Which razors do you consider rare.
There's probably already a forum for this but I couldn't find it.
Printable View
Which razors do you consider rare.
There's probably already a forum for this but I couldn't find it.
A couple of things. How rare are we talking. Right off the hop we can eliminate many many razors that you see advertised as rare. There were a few little known makers. There are some seldom seen models from well known makers and then there is the group of very late 1700's to very early 1800's. There are a few collectors here who have some truly great examples of all of those. I do not have any that are super rare. Some of the more modern makers are hard to find in exceptional condition, Palmera for one. Rare can be kind of a relative term and actually does not always make them worth a lot of money. Personally I like the very old razors with unusual scales, and don't have many and don't see many advertised.
Nothing real specific, just things you feel lucky to have.
Rare could be because they were rubbish shavers so everyone who owned one threw it away.
Well I feel pretty lucky to have all the razors I have. I have a box full of Henckels that I love, but they are not rare, there are a lot of them around, Henckels manufactured straight razors in large quantities for many many decades, and kept a very good quality as well. I have a few English razors from the mid 1800"s that are nice to have. I also have a few from the first half of the 1800's that I feel pretty lucky to have. Most of the stuff I have is stuff that I really like, individually none of it is particularly rare, and most of it is not particularly valuable. I do have a few razors that are worth more than I paid for them, at least in my mind. Here are a few previous posts
http://straightrazorpalace.com/custo...ostenholm.html
http://straightrazorpalace.com/show-...d-johnson.html
http://straightrazorpalace.com/show-...te-things.html
http://straightrazorpalace.com/razor...2-wm-hyde.html
I am with Rez... I prefer the less common models from the more common makers. For me it the 1" Bengalls or a genuine Bengall with a barber's notch.
I find that DublDucks are hard to come by in Aus... but Bengalls are very common here but not so much elsewhere...
I doub't I'll ever see a Wade & Butcher in a store here...
I also found this razor in a shop the other day... I suppose you could consider that rare as there is hardly any information about it.
If you can't find any info or another one it is rare isn't it
There would have been many razor makers running literal cottage industries in places like Sheffield, Solingen and Eskilstuna. They would have made small batches of razors. They might have been in business for only a short time. History has probably forgotten most of them. The trouble is, you could stumble across an extremely rare razor on places like eBay but you wouldn't know it.
I'm attracted to unusual razors, as these are likely to be somewhat affordable compared with the razors that everyone wants. You can really take a bath on some of them, but a win here and there makes you forget that part.
I can't tell, cause they're the ones no one have
Kind of like imaginary, the 'Holy Grail', yeah, that's pretty rare
It's never the ones you own, but the ones you read and hear people talk about
the ones you MUST go out and buy and once you acquired them, their status changes and new ones become the holy grail
vicious circle n'at
IMHO are two class of rare:
1) is ancient razors of 700/ early 800 or before, even if they are dirty o in not good conditions, are rich of history and are symbol of old era
2) razor in NOS condition and fine worked, produced by a good non industrial producer like old filarmonica or first Puma or some Shieffield.
If you find razor that you can collocate in both group (at good price) you are very very lucky (with rare ass :D :D )
a NOS seven day set of C.V. heljestrands MK134s in ivory scales would be considered rare and bring you alot of $$$ on the market
I think is vary rare razor
the maker only seems to have made knives & lucky to find any info on them let alone razors
Attachment 221037Attachment 221038
Well since you have a name and address the British Government may have business information like tax records or business registration papers, maybe even a genealogy search could give you the answers you seek.
The Australia government can provide these things if you ask and we are really a carbon copy of theirs...
I was going to do it for Bengall but I got lazy. I wanted to know the year they started stamping T.R. Cadman & Sons Ltd as opposed to just T.R. Cadman & Sons. I imagine it was the year they went to a Proprietary Company upgrading from a "business" for tax purposes no doubt. But Bengall is certainly not a rare maker by any stretch of the imagination.
No doubt about this one being rare, remember the original thread http://straightrazorpalace.com/razor...fo-please.html
Are you planning to finish this razor?
Rare, to me anyway, is all about condition. Bad condition anything is junk, no matter how seldom seen.
Some seem to collect tang stamps, however.
One of the most common razors ever, say a Goldedge, is common. A perfect one is quite rare by comparison.
Even ones from the old days. Older ones, more is forgiven if in decent shape.
Condition is the factor before rarely-seen can be considered.
If you have both, that is truly rare.
JMHO
The rarest straight I own. Michael Price was a famous San Francisco gold rush cutler who's bowie knives have sold at auction for over $30,000. Little known fact: he made a few razors as well. I know of four, including this one. A collector/author named Bernard Levine (who wrote THE book on early California knives) had one, another fellow here on SRP has spent a lifetime searching and has two. I have expensive razors, valuable razors, desirable razors, razors I've spent too much on, but none approach the rarity of this guy. I've been offered ridiculous sums of cash for it, no intention of selling ever.
To me, rare is an example from a maker of high repute who made very few examples.
Attachment 221120
COOL! Looking at the stabilizer. Think it was reground at some point?
Let's see that stamp. Never saw one!
I don't think it's ever been reground, and actually seems to have been lightly used. The makers mark strike is light and tilted, but legible enough to positively ID. Same stamp Price used on all of his cutlery, "M. Price San Francisco".
Attachment 221121
Attachment 221122
not done yet mate
after looking at the quality of the knives I found made by this company I wanted to use Ivory with pinning etc
but being in Aus & pushing it up hill to get legal ivory I am leaning towards bone scales & some pining or inlays.
no rush on this one as it will be a definite keeper I think & I want to do it some justice.
cheers
D
I have a Kippax which is rarely seen which has been said to be from the mid 1700's to the late 1700's but definitely not into the 1800's. I have one & another member on here has one that I know of. I think it was gooser that has one. There are some other rare ones out there that come along once in a great while.
The Jennings razor made in Australia in the 1860s is probably among the rarer razors anyone has turned up. There was a thread very like this one on Badger & Blade in Dec 2013 and mdunn posted a picture. I'm not sure of the etiquette here of mentioning other forums, let alone linking to them, so I'll leave it up to anyone who wants to google for it. It's not that exciting; just a razor with "Jennings Sydney" stamped on the tang but if anyone finds another there will be interested buyers.
The thing is, there were tons of small producers all over the place making razors. I have a number of razors I have only ever seen one or two of. Rare? Yes. But if I put them on ebay I might only get a few bucks for them because they usually have to have some other quality about them to make them valued.
Here are a few that you might have a hard time finding more of. The point of this is just to show that there are tons of 'rare' razors out there. I think the makers' histories are interesting. But anything from condition to scale materials to specific styles can make a razor rare. There are many different levels of rarity. In the end, just collect the ones you think are neat. :beer2:
Attachment 221197
Attachment 221198
Attachment 221199
Attachment 221200
Attachment 221201
Attachment 221202
Attachment 221203
Attachment 221204
Attachment 221205
Attachment 221206
Attachment 221207
Attachment 221208
WOW! Something to be said for tang stamps! Those are amazing! :tu
What is that last one?
It reminded me of this!; http://straightrazorpalace.com/razor...or-blades.html
A link to that?
Would a razor be considered rare if you have the only one you've ever seen? He is a link to a post I submitted on here a while back of one that I own, its the only one I've seen;
http://straightrazorpalace.com/razor...ml#post1574878
Quality custom razors are what I consider rare. I have handled quite a few customs, including some of myown that the ergonomics were not just right. I've also honed some customs that shouldn't have left the shop. Razors scaled in Ivory & other exotics like tortoise are a bit rare. Lastly, there are the commercial razors that are hit and miss depending on the things you like. I like the long monkey tail razors personally.
Don't forget that there are many razors that are held in collections that you never see. So it's hard to say. Even tiny cottage industry producers were making heaps and heaps of these things - they had to to make a living. And for anything modern, it takes a bit of effort to set up machining and etching and decorating processes, these were production razors.
Just remember the story of the Wentletrap shell: Economics and the Wentletrap | The Common Room
Rarity can be relative.
And imagine this situation: one has an 8/8 Filarmónica Medallon Taurino, and an 8/8 by a Belgian maker no one has ever heard of. You can imagine which one will command the attention of most, and conversely which one is likely more rare...
There are a lot of different places with some version or other of the Gales & Martin directory, but I like the Google Books one best because it's got good (relatively speaking, OCR-based text searches are largely terrible) searchability.
You can find it here.
As for the thread topic, I consider the whole rarity thing too much of a zero-sum game. I have lots of stuff that likely very few people do, but that's not really interesting. Technically, when you're getting razors made in the era before full automation, EVERY SINGLE ONE is unique. That W&B wedge you've got that looks like a hundred others is the only one exactly like it because it was made by human hands without a mold. That they're as similar as they are mostly explains why it took Sheffield so long to get fully automated.
On the other hand, I can be interested in the idea of 'lucky to have'. In that spirit, I offer up this trio:
http://theshiveringbeggar.com/wp-con...Pickslays2.jpg
The monogram is A H. This box was technically a box that held another box, namely the fancy-but-not-personalized manufacturer's box. That interior box is lost to time as well as one of the razors from the pair within it.
http://theshiveringbeggar.com/wp-con...Pickslays1.jpg
The complete pair is a set of razors I got quite a while back off eBay. I got them mostly because they represent a very particular era of production, namely between April and December of 1824. The only time when Charles Pickslay, still working under the Green & Pickslay banner, produced 'Peruvian Steel' razors. It was a formula he'd adapted from the two papers that James Stodart & Michael Faraday published with the Royal Society a few years previous. It was an alloy of imported India steel with rhodium and iridium. He kept trying to market his steel, long, long after the dissolution and lawsuits with Green & Pickslay had ended. It bankrupted him several times and he ultimately moved to the US, where his descendants still live (one of whom has a ledger he'd recorded in 1825 that points out it wasn't just the expensive steel that bankrupted him, but also his penchant for hiring a coach to go spend two years of a workman's salary on partying in London).
The pair were bought by William Archbald, a writer living in Kelso Scotland. He held a clerk position in the town government and didn't leave a lot of records for exactly what sort of writing he did, though he was an avid Cricket player and not particularly talented.
The razors most likely would've been purchased not long after they were made, so between 1824 and 1825. Archbald was a young man then, just starting his family. They're extremely plain, with just the scrimshawed name on the ivory.
http://theshiveringbeggar.com/wp-con...Pickslays3.jpg
Earlier this year I caught another eBay auction for a single, highly decorative razor with the box above. Now I probably would've been interested in this one regardless, because I've been trying to get nice examples of Hawcroft & Pearson, Hawcroft, and Pearson razors (after the pair split up they made things under their own names for some time), but what really caught my eye was the etch on the blade:
"To Wm. Archbald Houliston, from Willm. Archbald, Kelso, August 5th, 1845"
It's a gift from the owner of the Pickslay razors to his grandson. Originally, it would've been a pair, and I'm sad that the other razor's lost, but to have a group of razors like this is pretty remarkable, especially considering how I acquired them.
Consequently, it was the grandson who moved to America and probably brought all of the razors with him.
I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have these three razors.
(And I'm expecting to finally have a workshop again in the next couple of months and I'm really looking forward to repairing and cleaning all three of these razors.)