Thread: Senior members, a question

In senate hearings debating the tariff act of 1921 H.L. Henry, the head of the Geneva Gutlery Co., and representing nine other razor companies including; Torrey, Case, Droescher, Clauss, National Razor, Union Cutlery, Geo. Korn, and Poughkeepsie Cutlery, claimed that the German market was flooding this country with poor quality razors and threatening the stability of the U.S. manufacturers. He said they were made from Bessemer steel or a cheap grade of Swedish steel. Interesting reading.

Regards - Walt

^Oh, very very cool.

Originally Posted by Walt

In senate hearings debating the tariff act of 1921 H.L. Henry, the head of the Geneva Gutlery Co., and representing nine other razor companies including; Torrey, Case, Droescher, Clauss, National Razor, Union Cutlery, Geo. Korn, and Poughkeepsie Cutlery, claimed that the German market was flooding this country with poor quality razors and threatening the stability of the U.S. manufacturers. He said they were made from Bessemer steel or a cheap grade of Swedish steel. Interesting reading.

Regards - Walt

This is awesome!!!

Thank you,

Lynn

Walt- that is a very cool piece of history. The guy from Geneva basically foretells the crumbling of the American razor manufacturing business. Crazy.

Very cool to "see" this happening. I could sense the urgency in the situation on the part of the manufacturers.

Originally Posted by Philadelph

Walt- that is a very cool piece of history. The guy from Geneva basically foretells the crumbling of the American razor manufacturing business. Crazy.

Where can I read more about the American razor manufacturing industry??

Originally Posted by Ichinichi

Where can I read more about the American razor manufacturing industry??

Beats me. Little snippets like this from history are your best bet. I know the Case knife company had a book that was basically a bio of the company. I don't know how much it talked about razors though. The thing is- not much written word on the subject is out there considering what could be said. So a lot of information is kind of 'lost'.

I read somewhere that Sheffield and Solingen, for a time, swapped steels. Then as steels became more abundant in England, they would ship to Germany for other processes. Germany would ship to England for MOP and other scale material.

It is all intertwined and it would not surprise me to learn that the steel came from the same mine. So a Solingen blade would have the same steel as a Sheffield.

American steel is made here so all the razors that were made by American companies were made here.

There were exceptions. American Companies that used German blades etc then restamped then with the companies logo.

I really do not think it was so much the steel as the forging process. A good blacksmith family was worth there weight in gold if they could produce superior edged weapons. Obviously crappy steel, is just that, but even marginal steel could be made into a good shaver with the right smith at the helm.

Originally Posted by Ichinichi

Their presence in the public consciousness here is not in question; the recent upward trend in pricing is what categorizes them as FTOM.

This may devolve into an argument about definitions, but that doesn't match any usage for "flavor of the month" that I'm familiar with. Price != popularity - price is dependent on both demand and supply. Oil didn't become a "flavor of the month" just because barrel prices spiked. OTOH the hybrids and Smart cars could be considered FOTMs because their popularity spiked during that period, and collapsed once gas prices came back down.

I believe your focus on price as a proxy for demand has led you to mischaracterise the nature of the shift in demand. The price for the barber's razors is a function of both supply and demand, and the supply seems fairly steady while demand has grown rapidly. But this demand seems to me to be caused by the increase in the number of straight razor shavers, not by some recent fascination with Barber's razors in particular. Their prices are rising along with the prices for every other vintage razor on ebay. That their prices seem to be rising faster may simply be a perception issue (these razors have always been the most expensive of the sheffields, so a fairly across-the-board 3x price increase would send these into the stratosphere), and it may also be a matter of the way the supply and demand curve worked out - if these are a very supply-constrained razor (which they already were 4 yrs ago) and demand is fairly inelastic, then you can get some wild price increases that will dwarf those of the other razors, even if the popularity within the straight razor community remains constant.

Originally Posted by Ichinichi

6 months ago, no one would pay $350 for a WB Barbers; today, that's the going rate. That doesn't mean that no one was aware of the quality of WB Barbers, nor is it that the quality of WB Barbers have changed; just that 6 months ago they weren't as highly valued as they are now, satisfying the FTOM criteria above.

They do not seem to me to be any more popular today than they were years ago, relatively speaking. As a percentage of the discussions, there seems to be about the same level of chatter about them, and about the same level of "look-what-I-got" posts for these razors as there was back then. In absolute numbers there are more people interested in those razors now, but that's because there are more straight razor shavers around now. Since the number of W&B barber's razors on ebay any given time has been a fairly steady number, one would therefore expect the price to increase - possibly dramatically, depending on how elastic the demand is, even if say only 10% of straight razor shavers both then and now actually wanted one.

Wonderedges were hitting the $300 mark and higher four years ago, though I haven't really kept up with their prices recently, and while it is true that you could pick up a ratted-out W&B Barber's use for <$50 back then, you couldn't get a really nice one for that price - nice restored ones would run you $150 or so, and even back then guys whined about how expensive they were and whether they were really worth it.

Originally Posted by mparker762

I believe your focus on price as a proxy for demand has led you to mischaracterise the nature of the shift in demand. The price for the barber's razors is a function of both supply and demand, and the supply seems fairly steady while demand has grown rapidly. But this demand seems to me to be caused by the increase in the number of straight razor shavers, not by some recent fascination with Barber's razors in particular. Their prices are rising along with the prices for every other vintage razor on ebay. That their prices seem to be rising faster may simply be a perception issue (these razors have always been the most expensive of the sheffields, so a fairly across-the-board 3x price increase would send these into the stratosphere), and it may also be a matter of the way the supply and demand curve worked out - if these are a very supply-constrained razor (which they already were 4 yrs ago) and demand is fairly inelastic, then you can get some wild price increases that will dwarf those of the other razors, even if the popularity within the straight razor community remains constant.

Well said! Economics, my friend! For what it's worth, I love my W&B but I can't decide if it's my favorite yet, and it's not a "Barber's". Of course it only cost me 60 bucks and it's in pristine shape. The sun shines on a dog's a$s every once in a while.

Ogie