So, wha'cha interested it?

First things first, I reckon. If you're going to collect something, you have to decide what it is you're going to collect. One particular brand, one particular style, one particular period of time...

 Since I already had one Gillette, it only made sense for me to stick with Gillettes. What I didn't realize (until soon after I started) was the vast number of Gillettes there were. Old, NEW, NEW Improved, Goodwill, open comb (the ones with teeth), safety bar, Tech, TTO (twist to open), pre-war, war production, post-war, SS (Super Speed), adjustables...not to mention the variations within each type. Or maybe you'll get lucky and score a "hybrid", one made with a combination of old and new parts (Gillette was known for using leftover parts in newer models to save production costs)...

 1946 Ranger Tech head on a 1947 Super Speed handle

How to wade through all the confusion? Research. And the Interwebz. Ah, a marvelous thing is the Interwebz. Here, you'll find the ShaveWiki, a personal site devoted to vintage Gillette safety razors, numerous Gillette date code sites, plus forums containing more information than you could ever need. You may have to register in order to view any posted images, but you'll also be able to ask any questions you have about a particular razor you might find. Which leads us to...

...where do you find these things? Well, eBay is a good place to start. Sure, some of the prices are inflated, but I've seen the same in second-hand shops and "antique stores". Here is where your research pays off. Say you have your eye on a post-war, ball-end Tech, but the guy wants $40 for it. Gee, awful steep, you think. Sure does look good, though, like it's never been used. But you'd have to want it real bad to pay that much. So, you go to your forum and search "Gillette ball end Tech" to see who's saying what about it. You'll be able to figure out what a decent price would be. Back to the auction site, you do a similar search. Find all the ball end Techs listed, starting with those ending the earliest; if nothing's interesting, try the newly listed ones, then the "Buy It Now" listings with the lowest priced listed first. If nothing still comes up, be patient. There will always be another that shows up. But as you'll soon see, things can get complicated at times.

Be wary of listings that might be questionable. The razor pictured above was listed as a "Super-rare '46 Super Speed!" But the Super Speed wasn't named as such until 1947. The '46 was a Ranger Tech. Images posted showed a no-notch center bar (as was also stated in the description); I knew beforehand that Gillette notched the center bar in 1948 so as to simplify loading the blade from their new dispenser. An image posted that showed an inside view of the base plate revealed there were no creases where the safety bar joins.

Took some digging, but I found that Gillette started using creased base plates sometime in 1947. But what about the handle? A 1946 Ranger has a smooth band just above the TTO knob. This one is checkered like the rest of the handle. More digging found that a 1947 SS had a flat "shoulder" milled into the neck where it joins the handle. So the handle had to at least be a 1948. It looked like a clean, solid razor, too, so I snatched it up.

Was it worth the $39 I paid for it? I think so.

Shaving doesn't have to be a chore.

I used to think it was...for almost my entire life, I had a job that required me to wear one uniform or another (and therefore required me to be clean-shaven). So, I was always having to scrape my face before going to work.

On the few occasions I could grow a beard, it always turned out to be a pitiful exercise in futility. One, my whiskers didn't grow evenly. I'd have bare spots on my cheeks. Now, I could grow chin whiskers just fine...which leads me to my second point. Itching. After about a week, I couldn't take it anymore, and they'd have to come off. Quite the conundrum.

In my 40-some-odd years of shaving, I've used just about everything short of a straight razor. Truth is, my hands aren't that steady, and I'd probably cut my head off. I don't recollect what my first razor was, but more than likely it came out of a bag of cheap disposables. I tried electric razors, too, but they felt like the whiskers were being ripped out of my face instead of being cut cleanly like on the TV commercials. I do recollect having a three-piece travel razor and several different types of cartridge razors. After 20 years or so, I wound up with a '70s black-handled Gillette Super Speed. It came with me when I moved to Austin back in 2003. I was also using a myriad of disposables...cheap no-names from a plastic bag, a women's Venus a friend had given me (don't laugh; that thing could literally fly over my face and give me the closest shave)...but for some reason, I got rid of the Super Speed and scored a '65 (K4) Slim Adjustable. I'd been using a Czech-made brush, too, using whatever soap I could get at HEB's in a Homer Laughlin coffee mug (I used to collect restaurant china years ago). The pucks were cheaper than the canned stuff and lasted longer. I'm a horrible tightwad, but I digress.

Old Faithful

So, about a year ago I started searching online (can't say why 'cuz I don't know why) about wet shaving. Could have been the fact that my brush had shed most of its bristles. Or maybe I was getting bored with Slim (after 8 or 9 years). Whatever the reason, I joined an online shaving forum and caught a severe case of RAD (Razor Acquisition Disorder) and have been hooked ever since. I now have 29 vintage Gillette double-edge (DE) razors, and just started on single-edge (SE) injectors (waiting for the mailman to bring me some blades for my newly-acquired Schick Type L, as stores don't seem to carry them). 

Of course I had to get blades for all these treasures, so after doing some research, I now have over 1300 blades of some 35 or so different varieties (the $5 plastic fishing tackle boxes were tailor-made for razor blade storage). I do get carried away sometimes.

There's method to my madness, of course. Several years ago, I gave my oldest grandson my coin collection. Some +400 coins from over a hundred different countries, all neatly displayed in three zippered Meade binders. My youngest grandson will get my collection of 30-some-odd vintage coffee pots. Soon, the middle kid will get the majority of these (some I'll keep for my own personal use, of course). Are they worth anything? Maybe not...the most I'd spent on any one razor was like 47 bucks for a 1947 Milord, and the least was $5.50 for a post-war Heavy Tech (an excellent razor, btw). Are they "collector grade"? While some do appear like-new, they are all common and easily obtainable razors. Not like a Red-dot Toggle or something. A razor, like anything else, is only worth what you're willing to pay. Will they ever be worth anything? Who knows? By the time the kid gets my age, maybe so. A couple of things for certain, though...they are all good, clean user-grade razors, and they're all pretty damned cool.