Vintage Dress shoe appreciation, tips, maintenance and advice

[suitforcourt]

Picked up some Dexter LWBs. Let’s get these sock liners back in!

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One of my favourite tier 2 vintage brands. They fit TTS for me and are work horses. Nice find.

 

[Vincent George]

One of my favourite tier 2 vintage brands. They fit TTS for me and are work horses. Nice find.

Warren Buffett called his acquisition of Dexter the “worst deal of his life.” ?

 

[kilowatts]

Hi guys:
Take a look at Goodwill, Allen Edmonds size 11. Some great pairs.
kilowatts

 

[JFWR]

97626. Hope to find a 93605 to match one day… hope you’re all having good days.
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Corderoy in the dead heat of summer?

Also, is that in the NYC subway?

 

[Vincent George]

Corderoy in the dead heat of summer?

Also, is that in the NYC subway?

Corner of Tremont and School Street (Boston) near the Omni Parker House.

My wife also thinks I’m crazy for summer cording, but we had a nice, brisk sub 80 degree day and I had to do it.

 

[JFWR]

Corner of Tremont and School Street (Boston) near the Omni Parker House.

My wife also thinks I’m crazy for summer cording, but we had a nice, brisk sub 80 degree day and I had to do it.

Very nice. Boston has the same yellow bumpy stuff as we have on the subway.

Corderoy is fantastic but that's exclusively a non-summer wear. We were 93 and 90 percent humidity today. Y u c k.

 

[CWOyaji]

Warren Buffett called his acquisition of Dexter the “worst deal of his life.” ?

I made a passing attempt to estimate how bad a deal that was for him a few years ago:

While we're on the subject of Dexter... BTW if anyone wants to correct my math, please have at it.

The $8 billion dollar shoes.
This is a pair of Dexter 217644 Made in USA longwings. They're an acceptable quality shoe. And they should be, because each pair probably cost about the company’s owners about $2,000. Which is more than the $8.99 they cost me at St. Vincent de Paul.

In 1993 Warren Buffett’s investment company Berkshire Hathaway bought the Dexter Shoe Company for $443 million in Berkshire shares, about 1.6% of the company. At today’s market capitalization of $506 billion*, in the unlikely event that none of the shareholders of Dexter Shoe have sold any of their stock, they would be holding shares valued at about $8.1 billion.

Dexter continued making some shoes in the US when they finally closed the last plant in Maine and sadly laid off the remaining 500 workers. So at today’s share price, in the eight year period between acquisition in 1993 and offshoring all production in 2001, they spent about $1 billion a year in shareholder value on this business. The numbers were smaller back then of course, and writing down some of the goodwill (excess of purchase price over the marked-way-down value of the acquired assets) yielded some tax benefits, but it was a drop in the bucket.

I don’t know how many pairs of shoes Dexter made per year in the US during that period. But if (big assumption, but stay with me) they were selling as many as Allen Edmonds was in 2011, 500,000 pairs a year, then they made 4 million pairs. So the present day $8 billion cost of the company divided by 4 million pairs produced in the US works out to $2,026 per pair. Naturally that figure reflects the strong performance of Berkshire Hathaway stock more than what they actually spent to make these shoes. Still a compelling example of the effect cheaper overseas labor has had on manufacturing in the US.

Despite all this, I really do want to give credit to Mr. Buffett. He’s a good sport. He has humorously lamented the mistake he made in this investment in his annual letter from time to time, but to my knowledge he never tried to get protection via tariffs to save the business. They just took production offshore, and the company eventually became profitable again, but the quality is not the same.

Still, there is something about Dexter that makes people dream. This model, the 217644, once made its way onto a list of shell cordovan shoes despite actually being made of so-so quality calf leather. They are commonly represented as being shell cordovan and in some instances sell for about 5X what they probably would if they were being described correctly. They are a good looking shoe; not worth overpaying for though.

*As of August 13, 2018, per Google Finance
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...hoe-his-worst-deal-ever-idUSN2921504820080301

Spoiler: They do clean up pretty good

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[Vincent George]

Very nice. Boston has the same yellow bumpy stuff as we have on the subway.

Corderoy is fantastic but that's exclusively a non-summer wear. We were 93 and 90 percent humidity today. Y u c k.

I’m not built for summer. I simply exist in it.

 

[CWOyaji]

Very nice. Boston has the same yellow bumpy stuff as we have on the subway.

Corderoy is fantastic but that's exclusively a non-summer wear. We were 93 and 90 percent humidity today. Y u c k.

Take your wife to lunch in the Omni Parker House Restaurant and be sure to get Table 40, it's where JFK proposed to Jackie O. Also, Ho Chi Minh worked as a pastry chef in the kitchen of that hotel way back when, according to the brochure I read when Mrs. Oyaji and I stayed there a few years ago.

 

[Vincent George]

Take your wife to lunch in the Omni Parker House Restaurant and be sure to get Table 43, it's where JFK proposed to Jackie O. Also, Ho Chi Minh worked as a pastry chef in the kitchen of that hotel way back when. I read it in the brochure when Mrs. Oyaji and I stayed there a few years ago.

We had an anniversary dinner there a few years back. Very nicely done potatoes.

 

[CWOyaji]

It's a nice place and centrally located with lots of stories. God knows I ate enough potatoes growing up in Boston to last me a lifetime. Don't recall ordering them at the Parker House, but I did share a Boston Cream Pie with my wife, along with some coffee that probably came from Dunkin'.

 

[Vincent George]

It's a nice place and centrally located with lots of stories. God knows I ate enough potatoes growing up in Boston to last me a lifetime. Don't recall ordering them at the Parker House, but I did share some Boston Cream Pie with my wife, along with some coffee that probably came from Dunkin'.

I F*CKIN LOVE DUNKIN GUY

 

[friendlygoz]

It's a nice place and centrally located with lots of stories. God knows I ate enough potatoes growing up in Boston to last me a lifetime. Don't recall ordering them at the Parker House, but I did share some Boston Cream Pie with my wife, along with some coffee that probably came from Dunkin'.

I f——— love Dunkin’… whaddaya talkin ‘bout?

 

[suitforcourt]

I’m not built for summer. I simply exist in it.

The summer humidity in my area (Toronto region) is comparable to Asia. And I have family in Asia where the humidity gives me PTSD.

 

[well-kept]

Thrifted these foster & son yesterday, gave them some TLC this morning.
Could anyone tell me if they were made by F&S or outsourced?
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Those were made by Edward Green. Beautiful find.