the duplication from the new hats thread but I thought this might be of interest here. It is a new to me Stetson Beaver Twenty-Five in great condition with amazing dry-moldable felt (it takes just a few seconds to crease in a new style). Not sure but it may have LOT 7744 stamped inside the sweatband.

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A real beauty!!!

 

[MikeinRome]

Sorry for the duplication from the new hats thread but I thought this might be of interest here. It is a new to me Stetson Beaver Twenty-Five in great condition with amazing dry-moldable felt (it takes just a few seconds to crease in a new style). Not sure but it may have LOT 7744 stamped inside the sweatband.

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That's a real special hat, the earliest Twenty Five I've seen!

 

[wsmontana]

That’s the oldest 25 that I have seen

A real beauty!!!

That's a real special hat, the earlier Twenty Five I've seen!

Thanks guys! Do you think this could be an early 40s?

 

[deadlyhandsome]

Sorry for the duplication from the new hats thread but I thought this might be of interest here. It is a new to me Stetson Beaver Twenty-Five in great condition with amazing dry-moldable felt (it takes just a few seconds to crease in a new style). Not sure but it may have LOT 7744 stamped inside the sweatband.

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I had no idea the Twenty-Five went back that far. Great find!

 

[wsmontana]

That's a real special hat, the earlier Twenty Five I've seen!

https://www.thefedoralounge.com/threads/the-official-stetson-25-thread.54458/page-11#post-3029343

I think this could be one of those early hats in this ad you posted earlier in the thread. Also, I think it answers your question about whether these have beaver content.

 

[wsmontana]

I had no idea the Twenty-Five went back that far. Great find!

Thanks Brent!

Earlier in the thread Mike had posted an ad from 1941 that had a 25. Not sure if this hat is that early though.

I found a 7X Clear Beaver with the same retailer stamp:
https://vintagehaberdashers.com/2012/06/26/1940s-7x-clear-beaver-stetson/

 

[MikeinRome]

Thanks guys! Do you think this could be an early 40s?

It's at least early 40's. If there weren't any Twenty Fives before 1941, then this has to be one of the very first ones.

 

[MikeinRome]

If I didn't know anything about that hat and the only photo you showed me was the sweatband with the Lot Number, I would have estimated the date of the hat as within a year of 1940, just based on the Lot Number.

 

[MikeinRome]

So if that Stetson Twenty Five ad was in a Summer 1941 catalog, it might have been advertised even a bit earlier. At any rate, I'm sure that by Summer 1941 that Stetson would have already made at least some of these Twenty Fives, so the very first ones have to have been made a little earlier than Summer 1941, I would expect, maybe back into 1940, etc. It would have taken some lead time to have the special sweatbands and liners manufactured prior to the launch of this new model hat.

 

[wsmontana]

So if that Stetson Twenty Five ad was in a Summer 1941 catalog, it might have been advertised even a bit earlier. At any rate, I'm sure that by Summer 1941 that Stetson would have already made at least some of these Twenty Fives, so the very first ones have to have been made a little earlier than Summer 1941, I would expect, maybe back into 1940, etc.

Thanks for all your input Mike — I really appreciate your analysis and expertise! It blows my mind that this hat could be over 80 years old and still in such great condition.

 

[MikeinRome]

Thanks. I just love trying to figure out a wonderful hat like that. I'm very jealous. I have no idea where you got that hat, but you're extremely lucky. Happy to take it off your hands when you get bored with it!

 

[wsmontana]

Thanks. I just love trying to figure out a wonderful hat like that. I'm very jealous. I have no idea where you got that hat, but you're extremely lucky. Happy to take it off your hands when you get bored with it!

I picked it up from a lady who said it was her great-gramp’s. Her Dad had it and recently passed and she was selling off his stuff. Anyway, this hat is my Dad’s size and he was born in 1941 so I think it would be cool to let him caretake it for awhile and then I will likely pass it along down the road to an appreciative caretaker like yourself.

I do feel very lucky to have found it. I sent recent photos of the hat to the lady who sold it to me and she was very grateful that it found a new home and that it would be greatly appreciated and cared for.

 

[MikeinRome]

I'm just going to add one cautionary note about dating this hat. It's claimed that when Stetson started making the One Hundred hats in early 50's, that they manufactured a bunch of sweatbands and kept using those til they ran out of them in the 60's. If that same thing happened with these early Twenty Fives, and all the sweatbands were made at once, you could have a hat made in, say, 1943 and the sweatband would give you a false idea of when it was actually made. We have no way of knowing right now, since we only have a sample size of one hat, but if others turn up with the same identical sweatband info on them, then that will probably mean they were all made together at an earlier date of about 1940.

 

[MikeinRome]

Trying to answer my own question, it seems I was wrong in guessing a $20 hat might be 4X and a $25 hat might be a 5X. It seems at best that a $25 hat might be, pricewise, about equal to a 4X, but I'm not saying it actually was the exact same as a 4X, because I don't know. And a 5X was perhaps in the $35 range. I come to this opinion after seeing Alan's 5X Clear Beaver on the first page of the Stetson Lot Number thread, where his hat has an original price tag of $37.50 and his hat dating to very late 1930's.

Ad for the Stetson 25 in a Summer 1941 Stockman Farmer catalog which is for sale on eBay right now. Says hat has 5 1/2 inch crown and 2 5/8 brim, I think. Mentions hat has an oil silk sweat resister. So looks like 1941 was the first year the Twenty Five was offered. It doesn't say anything about the hat having beaver content, but says it's the best hat you can buy and it's listed beside 3X Beaver hats that are only about half the price, so I'd guess it wouldn't be a huge jump to assume the 25 does have Beaver. Maybe it's like a 4X or 5X Beaver, but I'm only speculating. All this means is there's some 1940's Twenty Fives floating around out there somewhere. I don't see any hats on this thread so far that I would judge to look like they were 40's hats. So let me throw this out there-- if a 3X beaver hat cost $15, does that mean a Stetson Sovereign Twenty is a 4X hat and a Stetson Twenty Five is a 5X hat?

 

[wsmontana]

Trying to answer my own question, it seems I was wrong in guessing a $20 hat might be 4X and a $25 hat might be a 5X. It seems at best that a $25 hat might be, pricewise, about equal to a 4X, but I'm not saying it actually was the exact same as a 4X, because I don't know. And a 5X was perhaps in the $35 range. I come to this opinion after seeing Alan's 5X Clear Beaver on the first page of the Stetson Lot Number thread, where his hat has an original price tag of $37.50 and his hat dating to very late 1930's.

What you are saying makes sense to me. It is interesting that the 1941 ad for the 25 was ”Stetson’s new quality. We think this is the finest hat you can buy.” Were the 5X and 7X CBs discontinued by 1941? I don’t see them offered in the ad but there is a second page that is cropped.

 

[MikeinRome]

I think the finest hat you can buy was just sales hype. That 5X Clear Beaver hat I mentioned has a Lot Number extremely close to yours, probably made the same year, just going by those numbers. Can't recall what I've read about 7X. Don't think I've seen any before the late 40's, just speaking offhand. The real high-end hats weren't always mentioned in ads.

 

[carouselvic]

This was taken from THE HAT BOX January 1927

 

[AbbaDatDeHat]

^^^ and black!! Go figure.
Timeline data reset i guess.