Thread: trying to purchase a razor for my husband

A quick look at the classifieds here and you'll see a Colombi for $95, That I think would be a better starter for him and leaves budget for you to add a strop.

Before I really knew what to look for when buying razors, I referenced the "Good brands of straight razors" and "Brands of straight razors to avoid" list before making any purchase. There are razors out there that are fantastic shavers but still not on the list (Hibbard Spencer and Bartlett for example) so the Army and Navy razor might shave great, I've never heard of the brand though so I don't know. Here are links to the Good and the Bad lists of straight razors if your interested.

Good Straight Razor Brands

Brands of Straight Razors to AVOID

+++++++++11111111 to Straight Razor Designs also VintageBladesLLC.com is a Great site that has good deals on beginner sets.

I suggest that you call Straight Razors Design. They are great to deal with and extremely knowledgeable.

The thing is that with vintage razors you can't quite comparison shop directly.
But you can do it with other razors listed on the same site and you will notice the striking tendency of everything being at enormous markup compared to everywhere else, and that is the so called 'discounted' prices. If you still decide to go for it I'd say it would of utmost importance to have it sharpened by somebody with skills and experience (e.g. see the member services section at the classifieds). That particular vendor is known for some rather 'creative' sharpening which most of us here consider an outright abuse of the razors.

As far as this razor goes the scales are not special - they are thermoplastic (not sure if celluloid, I'm not an expert) but relatively common mold that can be found on many different razors from the period.

A significantly better option in my opinion would be to contact some of the vendors on this site who sell vintage razors (look a the vendor's corner section) and ask them if they may have something along the army theme. There are a number of razors who were marketed this way, some of them were even commissioned by the military.