Brimming With Pride, Son Seeks Resting Place for Dad's Hat Hoard
Collector Amassed 109,000 Toppers; A Shot at History With Jolly Green Giant
Some children find themselves overwhelmed by a dead parent's boxes of photo albums or an attic brimming with not-so-valuable antiques.
Scott Legried is hampered by hats.
More than 109,000 baseball caps. All lovingly collected by his father, Roger "Buckey" Legried, a corn and soybean grower and farming-equipment salesman in Frost, Minn. (click below to read more)
Scott Legried inherited the world's largest collection of hats when his father died last September at the age of 73. The hats are boxed and stored in a garage, a basement and three 42-foot-long semi-tractor trailers at the Legried family farm. A three-ring binder catalogs each cap and its provenance—every John Deere hat from every state is listed, along with a black cap with intricate gold and red beadwork.
The hats were the elder Mr. Legried's unfinished legacy. He had hoped to see them displayed for the public. Perhaps a museum would try them on for size or a spot could be found nearby, in Blue Earth, Minn. To cap it off, he had wanted to get them on a late-night talk show like "Late Show With David Letterman."
Now, the duty of finding the hats a permanent, public home hangs on the younger Mr. Legried, 40 years old. He calls it an "honor."
"I had a very good relationship with my dad. He was my best friend," says Scott Legried, who worked and lived together with his father. With the collection, he said, "the goal is to keep it going."
The cap coup dates back more than four decades, when the elder Mr. Legried first noticed how a row of caps arranged in a closet looked colorful and interesting. He became mad for hats in the late 1960s and soon had so many, the collection expanded to his garage and basement.
The bulk of Mr. Legried's stash consists of freebies from farm conventions and trade shows. There are no duplicates or toppers with salty language. In the mix is a hat signed by country music singer Loretta Lynn.
As for his own tastes, Mr. Legried, an Army veteran, rarely wore any hat at all, except for warmth during frigid Minnesota winters.
Mr. Legried organized a public counting of his hats in 2006 at the Corn Palace in Mitchell, S.D. Volunteers recorded 82,792 hats in all, and the collection was certified as the largest by Guinness World Records that year. The publicity prompted people from around the country to send him more, and the stockpile grew to more than 100,000. Guinness reaffirmed the collection as the largest in 2010, and it maintains the record.
Still, Mr. Legried never found a permanent home for his hats. So now, his family is faced with the big question: What, exactly, do you do with them all?
Scott Legried isn't interested in selling. Even if he was, the world's largest hat collection probably has more sentimental value than monetary worth, said John Hickey of Dallas-based Heritage Auctions, a collectibles auction house. John Deere, military and defunct sports teams caps appeal to some buyers, said Mr. Hickey, but the going-rate for an average ball cap is what it sells for on eBay.
After all, it takes some topspin for a hat to command top dollar. In July 2010, a beaver Stetson cowboy hat made for Roy Rogers sold for $13,750 at Christie's auction house New York. A bowler hat worn by Charlie Chaplin in "The Tramp" fetched $18,750 in December 2011 at Sotheby's New York. An even bigger auction result was achieved online earlier this year, when a 1930s Yankees baseball cap worn by Babe Ruth went for $537,278 in May through SCP Auctions Inc.
Many largest-ever items and collections are created for a reason. The longest hot dog, according to Guinness World Records, was cooked up to celebrate Paraguay's 200th anniversary in 2011. It was eaten. What is believed to be the world's largest hand-knotted carpet is in the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi.
The late Mr. Legried's sister, Joyce Armon of Branson, Mo., said her brother concentrated his efforts to display the collection about 12 miles away in Blue Earth, a city of more than 3,300 people that already boasts a specimen of local kitsch: a 47-foot-tall statue of the Jolly Green Giant visible from Interstate 90.
But Mr. Legried "just never got any good results from anybody or any business to go ahead with that," Mrs. Armon said.
Cindy Lyon, executive director of the Blue Earth Area Chamber of Commerce, dreams of displaying the hats in a park near the Jolly Green Giant, a fictional character employed in advertising by Green Giant, the Minnesota food manufacturer.
In her plan, the hats would share space with the museum of Giant memorabilia, just off a coast-to-coast interstate highway and near other local attractions, such as the Spam Museum in Austin, Minn.
"Why not have it at the Giant park? You wouldn't believe the number of people who come there. We've had 23 countries and every state in the nation this summer," she said.
One glitch is that the acreage is part of a possible land swap between the city and the local Faribault County Fair board. With the talk of the trade, other community members have expressed interest in some of the land that is part of the swap for the purpose of a baseball field.
Kathy Bailey, Blue Earth's city administrator, said a final land decision was expected this fall. She said expanded space for Green Giant memorabilia and the hats seems like a good idea, but "we've got a large number of organizations to get approval from and cooperation with."
There are also space and money issues. A proper display—with four-inch high shelves, 10 feet to the ceiling—would stretch at least a half mile, the elder Mr. Legried once calculated.
Scott Legried said he would chip in up to $15,000 to help with a permanent space for the hats. More would be needed, and he and Mrs. Lyon have discussed raising money in a community that remembers the late Mr. Legried. "Buckey has friends all over," Mrs. Lyon said. "He's as renowned as the Green Giant—almost."
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