The nice thing about purchasing vintage hats is that you can always resell them for the same amount, if not significantly more, if they don't work out for the various reasons in which a hat can manage to not work out. They are comfortable purchases for me because of this.
I'm in a shared monetary situation with my wife and we do our best to avoid unnecessary purchases, so this is how I did it -- I have my own, personal checking account that's left over from when I was a teenager. I connected it to my PayPal account and auctioned off a bunch of things that I no longer needed, including two old beater acoustic guitars, guitar cases, a few vinyl records, and some other miscellaneous odds and ends. In the end, I ended up with about $300.00.
I used that $300.00 to purchase an Akubra Federation and a few vintage hats I found on eBay. Some of those vintage hats didn't work out, so I sold them and purchased others. Rinse/lather/repeat.
What I've found is this: No matter what I do, as long as I don't make irrational purchases and resell the hats I know I'll never wear, I retain a collection of hats that I will wear regularly and the pool of money consistently fluctuates between $150 - $200. This does require regular maintenance. If I don't like a hat immediately, I don't let it sit -- it gets sold straightaway.
This is an entirely new thing to experience for me -- I'm essentially playing Musical Hats without suffering much monetary loss. For every hat that undersells, there's a hat in high demand that will sell for more than I originally purchased it for. I'm sure others here have experienced the same and can speak on this.
I can't think of many other things that this would be possible with, but it certainly works for hats. And if, in the future, I find myself in a minor monetary bind, then selling my least favorite hat or two will get me out of it -- i.e., they can technically be considered investments. That's pretty awesome. The thing about vintage hats is that you have to have them in your hands and on your head in order to know if you're going to like them, so making the initial purchase is necessary.
Right now I'm on the downswing. I've made a lot of purchases lately, so I'm going to have to sort through the hats that I receive in the next week and immediately sell the ones that I wouldn't regularly wear.
Either way you look at it, it's a good deal. The only way you can lose significant money reselling a hat is if the hat was initially sold to you under false or ignorant pretenses (which has happened to me as well -- it seems unavoidable) in which you have to list the flaws that you never knew existed. Otherwise, you're working out of the same pool of hats/money. They're basically the same thing. The vintage hat market is unique enough that it works, thank goodness! I'd never be able to do it if it weren't so.
Hopefully I'll build up the skills to recognize by photographs alone if I'll like a hat or not, but as of now, I'm still fairly green.
I'm in a shared monetary situation with my wife and we do our best to avoid unnecessary purchases, so this is how I did it -- I have my own, personal checking account that's left over from when I was a teenager. I connected it to my PayPal account and auctioned off a bunch of things that I no longer needed, including two old beater acoustic guitars, guitar cases, a few vinyl records, and some other miscellaneous odds and ends. In the end, I ended up with about $300.00.
I used that $300.00 to purchase an Akubra Federation and a few vintage hats I found on eBay. Some of those vintage hats didn't work out, so I sold them and purchased others. Rinse/lather/repeat.
What I've found is this: No matter what I do, as long as I don't make irrational purchases and resell the hats I know I'll never wear, I retain a collection of hats that I will wear regularly and the pool of money consistently fluctuates between $150 - $200. This does require regular maintenance. If I don't like a hat immediately, I don't let it sit -- it gets sold straightaway.
This is an entirely new thing to experience for me -- I'm essentially playing Musical Hats without suffering much monetary loss. For every hat that undersells, there's a hat in high demand that will sell for more than I originally purchased it for. I'm sure others here have experienced the same and can speak on this.
I can't think of many other things that this would be possible with, but it certainly works for hats. And if, in the future, I find myself in a minor monetary bind, then selling my least favorite hat or two will get me out of it -- i.e., they can technically be considered investments. That's pretty awesome. The thing about vintage hats is that you have to have them in your hands and on your head in order to know if you're going to like them, so making the initial purchase is necessary.
Right now I'm on the downswing. I've made a lot of purchases lately, so I'm going to have to sort through the hats that I receive in the next week and immediately sell the ones that I wouldn't regularly wear.
Either way you look at it, it's a good deal. The only way you can lose significant money reselling a hat is if the hat was initially sold to you under false or ignorant pretenses (which has happened to me as well -- it seems unavoidable) in which you have to list the flaws that you never knew existed. Otherwise, you're working out of the same pool of hats/money. They're basically the same thing. The vintage hat market is unique enough that it works, thank goodness! I'd never be able to do it if it weren't so.
Hopefully I'll build up the skills to recognize by photographs alone if I'll like a hat or not, but as of now, I'm still fairly green.
