Thread: And I thought nothing can amaze me anymore...

Sure, depending on what particular speculations one makes about the potential buyer they can be anywhere between saints and chumps.

However, how is not reading that first edition Dickens different from not using a razor. I'm sure if you appreciate Dickens you can be really careful turning the pages and cause the similar amount of wear and tear, as shaving with a straight razor puts on it.

Originally Posted by tonycraigo

Oh, Gugi... you have no idea... you've entered into this fight, but you have no dog that bites...

I never trust a dog to do my biting
Next thing the dog would probably want to hump my leg too. No thanks, I can take care of the important things in life myself...

Originally Posted by gugi

Next thing the dog would probably want to hump my leg too.

look i got past that when i was ten.. stop bringing it up..

Originally Posted by gugi

Sure, depending on what particular speculations one makes about the potential buyer they can be anywhere between saints and chumps.

However, how is not reading that first edition Dickens different from not using a razor. I'm sure if you appreciate Dickens you can be really careful turning the pages and cause the similar amount of wear and tear, as shaving with a straight razor puts on it.

sorry, typo on my earlier post, meant to say "pay x amount"

I guess, to me the first edition dickens is something that should be treasured, and the right person probably could be trusted not to destroy, although granted i'm very indiana jones in this respect (It belongs in a museum!), but comparing the kind of guitar collectors i've known to many other collectors of such things as books and in this case razors, they don't have an appreciation of it's value, only it's worth. Dickens has been reprinted many times and can be read and appreciated without the need to handle the original. the razor in question here is, if it goes to a collector, going to put away not to see the light of day, and won't really have it's value appreciated by anyone.

the difference to me is owning something to say you own it, as opposed to appreciating it. someone decided these were collectible and put them out of reach in terms of worth to the people who would value them. just like the strats.

I actually think maybe i'm subconciously angry about not owning a vintage strat.

I don't know, you most likely paid more money for your dessert ironwood Thiers-Issard, and the grind and workmanship of that razor isn't anywhere close to the dubl duck quality. Both are good razors, but if you hold them next to each other you'll immediately notice that the dubl duck blade is just really well made with attention to details, while the TI isn't. And it goes to function as well, the dubl duck can be honed with your left foot, while the TI will most likely cost you few tries to get right. As far as shaving they are different, and I personally prefer the dubl duck too.

You don't really know that the buyer of the razor would just hide it in a safe dark place. Or that they don't appreciate it. All we know is that they appreciate it more than the selling price of $370, while the rest of us don't or would've placed higher bid.
I readily admit that I have an obscene number of razors, and with a rotation length of well over a year and each shave taking me between 5 and 10 minutes, I probably don't really spend enough time with each of them to appreciate properly. Nevertheless they're my razors and I've spent my own money to obtain them, so I get to do anything I want, the same way other people who decided not to spend their money on those razors can do anything they want with that too.

I think your problem with the vintage guitars is that you just can't afford one, or that there are people who appreciate 20kGBP less than such a guitar and you aren't them. May be some of them should just display the stack of banknotes instead of the guitar, but the society thinks that's kind of tacky, so the conformists they are they have to go with a different object such as a guitar

The whole basis of what my original post was about what a collector was in response to someones remark about us not being "collectors" which i agree with we're not, we're users more than anything else. you use your razors, albeit at huge intervals, you maintain them, you enjoy them, but you do use them.

On the TI vs dubl duck thing, and following what i'm about to say with regards to it's price, that opens up a whole other can of worms. First of all the price, i paid less for my TI than the current cost of that Dubl Duck, but this is fair enough as i live in the uk, part of the EU and therefore don't have to pay the same kind of import duties that you guys would, so luckily that works out cheaper. I don't know much about Dubl ducks other than their reputation. Were they premium razors at the time they were made? the cost of the TI i guess is influenced by the use of the desert ironwood and goldwash etc. Currently there is an entry level TI razor on the invisible edge that is a C135 grelot form. I have no doubt that razor is exactly the same as mine in terms of how it shaves, it just doesn't have gold wash and cork sniffing scales.

Onto the can of worms.. There is a phenomenon in straight shaving, which i recognise from my experience of it in the guitar world, and am positive it exsists in every other pasttime and hobby. It's called mojo, and i fully believe dubl ducks are a mojo razor. The thing about mojo is that everyone buys into it, it doesn't mean the items in question aren't good, but i think there's more than a little hype involved. The archetypal tubescreamer guitar overdrive pedal is the TS808, mojo'ised because of stevie ray vaughan, it was a key component in his sound (actually it wasn't, SRV was a key component in SRV's sound, but he used them always). So vintage tubescreamers are at a premium price wise, check em out on ebay. But further than this, it has to be a specific kind of tubescreamer the ones with the fabled JRC4558D op amp. People are so obssesive about this that these now go for £500 pounds and rising. The next level down are a Keely TS808's (basically a stock pedal that has been modified to be closer to the original with "mojo" NOS resistors etc etc) with NOS JRC4558D's (i stole mine for £120 on ebay, could sell that for over £300 though). The next step down is the keely modified TS808 with another chip he selected for use as the NOS op amps aren't available (£180 new). the next step down is the basic ibanez reissue with new production chips, and the bottom rung is the bog standard production TS9 reissue with whatever Op amp works for the circuit..

Apologies for the unsolicited guitar geek history lesson, but it's relevant.

So you have a range of prices there, from £80 to insane cases £800. I've owned the real deal vintage, I've owned the keeley with vintage chip, and have ab'd them against the reissue and bog standard production pedal. does the real deal mojo pedal help you channel SRV? nope, but it makes you sound better right? nope. but the pedal itself sounds better though? well.. yeah a little.. but not that the average person in the audience would notice, and certainly not £520-£720 better.

I have a few semi mojo razors, never paid silly money for them, in fact paid less for them than i've seen them go even in the classifieds, couple of pumas (88 and 52), an original 1/4 hollow thumb notched grelot, one of them is professionally honed and the others i honed up myself, and am equally happy with their performance, mind you, the guy that honed my puma probably spent a lot less time than i did honing the other too to get to that similar result. Anyways, paid more for them than i paid for my other non mojo razors, and paid less for those than the Ti ironwood. which in turn i paid less for than i would with that dubl duck.

Coming to the point.

Does the Ti ironwood shave £180 better than the basic starter kit dovo made straight i have (both professionally honed). nope. it does shave a better, but not 3 times as good. does the original grelot or pumas shave, say, however much i could have paid for them if i hadn't got lucky minus the cost of the basic dovo made straight? nope, they shave better no doubt, but not by the lengthily explained amount above.

Yes some razors are good shavers, using basic dovo starter straights as the baseline, and some are excellent shavers, but the prices paid for something like that dubl duck don't reflect this, the reflect the desire of the person buying to own that razor based on reputation and perceived satisfaction in owning it. But will it make you shave better? nope. will it be a better shaver? probably but not £200 - £300 better. That's what i've been trying to say.

As for the vintage strats, i'll not comment on my purchasing ability, however would i buy one? no, because i know they're not worth that amount of money. Leo fender was a broad analog of king gillette. He wanted to make the guitars for different reasons, but he wanted to make them numerous and cheap compared to the other makers of the time. a fender strat was designed to be easily manufactured and assembled with easily replaceable standardised parts should something wear out. But something magical happened thru sheer luck. the older they got the better they sounded, and they had a distinct sound. and so many iconic players used them, because they were solid and cheap. when eric clapton bought the 5 or 6 strats that became blackie, they guy who sold them pracitcally gave them away because they were so unhip. then the collectors later realised, hmm i want that because x, y and z played it. then the prices went up, so the investors and prestige buyers said, i want that because it's worth a lot of money and holds it's value. it irks me not because i don't have one (played a few), but because so many people never will be able to play a truly (by sheer luck) awesome sounding great guitar.

This post was way too long, apologies

I checked yesterday that the TI ironwood is £257 on steve dempster's site, which is the same as $402, and the dubl duck went for $370, so it's the same ballpark, just slightly cheaper. In US the cheapest 6/8 TI will set you back $180 so you can have two of those for the price of one new dubl duck. And this way you can compare brand new razor to brand new razor. Out of the box the duck will shave great, the TI may or may not shave good, but another $20-$30 will fix that.

The thing that the dubl ducks have that most other razors don't is consistent high quality. You can buy a goldedge for I don't know may be $100-$150 and it will have tarnish, pitting, may be a bit of rust, missing gold wash and enamel, warped or cracked scales, medium to significant hone wear but it will shave nicely. Most likely better than most razors you can get for that money.

As far as how much better one razor shaves than another that's purely subjective. If you go that route anything other than a $5 Gold Dollar will look like a complete rip off. I mean how do you objectively quantify how much better one razor shaves than another one?

And, yes if you are a collector you are willing to pay the cost for pristine examples for the stuff in your collection. I don't understand what's the problem with that given the fact that in almost all cases it is still cheaper than getting a professional restoration service that still doesn't bring it to an original condition.

A lot of people pay good money to visit museums and see original paintings. Is the aesthetic pleasure that one gets out of a $50 000 000 painting 1000 000 times more than the one gets from a $50 photograph of it?
Of course, you could argue that all this means is that original art is extremely overpriced and shouldn't cost more than say $1000 a piece. And you may be right if you'd live in a dictatorship where somebody sets all prices based on somewhat objective criteria (say the cost of raw materials plus labor at a set wage). But in our societies we have a different system and an old canvas painted by Picaso 100 years ago is worth significantly more than a brand new one of the same size that I could paint today.


As far as guitars go, the bottom line is that you seem angry that some people are really stupid and are paying obscene amounts of money for something that's marginally, if at all, better than what you can buy day in and day out. I don't understand why would you want something that's not so good to be cheaper enough that you can buy it. Can you just buy something just as good that's being produced currently? May be you do suffer from something that a lot of collectors do - they value the same thing completely differently depending on whether they're buying or selling it.

My ideal non-hypocritical measure of 'fair price' is one that you would be willing both to buy and sell an item for.

The discussion in the last few posts here is an eternal debate on SRP and other forums, in fact it is a debate being had in numerous hobbyists fora.

I think it is quite a fruitless one.
The reason for saying so is that we all have different approaches to this hobby.

Some are collectors, and within that group there are several different types of collecting as well.
Be it scales, NOS historic pieces, exotic materials, origin of product, time-frame of production and so on and so on.

Others are looking for a way to shave in a traditional way.
Perhaps with an heirloom left them from parents or even grand-parents, which means that the cost isn't really a big issue.

Some are in to straights to save a buck or two in the long run.
A vintage razor restored and buffed to a useable state can be had for $30 bucks on the bay all the time.

And then there is the various kinds and degrees of hobbyists, who perhaps falls somewhere between the collector and the other types of members we have here.

I'm sure there are lots other types as well in here.

Now, we are united in that we seek knowledge in the art of straight shaving, but that's where it stops IMO.

What one of these persons feel an object is worth to them, compared to the next guy is bound to vary.
Simple as that.

It is all about perception.

Luckily we are involved in a pretty low cost hobby after all.

Heck, I've seen simple classic dining-room chairs sell for tens of thousands of dollars.
A Wonderedge doesn't look all that expensive in that light

wow, did i pay that much? i'd thought it was £225 when i'd bought it, i hear what your saying, especially with regards to subjectivity, and that's the point really, most people especially new guys on here only have what they read about dubl ducks to go on, and consistency isnt what they hear, what they hear is (sic) "the razor with magical shave properties. At no point am i saying that it isn't good shaver, it very probably is, i just won't be spending that kind of money to find one.

And yes you can spend your money on what you like if it makes you happy, i just find it a shame that a collector with prestige aspirations and more money than your average end user, drives the market price up and keeps that item out of the hands of a user who appreciates it rather than just values it.

and yes i think the athestic pleasure one gets from a piece in a museum, any piece is much greater than seeing a picture of it. but that's again subjective. using the dickens example i stated earlier, you can read that from any number of reprints, but you can't appreciate the artistry of a painting (i;m told) from a print or copy. but thats not a equivalent analogy as anyone can go to a museum and see that piece. what i find unfortunate is when a private collector who can afford the original, and puts away in storage somewhere or their condo so they can wait on the value increasing. the pieces in museums tend to be unique and irreplaceable.

Saying that, I've always failed to see the fuss about the mona lisa, i've been to the louvre and seen it. There are literally tens of thousands of other pieces in that museum that stir more in me, especially in antiquities.

I think this one has run it's course possibly? we're both falling back on previous points now and getting a little bit out of the realm of razors lol but i appreciate the time gugi, it's been a good conversation and i've enjoyed it

Cheers

Simon

Oh come on, now I have to find other threads to post in