General Info

We are proud to announce a new resources for fez collectors! After more than a year of work, we are happy to release our “Fez Grading Guide” to the world.

This guide will help any collector rate their fez on a 15 point scale. Up to five points can be awarded in three categories – condition, rarity, and age. The higher the score, the more valuable the fez!

We hope you find this guide useful. We will be using it in our correspondence with others when we are asked to value a fez, making the process a bit more transparent.

This guide will permanently reside our our Resources area.

It has been quite a while since we’ve posted anything new here at the Museum. That is mainly because we haven’t had any new additions to the collection since shortly after the Christmas holiday. The rarer specimens for which we are in the market have been increasingly harder to come by, so there is a shortage of new fezzes to post.

However, we are in possession of one cute little fez related object that we wanted to share with you – Mr. Fezziwig.  In the early to mid 20th century these types of figures were quite popular. Being made of metal and with a bit of paint to make the fez standout, they were nice little knick-knacks for the fraternalist. This piece was donated to the Museum by the father of the curator and has become sort of a mascot for the collection.

In the future, as we add new fezzes, we’ll be sure to post them. We appreciate your patience as we continue to grow!

Good day, intrepid reader! Today’s update isn’t one that deals directly with any particular fez. Instead, we thought it would be nice to share with you the culmination of some of the research the Museum has been doing on the side. Recently, we came across an archive of newspapers from the earliest part of the 20th Century. What did we look up first? Stuff about fraternal organizations, of course!

After a bit of digging, we hit the jackpot in regards to information on the formation and subsequent merger of roughly a half dozen social fraternal organizations aligned with the Odd Fellows. As the popularity of the Shriners grew in the Masonic world, many folks wanted a similar organization in the group they belonged to. This caused the formation of such groups as the Imperial Order of Muscovites, the Oriental Order of Humility and Perfection, the Ancient Mystic Order of Cabiri, the Pilgrim Knights of Oriental Splendor, and even more!

By the 1920’s, the Sovereign Grand Lodge of the Odd Fellows (the national governing body) had enough of this nonsense and talked several of the organizations into merging. In 1925, they all came together and formed the United Order of Splendor and Perfection, which would be renamed two years later, calling itself the Ancient Mystic Order of Samaritans (which exists to this day.)

So, we encourage you to check out our timeline and learn something about the earliest days of fez wearing fraternalism in America!