Oct 2, 2026 · 38 min · 10 segments
Jake Hounshell is the founder of Shells Vintage Hat Co., a Charlotte-based business selling vintage sports hats and original, ’90s-inspired designs. A Raleigh native and University of South Carolina…
Jake HounshellGuestSteveHostOne thing that I think would be cool to understand, and you probably have such like a deep knowledge of the kind of hats that you want to buy.
And I feel like a listener that is relatively interested in hats might be interested in understanding like what do you look for like if you could give like a like a two-minute master class on jake's process for finding a hat that he loves like what are like two to three things that you're like gotta have this gotta have this
you're are you talking like of like buying from a manufacturer or or uh finding him on ebay
Definitely the brim or the crown shape is something that I also really pay attention to.
A lot of the vintage hats you find now can be really actually like shallow and small.
So I try to, you know, find hats that have the taller front part of the hat.
Obviously, a lot of the hats now, a lot of the brims are misshaped or cracked.
Those are pretty much stuff right off the bat that I think a lot of people probably already know.
Not only the quality of the embroidery, but I don't buy hats where they just throw a logo on there and that's it.
I buy this stuff that is, has the, has the pizzazz, you know, either, whether it's just like a cool script writing of saying, you know, South Carolina on it, or a mixture of having, having the logo and some really cool, you know, like designs, lines, kind of other elements to the hat that make it look like it's actually vintage, which it is.
Yeah, I gotcha.
And then another part too, that I forgot is, is the, the company, like the manufacturers are, are very important.
else yeah there's a lot of them out there but those are like the top five and those you know when i'm going to search for a vintage hat a lot of times i'll just search by company and kind of go through what they have on ebay
man you're giving away the playbook too right there
One thing that I think would be cool to understand, and you probably have such like a deep knowledge of the kind of hats that you want to buy.
And I feel like a listener that is relatively interested in hats might be interested in understanding like what do you look for like if you could give like a like a two-minute master class on jake's process for finding a hat that he loves like what are like two to three things that you're like gotta have this gotta have this
you're are you talking like of like buying from a manufacturer or or uh finding him on ebay
Definitely the brim or the crown shape is something that I also really pay attention to.
A lot of the vintage hats you find now can be really actually like shallow and small.
So I try to, you know, find hats that have the taller front part of the hat.
Obviously, a lot of the hats now, a lot of the brims are misshaped or cracked.
Those are pretty much stuff right off the bat that I think a lot of people probably already know.
Not only the quality of the embroidery, but I don't buy hats where they just throw a logo on there and that's it.
I buy this stuff that is, has the, has the pizzazz, you know, either, whether it's just like a cool script writing of saying, you know, South Carolina on it, or a mixture of having, having the logo and some really cool, you know, like designs, lines, kind of other elements to the hat that make it look like it's actually vintage, which it is.
Yeah, I gotcha.
And then another part too, that I forgot is, is the, the company, like the manufacturers are, are very important.
else yeah there's a lot of them out there but those are like the top five and those you know when i'm going to search for a vintage hat a lot of times i'll just search by company and kind of go through what they have on ebay
man you're giving away the playbook too right there
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