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RELATED PAGES:
Tips for collecting vintage hats
Tips for selling vintage hats on line
Please check out our brand new website
marketplace for high end collectible hats, vintage clothing, accessories
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HATATORIUM EMPORIUM
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notice: This website and the accompanying eBook, Hatatorium: An Essential Guide for Hat Collectors, are copyrighted and may
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Tips for Buying Hats Online
(c) 2012 Brenda Grantland, updated 11/19/2012
Vintage hat collectors are in heaven these days -- if they have enough
spending money left to invest. The recession forced many
vintage clothing shops and antique stores to close their doors, and
many began selling on line. As a
result, amazingly wonderful vintage hats by famous milliners and/or
expensive
stores are turning up online, sometimes offered with fixed prices or
starting bids at or below yard sale prices.
Sometimes no one else bids against you, and you can pick up hats for the
opening bid price. Vintage hats were selling for rock bottom prices
from June through the fall of 2011. Prices in general have climbed
significantly beginning in the spring of 2012, but hats from the top
collectible milliners often bring hundreds of dollars each. Still, a
savvy collector
who shops diligently can pick up great hats at
amazing bargains.
It's such a great opportunity that we really can't afford not to
buy now while the prices are still going up. But we have to be careful. Here are our tips for buying on line:
1. Do some research and know what you are looking for before you place a
bid. Finding the astounding gems
takes careful scrutiny and research. Find out the relative prominence of
the milliner or store label. It helps to know in advance which milliner
labels and styles you want to collect - then you can do a word search
for those terms. Browse the Hatatorium gallery albums on Styles,
Milliners and Materials to learn the different terms you'll need to
know. For more detail, get the Hatatorium ebook.
2. Spend your money wisely. Don't try to buy up a hat collection all at
once, or you'll end up with a closet full of mediocre hats and just a
few great ones. Spread your purchases out over months, years (or make a
of collecting as many of us do) Troll through the hats listed on line
and do it frequently. Expect to spend some time culling through lots of
hats you
don't like before you find the gems you deserve.
3. Do word searches for the styles, milliners and/or materials that
interest you, and save all the ones you like to a Watch List (eBay) or
Favorites List (Etsy). Often novice hat sellers will classify the hat
in the wrong era category, and will describe it as a
"rockabilly steampunk goth shabby chic fascinator topper chapeau" when
it is a beret or fedora. They may misspell the milliner's name -
Schaparelli instead of Schiaparelli for example - so your word search
will not find it. Whenever a combination of errors like that occurs, a
great hat can slip entirely under the radar and attract no other
bidders, allowing you to buy the hat for the minimum bid which may be
1/10 of its value. Finding those misplaced gems takes a lot of looking.
You have to browse the categories and sift through hundreds or even
thousands of listings.
4. Scrutinize the pictures, looking for stains, discoloration,
moth
holes, missing decorations, torn veils, etc. Carefully read
everything the seller discloses about the hat. Beware of
stains. You can clean the dust off but you generally cannot remove
stains, and you may never be
able to get rid of a bad odor. If it is misshapen, maybe you can
reshape it. The Hatatorium book gives a number of tips for cleaning and
restoring vintage hats. Once armed with a few restoration skills you
will be more comfortable taking a chance on a hat that needs a little
work.
5. Does it fit? Since you can't try it on, the only way to know if
it would fit is to know the inner circumference. Unfortunately most
sellers don't list that and you have to email them to ask. Sometimes the seller will list the diameter but not the
circumference. Diameter is not enough to determine whether the hat
would fit. Heads are not round but oval, and hats are bendable. The
diameter will vary depending on where you measure.
6. Scrutinize the seller. Does the listing say "no
returns." That is a bad sign, but not necessarily a deal
killer. Check in the seller info box on the right of the listing
to see what the seller's positive feedback ranking is, and check the
figure next to the star. That number represents the number of feed
backs the person has gotten on EBay. If the number is low (say
less than 20) then a 100% positive rating might not mean much because
the seller is new to Ebay. Fortunately, if you purchase with
Paypal (I highly recommend that you do) you can rely on the Paypal
guarantee to get your money back if the hat is not as described and/or depicted in the pictures.
7. Sometimes the hat will arrive damaged from being stuffed
into a box smaller than the hat, or even an envelope. Sometimes it will
have a horrendous odor or other
undisclosed defect. This is maddening when it happens, but don't let
it ruin your day. Write the seller and ask for your money back. File a
claim if they refuse to give your money back. Etsy and eBay are usually
very quick to resolve any claims. If you are careful in scrutinizing the
sellers, this doesn't happen often.
8. Leave honest feedback. If you had a good experience with the seller,
save them to your favorites list, and check their stores again regularly
for other bargains. Ongoing sales relationships with eBay and Etsy
sellers often turn into friendships. That's how the co-authors of
Hatatorium met.
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