Thread: Tips on Ebay buying?

A new member recently sent me a "restored" and "shave ready" razor he bought off of ebay. This seller has an excellent reputation as far as the deceptive feedback system of ebay is concerned. He described all the right tools and the elaborate process he used to restore the edge of the razor to shave ready condition. He described the bevel as being highly polished for a comfortable shave. He also had the temerity to describe the razor as being restored to a "mirror finish." His photography skills did a pretty good job of hiding the truth.

When I received the razor, I was shocked at just how bad the razor was. It was obvious that he had butchered the faces of the blade with a WIRE bristle Dremel and made no attempt to remove the scratches. Yes he HAD polished the bevel--it was shiny, but then again when you looked straight down onto the edge, that too was shiny. When you hone a razor, you are converting the edge from a "U" shape to a perfect "V" shape and the apex of that "V" will not reflect any light, yet the edge of this guy's hone job was the shiniest part of the razor. In other words, the razor was completely, utterly, dull. Worse, his Dremel work had ruined the spine. Yup, he Dremeled the spine and made it extremely variable in thickness. He honed with tape and so did nothing to correct the damage he had done.

It took me a long time to fix that razor, first on the buffer and then on low grit hones. I had to remove a lot of steel from the spine to make it flat but it still looked ugly because of the extreme variations in the hone wear along the length of the spine due to his Dremel job.

I started a thread complaining about the quality of this guy's work, but that's not allowed here. Praise is allowed but we are not allowed to badmouth the work of vendors, even if they are not members here and only sell on ebay. I didn't realize we couldn't criticize ebay sellers but I do recognize, and acknowledge, the justification for that policy. I simply didn't want others to fall prey to this guy who clearly has no idea what a properly honed razor is. For that reason, all I can tell you is the following:

If you are new, DON'T TRUST EBAY SELLERS! Your limited reading here on SRP does not prepare you for all the crap these sellers can and will foist off onto you.