Quote Originally Posted by Voidmonster View Post
The Wade & Butcher 'Special' razors were produced during the seriously declining fortunes of the company. They had given up on traditional production and used machine-production techniques involving stamped blank razors minimally finished by a skeleton crew of skilled workers.

The word has as much bearing on the quality and utility of the razor as sunglasses marketed as being "HD". It's pure marketing fluff.

On the other hand, while my description makes it sound like it's somehow inferior quality -- it's absolutely not. They were seriously trying to compete with all the other shaving methods out there at the turn of the century and they made their best effort. They're good razors. Just not any more 'Special' than the 'Universally Approved' razors of the 1820's were 'Universally Approved'. Or for that matter, the 'Celebrated' razors were Celebrated.

Nice NOS and coffin