Quote Originally Posted by BobH View Post
Not all DDs are "ornamental", consider the DD Special No 1. My guess would be same quality steel as the fancy Goldedges and such. Ornamental has nothing to do with the quality of the shave. Yes they are more expensive to produce because of the ornamentation and eye candy rightly is priced higher. Again nothing to do with the ability to take and hold a fine edge.

Yea the scarcity of certain razors naturally increases the price over similar more commonly encountered ones. That adds to the wow factor but speaks nothing of the ability to take and hold a fine edge either.

Bob
Oh, I'm not saying that ALL DD's are ornamental, but the majority are. Just like not all Genco's were plain. My main point was simply the abundance of one vs. the other.

Like I said before, this is speculation on my part, having only shaved with one semi shave ready W&B, and no DD's or Filly's... I have, however, shaved with 13 Genco's, and all have given fantastic shaves once brought to shave ready. I have no doubt whatsoever that the brands mentioned by the OP belong in the world class list, though. But, my point is I haven't heard, yet, of someone saying they got a bad shave from a properly shave ready Genco either. For an inexpensive yet consistently good quality razor that always performs as it should, it's a win-win.

I guess what I'm saying is that if a Genco isn't up to par with one of the brands the OP mentioned, what makes it so? Obviously, they were well enough received to become the largest razor producer in the world, so something had to be going right... If not, I imagine they would have folded and closed up shop or at least never gotten as big as they did.