Bought one of these today:

Provence Sant Men's Shaving Brush - Bath and beauty products - imported and hand crafted from Baudelaire Soaps

Why that brand? Because it's the only badger brush I've seen for sale locally.

I used an old Wilkinson Sword brush for years, not sure what it was made of. Softer and finer then boar but blonde so likely not badger, probably synthetic. I've been using an Omega boar brush for the past 4 or 5 months though. I must say, badger is MUCH softer. Much more then I expected it to be. It's like cats and dogs. Cats are soft, dogs are coarse, badgers are soft, boars are coarse.

Glad to finally find a store locally that sells nice shaving gear even if they have limited selection. They had a couple of Merkur DE's, some sets with matching brushes and fancy handles for cartridge heads with stands and one other brush with a glass handle for $158. Bit rich for me. Only soap they carried was the type made by this company that made the brush. They do carry straights they said but are currently out of stock, Dovo and Thiers-Issard.

So how was the brush? Very nice. I can't compare it to anything else though, it's only my 3rd brush ever and my first badger. The handle is hand made and a tad lopsided but that didn't affect how it performed of course. Handle is a bit small too. I'm glad I bought it.

I'm sure I'll buy more badger brushes now. Great, as if RAD wasn't bad enough, I have BAD too!