Rugged Beaver Felt Vintage Antique Old West Clint Eastwood Cowboy Hat 7 1/8 57cm

  
Please see all 12 images. This is a Rugged Cowboy hat with a unique leather hat band.

This is a great Old West hat with use and imperfections. Generally speaking the older the hat the better the quality. At some point hat companies kept increasing their X ratings to compete with each other.

Early in Cowboy hat history, the X designation was used as a pricing point. In fact, the three X hat was a better product back in the early 1900s and into the 30s. The X was more of a pricing point than a beaver content quality originally.

But an X designation wasnt a hats only quality notation. There were many others like the name of the hat, etc.

But the Xs still hung around causing confusion for collectors and customers alike. Worse, as the years moved into the future, those Xs meant less and less as a marking of quality until today they seem practically meaningless with modern Hats having absurd things like a 100 X and 500 X. So, how much beaver makes an X?

The fact is, no matter what era your hat is from, we just dont exactly know how much beaver fur is in there. The fact is, we dont really have a sure-fire way to know what the Xs mean. Sadly, Mist companies did not keep records for posterity on how much beaver to rabbit fur mix was contained in its products. It was an industry secret, in any case, and one that Mist companies would not have made public during the hat heyday, anyway. So, the fact is we dont know at all how much beaver fur is in a companies hats. We dont know with precision what the Xs mean. Sadly, there is no way at all to ever ascertain just how much beaver is in any particular X quality hat. Further, that formula changed as the decades moved on. Triple X hats in the 1910s were of better felt quality that the XXX hats of the 1950s and the XXX hats of the 50s were far superior to those of the 1970s. It is patently obvious that the fur content and finishing process was radically different from era to era, so a three X hat from 1920 and one from 1970 are in no way at all similar in quality.

Cost cutting in manufacturing and costs for materials were major reasons for this disparate quality. But saying that a XXX hat from 1922 was as high as 50% is just a guesstimate. In fact, we are only pretty sure that a Stetson 100 is 100% beaver (but made of the most delicate part of the beaver, the belly fur) or that a 50X is 50% beaver, a 25X is 25% well that is, at least, what Stetson used to say in advertising once in a while. As to the other X hats, a old 7X is likely also 100% beaver (but not of that special belly fur) but even that is more or less a guess by collectors.

Also, there are fur felt hats made of vicuna fur, nutria fur and chinchilla, too. Hats are even made of buffalo fur. As to todays Xs, most collectors just ignore the whole scheme as they dont seem to make any sense at all. Most collectors feel that the Xs lost all meaning before the year 1970s dawned. The item "Rugged Beaver Felt Vintage Antique Old West Clint Eastwood Cowboy Hat 7 1/8 57cm" is in sale since Friday, June 11, 2021.

This item is in the category "Clothing, Shoes & Accessories\Men\Men's Accessories\Hats". The seller is "texasmovieantiques" and is located in Austin, Texas. This item can be shipped to United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Denmark, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Czech republic, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Estonia, Australia, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, Slovenia, Japan, Sweden, South Korea, Indonesia, Taiwan, South africa, Thailand, Belgium, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Austria, Bahamas, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Saudi arabia, Ukraine, United arab emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Croatia, Malaysia, Colombia, Aruba, Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Saint kitts and nevis, Saint lucia, Montserrat, Turks and caicos islands, Barbados, Bangladesh, Bermuda, Brunei darussalam, Bolivia, Egypt, French guiana, Guernsey, Gibraltar, Guadeloupe, Iceland, Jersey, Jordan, Cambodia, Cayman islands, Liechtenstein, Sri lanka, Luxembourg, Monaco, Macao, Martinique, Maldives, Nicaragua, Oman, Pakistan, Paraguay, Reunion, Uruguay, Russian federation.

• Brand: Resistol
• Department: Men
• Character: Clint Eastwood
• Size: 7 1/8
• Color: Brown
• Theme: Western
• Style: Cowboy
• Material: Beaver
• Fabric Type: Felt
• Vintage: Yes