Club Obi Wan

We can see easely the hollow on this picture.

BrandonA18 wrote:Additional photos are now live in the action preview listing here:

https://propstore.com/product/indiana-j ... re-fedora/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Brandon

Brandon -- thanks so much for pointing us toward those great photos!
Much appreciated

Hi, Brandon -

I know the hat has changed over time a tiny bit. These things shrink and settle in. But, if you get a chance, how wide is the brim on either the right or the left side?

Just curious. If it violates something for you to answer then no worries.

We all know that the hat for Crystal Skull is 2.5" exactly and consensus is that the Raiders hat is almost 2 3/4"

Such an amazing thing to see this! For years Ive been trying to get this look in a hat. It actually appears to be super soft. I am also surprised to see no lining in the hat! Wow... The quality of the fur is also very interesting. It is absolute magic on film! I would be curious to see how close a match modern hat makers have gotten to this authentic replica.

No difference from other vintage hats. That said, imo, there is nothing out there that can compare today. We have lots of great hats that match the color and look, but the rabbit felt today is not what it used to be.

Jeremiah wrote:No difference from other vintage hats. That said, imo, there is nothing out there that can compare today. We have lots of great hats that match the color and look, but the rabbit felt today is not what it used to be.

So true. For that “claylike” softness, your only choice is to go vintage, sadly.

Here’s my dobbs forty from the 1950’s. Even my 100% beaver Penman hat, while an exquisite example of modern felt, just doesn’t compare...

https://youtu.be/FfXKu3KpGtY" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The ONLY felt I've ever owned to date that mimics the vintage softness of the old felts is my AB/Garrison 78 gr. Portuguese beaver felt that I got from Steve Delk back in 2006.

It was an experimental cone he had received from his distributor when he was looking for a thinner and softer beaver dress felt, but at the time he wasn't a fan of exactly HOW soft the felt was, so he offered it to me as a 'yard hat'.

It's been re-blocked at least 3 times by Dave Garrison, getting better and better each and every time, and has pretty much become my 'go-to' hat for several years now. I can just beat the crud out of it, and it just comes right back every time.

It's really weird as it acts EXACTLY like a 1940's Borsalino I have in my collection, and sad it wasn't followed up on by Steve, as if he'd given it a chance, I think it would have been a Grand Slam for him. He just didn't give it time to 'grow' on him.

Regards! Michaelson

Yes there are beaver hat bodies similar but we are comparing rabbit to rabbit. To date I don’t think there are any that can compare.

I made the statement regarding the only comparable I've come across being like the old rabbit, Jeremiah, was/is a thin dress 'off the radar' beaver.....and therefore agreeing with the fact about rabbit not being the same anymore.

The Boralino I mentioned above is a vintage rabbit.

I know what we're comparing things to, but thank you for reminding everyone. Sorry you didn't follow my train of thought, as convoluted as it was.

The irony is this is the thin beaver that Steve was trying to obtain to match this original Raiders rabbit felt in terms of softness since the original rabbit was no longer available, so it is related.....kinda....sorta....

Regards! Michaelson

Some more photos taken today...

I had a thought about Jack's HJ's today- if they look rediculously tall, why would HJ sell them? Answer- They were meant to be telescope crown hats, which the concentric lines around the crown on the Raiders hat reveal.
So I came here to say that, and Bingo! There's the hat in it's original telescope crown shape! The sweat WAS folded!
I've been ranting about the Raiders telescope crown here since 2005.
I wouldn't handle that hat at all if possible.

Hi Canyon, folded sweat

This is what the top of the Raiders hat looked like before it was reshaped for the film! They didn't "rebash it" it just fell back into it's original shape with a tiny bit of proding!

Also explains why In some scenes, at least one in particular, the hat has a telescoping bash. Either the scene was shot before someone realized the hat was not rehashed with a center crease, or the hat returned to its original bash momentarily.

3thoubucks wrote:Hi Canyon, folded sweat

Hah! I'll never forget that comment you made all those years ago. It still brings a smile to my face.

So, funny thing about the folded sweat....over on TFL, we were talking about John Wayne's hats and who made them. I remembered that they auctioned some of them off a few years ago and went to look up the listings. Sure enough, lookie what we have here:

3thoubucks wrote:

This is what the top of the Raiders hat looked like before it was reshaped for the film! They didn't "rebash it" it just fell back into it's original shape with a tiny bit of proding!

You are correct. This is the way you received a Poet when you ordered one direct from Herbert Johnson-- at least, between '89 and '93, when I bought several of them.

The sweat band curves out and becomes the underside of the brim in front? Mistaken for a dimensional cut? But in the back the sweat doesn't flare out onto the brim. I think maybe it's detatched in back.

The point where the sweat band ends join is off center. Is this the final proof the hat was turned?

edit: i just redid my sweatband so it curves out under the brim like the Raiders hat. It has altered the look of the brim in an very Raiders way! Plus, I believe this did a lot to enhance the channel under the ribbon in the front dent above where the sweat flares the most. May be the primary cause.

eazybox wrote:

3thoubucks wrote:

This is what the top of the Raiders hat looked like before it was reshaped for the film! They didn't "rebash it" it just fell back into it's original shape with a tiny bit of proding!

You are correct. This is the way you received a Poet when you ordered one direct from Herbert Johnson-- at least, between '89 and '93, when I bought several of them.

This may be true for the late 80's but I own 4 original 13 Old Burlington St poets from ca.1980 and they all have a straight centre bash not a tear drop.

I went to look at the original today, I really didn't see any evidence for a tear drop just the lines of an old centre bash, I think they were confused when they unpacked it and put it on display and reshaped to a tear drop, I'm sure the original was centre bashed from the shop.

The original is in such good condition. I was annoyed I didn't take any felt or ribbon with to check colour as its very hard to capture the colour on camera. Has anyone been able to compare the current ribbon or felt colour from HJ with this hat?

Its very hard to eyeball how wide the side brim is, its very uneven one side is slightly wider which you can see on the photos. The brim also looks longer than it is to the original break because the ribbon bottom has been alighted to the sweat band stitching which is higher not the brim break. (its also done like that on one of my originals)

The front bash is about an inch off centre compared to the centre line of the hat oval and the back ribbon. All of my 13 Old Burlington Street Fedoras have off centre bashes, 2 slightly to the left one slightly to the right and one about an inch to the right like the raiders hat, this indicated the off centre bash may well have been put in at the shop, as they don't seem to have taken much care about putting centred bashes in the hats I have.

Who were the two guys on the floor photographing the blade runner shirt today, are you on this forum? Did you get any good photos of the fedora?

It's a shame this wasn't an opportunity to have access to measure the brim dimensions, it would have made such a difference to the community who just want to make Raiders fedoras that have the right feel. Everyone knows where the original is so there is no possibility of faking it.

I wonder if there is still a chance to have the brim traced and measured before the auction. But where would the measurement be taken from, the old brim break or the bottom of the ribbon, or both?

I will write a post about my originals at some point they match up with the Raiders hat in most ways except for brim cut and ribbon width, only one has the exact same stamp as the Raiders hat and interestingly this is the one that shares features with the raiders ribbon, so was probably from the same time frame as the raiders hat.

Did you buy your hats new directly from HJ? Many people, especially IJ fans, would change the shape after they got their Poets. I also bought two from Lee Keppler which he restyled before sending them to me. Anyway, the ones I got directly from HJ were not exactly teardrops; I believe it's referred to as diamond-shaped (although I'm no expert on hat terminology), and also there was no "dome" in the top center of the crown. Of course, the later Poets weren't really the same hat as was used in Raiders, which may also account for the difference.

My 15 years of research and reproduction of the concentric lines on the crown indicate that the original bash was a pork pie. There is a pork pie pictured at 10 o'clock on the HJ catalog page. So it's just the back of the teardrop that is original in my opinion. DNL, who often misremembers details, did describe the hat as a "Crocodile Dundee" hat. That quote is here somewhere.

3thoubucks wrote:My 15 years of research and reproduction of the concentric lines on the crown indicate that the original bash was a pork pie. There is a pork pie pictured at 10 o'clock on the HJ catalog page. So it's just the back of teardrop that is original in my opinion. DNL, who often misremembers details, did describe the hat as a "Crockodile Dundee" hat. That quote is here somewhere.

Interesting. The only film-contemporary Poets with which I have direct experience are the "later" ones, just after Last Crusade. If you ever saw the way Stetson and Dorfman Pacific used to shape the backs of some of their wool felt Indy crowns, that is what I was trying to describe here. I just don't know what I'm supposed to call it-- sort of a teardrop but with sharper, more angled corners. I often wondered if Stetson modeled their hats after an example of an actual Poet, because their wool felt crowns were shaped a lot like the Poets I got from HJ.

How funny, just popped across to see the items displayed at the IMAX and guess who was there also looking at the items ... Deborah Nadoolman ! She was talking to a couple that she didn't think that was the actual Raiders hat and that she had used an Australian hat in the end as HJ couldn't match the felt . Or something like that. She's still in my bad books so I couldn't be bothered to talk to her.

CRB wrote:How funny, just popped across to see the items displayed at the IMAX and guess who was there also looking at the items ... Deborah Nadoolman ! She was talking to a couple that she didn't think that was the actual Raiders hat and that she had used an Australian hat in the end as HJ couldn't match the felt . Or something like that. She's still in my bad books so I couldn't be bothered to talk to her.

SOLD $424,000

D00R wrote:SOLD $320,000

Just what would someone do with a $320,000 fedora?!?
Can't wear it. Can't expose it to direct sunlight or humidity.

It's fun that some of you guys got to see it in person, and the rest of us got see lots of close-up photos.

But even if I had a spare $320 grand, I'd rather have hats I can wear.

It says here that it went for over half a million dollars: https://news.justcollecting.com/harriso ... rop-store/.

Glad I got to see it yesterday in person. In my opinion, the colour of the hat is not well represented in the catalogue photos. I took a couple of pictures on my iphone, then, when standing there, altered the colour / tonal values of the images in the in-app settings so that the colour values of what I saw on my phone matched exactly what I was looking at in the display case. Was pleased with the results. I'll try to put up the pics when I get around to signing up to a photo hosting site but in the meantime, if anyone wants to send PM me an email address, I can mail you my pics.

LRGS wrote:It says here that it went for over half a million dollars: https://news.justcollecting.com/harriso ... rop-store/.

I must have dozed off during "the famous dessert truck chase." Or was that in the extra footage on "Big Bang?"

Ha! Nosirrah beat me to the punch while I was typing my comment. Oh well, I'll continue beating the dead horse anyway:

LRGS wrote:It says here that it went for over half a million dollars: https://news.justcollecting.com/harriso ... rop-store/.

The "320,000" price is in UK pounds: £320,000. As D00R notes, that's about $434,000 in real money. But then, as pointed out in the article linked above, the auction house tags on a 23% "buyer's premium."

Twenty-three percent on top of the winning bid! So the final price ended up being £393,600, or $521,362.

Wouldn't it be nice to have so much disposable income that you could drop half a mil on the hat Harrison Ford wore while he was buying donuts?

Wait... whaaat? Donuts?

Why, yes; here's a quote from the article:

"The fedora was worn extensively by Ford throughout the production, and its unique markings meant it could be screen-matched with many of the film’s most famous moments. These included Indy’s visit to former flame Marion Ravenswood’s bar; the Cairo street chase and short-lived duel against a sinister swordsman; a face-off with a King Cobra in the Well of Souls; the fist-fight with a German mechanic beneath a spinning aircraft propeller; and the famous dessert truck chase."

"Truck? What truck? You mean the donut truck?" And off he goes!

Y'know, back when I was in elementary school, I'd have been marked down for stupid little grammar mistakes like confusing "dessert" with "desert." But today, errors like that are the hallmark of a professional journalist. (I am very ashamed to admit that I hold a degree in Journalism... from back in the day when grammar and spelling and, y'know, facts actually mattered.)

And... Marion Ravenswood?

If Deborah Nadoolman says that this is not the hat she sat on, well, who am I to argue? She ought to know! Now I need have no regrets about not purchasing the famous cupcake... or was it donuts... or eskimo pies... truck chase hat; I mean, if it's not the hat on which Deborah sat, what's the point in owning that?

Nosirrah wrote:

LRGS wrote:It says here that it went for over half a million dollars: https://news.justcollecting.com/harriso ... rop-store/.

I must have dozed off during "the famous dessert truck chase." Or was that in the extra footage on "Big Bang?"

Brilliant.
'Stop Me and Raid One'

I find it interesting that, according to the article, neither the S&W nor the whip sold.


Regards,

Indiana Jeff

Indiana Jeff wrote:I find it interesting that, according to the article, neither the S&W nor the whip sold.

Regards,
Indiana Jeff

That's odd because both sold
Whip for £47,500
S&W for £37,500

The Solo Jacket didn't meet the reserve but Stephen said they had a number of bids post the auction

You know, suddenly the purchase of a HJ raiders poet doesn't look like such a large investment...

WetDigger wrote:You know, suddenly the purchase of a HJ raiders poet doesn't look like such a large investment...

Ahhh...Einstein's little-known Theory of Hat Relativity.

I wonder how long it will take to ship the hat to Dubai?

$521,000? Darn. I was a day late and $520,999 short.

EDITED: originally I used the other "D" word and it was censored. Hope "darn" is OK. If not, I'll try "Oh, dear."

The hobby of prop collecting, unfortunately, has become an exclusive club for super rich investors, who have elbowed the true fans, who collect out of love, and not greed, to the sidelines-- where we can only gape in awe (or dismay, or even derision) at increasingly mad selling prices. Is any hat really worth over half a million dollars? No-- how many homeless veterans-- to use just one example-- could you feed with that much disposable income?

No need for that kind of language here.

Jeremiah wrote:No need for that kind of language here.

Well, considering that hat is one the single most iconic pieces of film costuming of all time, I'd say half a million is about right.

Forrest For the Trees wrote:Well, considering that hat is one the single most iconic pieces of film costuming of all time, I'd say half a million is about right.

Personally, I'd give the title "single most iconic piece of film costuming of all time" to Judy's ruby slippers. Indy's fedora certainly belongs somewhere in the top ten though. As such, they are both priceless and I'd say they belong not in the private collections of millionaires, but "they belong in a museum" where everyone can enjoy them. Just my opinion, and who knows what the current owner will decide to do with the hat (which is,after all, when you remove the rose-tinted lenses through which we view it, just an old worn out piece of clothing). But being a collector myself, the ridiculously escalating prices have been a major beef of mine for years.

I once was offered the chance to buy an original screen-worn IJ hat for $7,000. For all I know it could have been this same one, because I was told Harrison Ford had signed it. But the guy who told me about it, who was another collector, checked it out for me and told me that the hat had been sold and had since increased in value to $12,000. That was back in the early 1990's. Inflation is a witch.

Coincidentally, I was just reading an article in an old issue of ROLLING STONE about the first BEATLEFEST convention in 1974. A charity raffle was held for a pair of signed drumsticks donated by Ringo, the tabla played by George on the SGT. PEPPER album, and two guitars-- one owned by John, the other by Paul. The total price raised for all of these items was $3,000. That's what I call a bargain by today's standards. If anyone has time machine they can lend me, I'm there!

I'm curious, for no specific reason beyond idle curiosity, if anyone can detail or has detailed the "provenance" of this hat; that is, specifically, what was the train of ownership from the time it was purchased by the film company until today? Who have the previous owners been? By what manner did the hat pass from the film production company into private ownership? How many owners has the hat passed through, and how has it been handled, stored, or displayed over the past thirty-odd years?

I've read here that "a previous owner" had the hat autographed by Harrison Ford. Is it correct, then, that the signature does not necessarily date from the film production?

(I have read the story about "Desi" on the main site page, but there are no details about who the "stunt man" was, or how the hat passed from the stunt man to Desi, or where the hat went after Desi. I assume the "Desi" hat is the hat which was recently auctioned, but perhaps that is not the case. Does anyone know for sure?)

The auction listing indicates the hat comes with "a certificate of authenticity" from Prop Store. I'm sure they make a reasonable effort to document the items they sell, and this one must have been reasonably well documented to command a half-mil selling price. But the auction listing, or at least the online listings I've been able to find, do not detail the full history of the hat.

I also understand that the film production company purchased several hats. How many are still in existence? Where are they? How many did Ford wear? How many were worn by stunt doubles? Are any other Raiders hats in the hands of private collectors?

I also thought I saw a topic on this forum a few years back indicating that the purchase receipt for the original order of hats for Raiders had been discovered. Is that topic still on here? Or am I mis-remembering? I cannot find it despite searching using a variety of search terms.

I don't have the answers to any of your questions, but would have asked some of the same ones were I interested in buying this hat. For one thing, it looks in better shape to me than the one that was owned by Desi. It looks like it was cleaned, at the very least, because I don't see some of the dirt marks that were on Desi's hat and that matched up so perfectly with stills from Raiders. And I could be wrong about this detail, but if I recall correctly, there were also some stain spots (blood stains?) on the back of the brim of Desi's hat that I don't see in photos of the one that just sold. If the hat was cleaned or reshaped to any degree, that would have been a mistake, in my opinion, but apparently the new owner had no such concerns. The ribbon and bow details do match up nicely, though. And perhaps lighting and camera angles account for the other apparent discrepancies.

I've only followed this story with casual interest and not researched it in depth, but I assume that "both" Desi's hat and the recent one sold are claimed to be the one true Cairo hat, because of the film photos used in both cases to support authenticity.

I personally think that with this type of item, being 40 years old, from an era when everything wasn't documented on the internet, that we could never know the true story now. Too many opinions, not enough facts.

Anyhow, here's my photos from the exhibition. Deborah Nadoolman was stood behind me when I took these, and I'm pretty sure she was mentally rolling her eyes when she was looking at it.

CRB wrote:Anyhow, here's my photos from the exhibition. Deborah Nadoolman was stood behind me when I took these, and I'm pretty sure she was mentally rolling her eyes when she was looking at it.

"Mentally rolling her eyes" because she was thinking to herself, "I had a whole closet full of these things! If only I'd known to hang on to them!"

It's pretty cool to see how the hat was displayed at the auction preview! Thanks for sharing these pics!

Collecting is a risky hobby, there is no doubt about that. No matter how carefully you check out an item, unless you get it directly from the source, there is always a chance it is bogus. And even "experts" can disagree on authenticity.

But you can put the odds more in your favor by not bidding on things like multiple current eBay listings where someone has put some illegible squiggles on album covers or photos, called them Beatles autographs, and claimed they are from an estate sale and the executor doesn't want to go to the expense of having the signatures authenticated, but "believes" they are authentic. These items actually are attracting bids.

I used to report obviously phony listings like this to eBay. They'd thank me and say they'd investigate the matter, but they'd never take any action-- the listings would remain up and the winning bidders would get ripped off. So, you have to educate yourself as thoroughly as possible to lessen your chances of being taken. But if you ARE interested in collecting incompetent forgeries, there are lots of great bargains out there.

Huh, I assumed this was the same hat as the one Desi had. Just looks like it was cleaned up (which would be a strange thing to do since the soiling was from the film production). So, these are two different hats?

Forrest For the Trees wrote:Huh, I assumed this was the same hat as the one Desi had. Just looks like it was cleaned up (which would be a strange thing to do since the soiling was from the film production). So, these are two different hats?

To my eyes, the bow and ribbon work looks almost exactly the same, but the rest of the hat that was just sold looks significantly different from Desi's. If there were a "shrug" emoji here, that would be my answer.

On the first page of this thread Mike stated Brandon confirmed this is Desi’s fedora.


Regards,

Indiana Jeff

Indiana Jeff wrote:On the first page of this thread Mike stated Brandon confirmed this is Desi’s fedora.


Regards,

Indiana Jeff

If true (and it probably is), then it appears to me from comparing the photos that the hat was "freshened up" a bit before the recent sale ("Big mistake, Indy!"). But as I said, lighting and camera angles may account for some of the differences I see. A lifetime of experience has taught me to be very suspicious, especially at price levels like this. I can only hope that the current buyer was equally suspicious and had ways of getting more information on the provenance than somebody's word that the item was genuine, before bidding.