-By Warner Todd Huston
I am sure the PBS antiques appraisal show, Antiques Roadshow, gets slapped around by real experts for being wrong all the time. For instance, I’ve seen prices for Civil War artifacts quoted way off base. But the show’s Bruce Shackelford even got an identification of a piece wrong in one episode.
So, this episode of Antiques Roadshow is an old one. I only just now saw it for the first time this week. But in the show from 1998, Shackelford misidentified the Stetson hat in the image below as a “Boss Of The Plaines” model hat.
He was wrong.
A true Boss Of The Plaines has a flat brim with a short, rounded crown. Just like so…
(From my own personal collection)
The one he had on the show, while a great piece, is just a regular Stetson, wide-brimmed western hat, not a Boss Of The Plaines model.
But, one might understand why he was so confused. Not really knowing anything about hat history, Shackelford conflated what was stamped on the leather sweatband with the famous model name.
On the sweatband it notes that the hat has a “Boss Raw Edge” brim. As Shackelford properly noted, a Boss Raw Edge brim meant that the brim edge did not have any adornment such as a ribbon bound edge or any decorative stitching. It was unadorned, or “raw.” But a hat stamped “Boss Raw Edge” does not mean it must also be a “Boss Of The Plaines” model hat.
He also got the price wrong. In 1998 he said it would go for over a thousand bucks. That was waaaay too high in 1998. It may go for upwards to $2,000 today, but not back in 1998 it wouldn’t have. It probably wouldn’t have topped $800 back then.
I know I am way late to the party pointing this out since the original mistake happened over 15 years ago, but I just saw it for the first time and HAD to say something. Now that I got that off my chest…
If you are interested in hat history, check out my pages starting at: So… What’s the Deal With Those Stetson Hats, Huston?.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, Wizbang.com, among many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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