Club Obi Wan

http://www.baronhats.com/indiana.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

What? They've claimed that for years.

Regards! Michaelson

So for $998 I can get myself a Baron "Indy" hat in beaver felt.

For $1,125 I could get two beaver hats; an Adventurebilt (from Mr. Delk) AND one from John Penman.

I wonder how many Baron Hats has made at that price?

Right! I can't believe that sorry I'll stick with our NORMAL hatters. I only hatters that are FANS!

Wait....775 dollars for "100% fur felt"? I'm assuming that'd be rabbit? Since the beaver is 998 dollars?

That's..........Amazing......

I thought Borsalino hats were overpriced for the skill put in.....

One Baron Indy hat, or three Penman's?

No doubt where I'd send my money.....I'm rather shocked at that...1000 dollars for a beaver hat? Who pays that?

done ANYONE own one? I doubt it but....It does look kinda cool. but not 1000 dollars cool. But to me it looks more LC instead of TOD.

fifthchamber wrote:Wait....775 dollars for "100% fur felt"? I'm assuming that'd be rabbit? Since the beaver is 998 dollars?

That's..........Amazing......

I thought Borsalino hats were overpriced for the skill put in.....

One Baron Indy hat, or three Penman's?

No doubt where I'd send my money.....I'm rather shocked at that...1000 dollars for a beaver hat? Who pays that?

the same guy that bought the "original" indy hat on auction....

I have a couple of Baron's Cliffhanger hats -- brown beaver and a charcoal gray (special order). I have had the hats for probably over ten years now and both are nice hats and I enjoy them from time to time. They were expense then, but I was unaware that they had gone up this much in price. I truthfully debate the price I paid back then, but it seemed fair when comparied to Peter's Brothers Michaelson Borsalino, at that time (which I also had for about five years -- also, one in brown and one in gray). But, I don't think I would tackle the same hat now at the price break they are at. I have paid a great deal of money for some of my custom hats, but I would not pay this amount to buy 'my Baron's' now! W>

They use Winchester felt too.

Apparently $1,000 is at the low end.

http://www.baronhats.com/legends.htm#cogburn" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I find it rather "illuminating" that the majority of the talk about the hat ends up referring heavily to the film it was used in rather than the hat itself... Not much said about the type of felt, why it's worth paying more for it being handmade, or the details, but a whole lot about the greatness of the film the original was used in....

Looking at (for example) John's site, you can see the balance is where I feel it should be (for a Hatter anyway...Less so for a movie review site perhaps?), the talk is about the hat.. What makes it so great and why you are paying more for the beaver or the rabbit...Something distinctly lacking from Baron's site sadly...

I know their pedigree, and I understand that they have a great lineage, and are more than entitled to use that for promotion of their products, but 2000 dollars for a hat? And not even one originally made by them? Or connected in any way? And one that seems, to my eye, to feature nothing added that would warrant the extra 1,500 dollars increase over most hatters for something of that size seems rather ridiculous....

Seriously...It's a hat...And as much as I love hats...Those prices are insane.

I guess some people need to pay more to feel it's worth it, rather than sticking to great quality and reason...I wonder how many they sell per year?

Baffling...

What this tells me is that they really DON'T want to make Indy hats. Not at that price. I'm not sold on the ribbon I see in the picture either. They also show a picture of Eddie Baron working with one of the hats. I do not remember the last time I saw Eddie in the Store.

Jake

Sadly it's not just the Indiana Jones hats that are insanely priced....

This; http://www.baronhats.com/snatch.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Is a leather hat....That much leather apparently costs 650 dollars....

Strange, as you can get a whole jacket or two for the same price....And look quite a lot better too...

Looking around that site further leads me to think that some people really must have more money than sense...Most of the prices are way above "reasonable", and several are well into the "woah, really?" stage....

I wonder what Eddie Baron would have made of these prices....I'm guessing that the new prices are Mark Mejia's "inspiration"? Since Wconly made mention of the prices being a little more reasonable back in the day...

It's rather amazingly overpriced right now..(I'll stop there, don't need to be insulting the company any further...Their prices will do that for me...)

"Somtimes a hat is just a hat." Sigmund Freud. Barron's is definitely pushing the envelope. They make the "Justified" hat for Timothy Olyphant, and the reproduction which is a little different cost something like $900.00. $650.00 is about "average" I guess for the full beaver custom hat, but even then it's a stretch for both the hat shaper and the buyer. Kevin O'Farrell charged $6 &/or 7 hundred for his hats and I heard him once complain about business being slow. And that was before we started talking about the Navajo silver story-teller hat bands. It can can be expensive being an adventurer. I may have to go back to boony hats....

Let's face it, you're paying for provenance, plain and simple.

You're getting a lot more sizzle with your steak, even though it's the same cut and prepared steak you can get down the street for half the price.

Not much different than some of the restaurants you go to........

Not saying it's right, but it's just the nature of the business.

Regards! Michaelson

Kim Hoffman wrote:"Somtimes a hat is just a hat." Sigmund Freud. Barron's is definitely pushing the envelope. They make the "Justified" hat for Timothy Olyphant, and the reproduction which is a little different cost something like $900.00. $650.00 is about "average" I guess for the full beaver custom hat, but even then it's a stretch for both the hat shaper and the buyer. Kevin O'Farrell charged $6 &/or 7 hundred for his hats and I heard him once complain about business being slow. And that was before we started talking about the Navajo silver story-teller hat bands. It can can be expensive being an adventurer. I may have to go back to boony hats....

The odd thing about that hat is that even though they have a pic of Olyphant on their site, I have heard from seversl sources that the Justified hat is a modified Stetson.

Waylon's hat could be a Stetson, modified. On the show the hat's crown looks to be approximately an inch taller than most contemporary Stetson western hats. It's not the "Open Road." It does have the standard "Cattleman's" crease; and quite possibly Stetson rolled a hat out for him. Or just as likely the costume department arranged something. Rand, Tom Hirt, O'Farrell, and others, have made hats for movies and tv. In the novels Waylon wears the Open Road, but the crown is 4 & 1/2 or 4 & 3/4 inches high and the brim is 2 something. Jaxonhats makes a fair reproduction for less than Barron's.

Just looked up the thread on The Fedora Lounge. A Hatco employee at the Stetson outlet told one of the members there that it was a Stetson Carson with a trimmed brim and a custom leather band: http://www.stetsonhat.com/products_detail.php?id=307" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Knudsen hats also has a replica for $230: http://knudsenhats.com/Hatdept/justified.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Well end all be all, their indy lip doesnt look that bad. if you go on the website and read some reviews about the indy hat and it seems alright but for that price i dont think they would let someone post a crappy comment

It could be Stetson's Carson, but the crown, at least as perceived through the medium of tv, looks taller. The Knudsen hat might be the Carson, and the crown does look a tad shorter. But the price ain't bad. Knudsen is in the East Bay, Walnut Creek, maybe. I think he gets Pre-shaped Stetsons and then hand creases them. I've been meaning to drop by at some point.

_ wrote:Not to open things even more, but they have used pics of others work and claimed it to be theirs. Also, I never give much if any weight to self-reported praise.

I never used to say anything about the character and representations of these guys until they crossed the line with respect to CS. They did not count on the friendships here with Fedora, nor the fact that we have members that know Bernie Pollack.

I'm with you. Price is a realitive thing. If there is a market for $1000 headwear &you want to buy it, more power to you. Optimo makes the "1000" made of 100% beaver belly fur in many colours including undyed & porcelain. Do I want it? Yes! The thing that turned me off Barons forever is the false claims. I own a limited edition Dorfman & as I recall, I paid $500. I think it was worth every penny. Again, value is a realitive thing, outright lying is a whole nother bag of hammers.

Thanx!!!
Charlie

Equally, I think some people prefer paying more just to say they paid more when asked....

But the quality doesn't push the hat up that much in this case.... The leather hat from Snatch I pointed at earlier is being sold at a disgusting price, and it's a nasty hat... You'd have to be blind to think that the hat was worth that much cash....

The Indy hat may well look decent, but for that price, that's the very least I'd expect... I'd also expect prompt making and delivery and as many repairs and reblocks as I needed in a lifetime, but something tells me that wouldn't be the case...

While I have respect for anyone trying to start up something like this, charging prices like that is just crazy...The product isn't worth it...And you can get far better, for a far more reasonable cost, from people who have proven themselves time and time again....

Prices like that surely must affect business....There can't be that many rich people in need of throwing away money on hats without caring what they get back? Surely?

And yes, prices are relative....But quality isn't...Some hatters are worth paying more cash for one of their hats, mostly due to great customer service, stunning worksmanship, or connections to hats they've made that you like previously...But if the quality isn't there, you're still just tossing money into the wind....And only a stupid person would do that (Lots of them about though...)

I've seen Borsalino's here in Tokyo being sold at 150,000yen.. About half my monthly salary (1500 dollars?), and honestly, they weren't good at all..Fascinating, but stupidly priced...But the name is the name, and sometimes, that's all it needs for people to be hooked....Baron's has a rep, but I don't think the name alone could carry them up above 500 dollars for a hat....

Who knows?

You also have to take into account how available an item is. Where else can you find a reproduction of a Rooster Cogburn hat?

Bruce Wayne wrote:You also have to take into account how available an item is. Where else can you find a reproduction of a Rooster Cogburn hat?

Knudsen makes the John Wayne Cogburn hat.

Hey Charlie..

Yeah...That does goes some way...Although I would suspect that you could ask someone like John to come up with a design for that and still come in rather lower than the cost of Baron's hat...

I agree..If no one else sells it, prices can be raised a touch since there's no competition...(Although that's still not a validation of the prices we're talking about..Fair IS fair still).. However, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anything sold in Baron's collection that couldn't be made or already sold at a more reasonable price elsewhere...

Hence the confusion about what you'd really be paying for with the Baron hats...

I think..

jlee562 wrote:

Bruce Wayne wrote:You also have to take into account how available an item is. Where else can you find a reproduction of a Rooster Cogburn hat?

Knudsen makes the John Wayne Cogburn hat.

I didn't know that.

Thanx!!!
Charlie

But you know what really strikes me as odd about the Baron site? I mean, besides the slippery wording....

Their "Cliffhanger," which is ostensibly a TOD hat, comes with a 5", in their own words "extra high crown." Now as we all know, most Indy hats come it at about 4.5" creased in the front. It also has a very straight looking block which was atypical for the TOD hats to say the least.

Contrast this with their "Cliffhanger redux" hat. 4.5" crown, tapered, and mysteriously, a 1.75" ribbon. Huh? And both are marked as having a 2.75" brim, with no indication of a dimensional cut.

If you look at their "Dillinger" reproduction, it has a 3" brim. But the actual Optimo hat had a 2" brim.

It's not like these dimensions are secret or anything. And you would think a hatter would have a very good eye for hat proportions. But they're all wrong. The brim on the Dillinger is VERY wrong! I mean, I can see how one might misjudge the proportions by even half an inch, but a full inch? That's a huge difference when talking about brim width.

I make no comment on the construction or materials, which I've heard good things about (as opposed to their customer service), but with regards to accuracy as "reproductions" I wouldn't really give them a passing grade on the above hats.

I'll be in LA next Friday. Might have to stop by this shop and see what this is all about. Anything in particular I should discuss while I'm there? (POLITELY discuss, I should say.)

sammy just going to the shop is awesome. no worries! just don't buy like 3 or 4 of them haha

Aragorn658 wrote:sammy just going to the shop is awesome. no worries! just don't buy like 3 or 4 of them haha

LOL! Agreed....seeing the shop is what I'm really interested in. I'd love to see their displays and their merchandise. At the risk of looking like a tourist, I'll take pics and post. Hmm....now which hat should I wear.

Sammy wrote:

Aragorn658 wrote:sammy just going to the shop is awesome. no worries! just don't buy like 3 or 4 of them haha

LOL! Agreed....seeing the shop is what I'm really interested in. I'd love to see their displays and their merchandise. At the risk of looking like a tourist, I'll take pics and post. Hmm....now which hat should I wear.

The AB of course, and compare it with theirs.

So far as I've been able to gather, they actually did make Crowe's hat for "3:10 To Yuma", which is a costume I've been interested in doing for a little while now. Less than a year ago, the "Western weight" hat was around $780, which I thought was laughable. Now.... it's just hilarious.

http://baronhats.com/Yuma_repro.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Ah, Baron Hats.

This is the company that sells a "Bond hat" in the wrong color and shape and so on for thrice the price of the real thing at Lock, isn't it?

DeWayne wrote:So far as I've been able to gather, they actually did make Crowe's hat for "3:10 To Yuma", which is a costume I've been interested in doing for a little while now. Less than a year ago, the "Western weight" hat was around $780, which I thought was laughable. Now.... it's just hilarious.

http://baronhats.com/Yuma_repro.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In fairness to Baron, most hatters have raised their prices in the past year. Optimo did, Art Fawcett did, etc. That is a pretty incredible increase though.....check out Knudsen's replica for $300: http://knudsenhats.com/Hatdept/310toyuma.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

jlee562 wrote: In fairness to Baron, most hatters have raised their prices in the past year. Optimo did, Art Fawcett did, etc. That is a pretty incredible increase though.....check out Knudsen's replica for $300: http://knudsenhats.com/Hatdept/310toyuma.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That's even better than another replica maker I was thinking of going with. Thank you for this link!

Yes, the price increase is pretty incredible. My Colt Single Action Army purchase was a bargain by comparison.

I used to go into Barons a lot back in 2000-2002 to get work done on my Indy hat. I'd bring in a Federation and have them tweak the brim or change the ribbon. Just small stuff. My point is they never knew anything about Indy's hat at this time. I had to explain everything to them. They used a flange to do my brim (which I now know is wrong) and bashed it incorrectly every time. I didn't really know any better at the time. I do remember them asking if they could take measurements of my Fed! A little odd for someone who supposed made a film-used hat!

Still they were always nice and helpful! It's a great shop; they've got a file of celebrities and their hat sizes going back to the 40's! Very cool stuff!

DeWayne wrote:

jlee562 wrote: In fairness to Baron, most hatters have raised their prices in the past year. Optimo did, Art Fawcett did, etc. That is a pretty incredible increase though.....check out Knudsen's replica for $300: http://knudsenhats.com/Hatdept/310toyuma.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

That's even better than another replica maker I was thinking of going with. Thank you for this link!

Yes, the price increase is pretty incredible. My Colt Single Action Army purchase was a bargain by comparison.

Yeah, Knudsen has some nice looking lids. They made Adam Savage's western which he wears on Mythbusters all the time, it's their The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly hat.

Just left Barons. cool shop. Oddly enough their Indy hat was absent. It wasn't what I expected. Lot's and lot's of hats of various styles. But I don't think I saw any hats less than 120 bucks! Looked at a straw stingy brim, $120. Checked out another stingy brim, felt, no liner, $145!! I like their selection though. There was one other customer there besides myself who had brought an old panama to ask for repairs. It was interesting to hear the employee helping him answer questions about fitting hat to person, construction of fedoras, etc. It's a small storefront that is oddly located in a residential area. In the back is where all the magic happens. To be honest, I would have loved to live in the house across the street from them growing up! I'd be poking my head through the back door everyday after school! Anyway other than a hat brush, I didn't purchase anything. I walked in wearing my AB so maybe the employees thought "oh no, here comes another gearhead. Quick, hide the Indys!" But I did manage to have a couple of pics snapped before I left. The AB is still getting used to my head so it seems to be sitting pretty high up in these pic. Plus, it was pretty warm and I was sweating like crazy!

dang those are big pics! sorry.

Your not fooling anyone sammy we all know you bought that straw hat in that last pic! Nice try.

Aragorn658 wrote:Your not fooling anyone sammy we all know you bought that straw hat in that last pic! Nice try.

Darn it!!! How'd you know??? Decided this year I'd go as Little Bo Peep instead of Indy for Halloween.

Knudsen makes some #### on Wheel's replica hats... are they pretty solid hatmakers?

Quick and dirty search,

This is from 2012 and is largely positive
http://www.cascity.com/forumhall/index. ... ic=41769.0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

This is from 2010 and not so much
http://www.thefedoralounge.com/archive/ ... 51160.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And according to this they are going out of business?

http://www.goldengatewesternwear.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Not a lot to go on, but I would be reluctant.



Regards,

Indiana Jeff

backstagejack wrote:Knudsen makes some #### on Wheel's replica hats... are they pretty solid hatmakers?

The Man with No Name hat which Adam Savage wears on Mythbusters frequently is a Knudsen. That hat has taken a lot of punishment, including several soakings IIRC.