I kept thinking that I couldn’t let them become part of “dad’s” collection on eBay.
Ugh, an interaction with him was one of the first I had on my journey to finding that Knox homburg (I was writing to ask why his St Regis was worth $400 instead of the $100ish they seem to go for with regularity). He came across as super weird and scammy but I almost believed it was just some wacky family of weirdos with a huge hat collection trying to fleece uneducated buyers, which is a drag but whatever.
Then a week or so later I read all about him here and realized the "collection" is him hoovering up all the good hats he can find and selling them for ridiculous prices with a weird story about how Dad worked on it and we took down the Stetson 5, 10, 15, 20 and this one is just like the 15, and... barf.
It's a free world, but it bothers me because he's depriving people who might not have oodles of money to spare trying to find something nice and get a deal on it, and driving up the prices from all the other clueless sellers who use his listings to help price the crappy (or maybe not) hat they found in some thrift store or attic. Plus the constant violation of vintage lids by stretching them up a size to try and sell them for more money. Just ick.
Anyway, all that to say that one of the this that ran through my mind when I was peeking under the hood of that Knox was that I was happy I'd rescued it from being resold for $500 (because it's from the 1910s/20s of course!) after being stretched to a 7 3/8 (because it was almost a perfect 7 3/8 and Dad just had to get it there).
Good job Brent.