I also avoid modern Dovos. Their quality has apparently improved since the buyout, but I have not tried or honed one.

As far as the Chinese razors go, stick with the Gold Dollars/Gold Monkeys. Any ‘ZY’ type blade or razor with wooden scales have mostly been a disappointment to me.

Buying Gold Dollars/Gold Monkeys is a numbers game. Recently I bought 12 of them for $4.41 each, delivered. The experience was ‘normal’ for these razors. Two honed right up, two are going to be more trouble than they’re worth, one I have not honed yet, and seven honed up with some degree of corrective honing and will be fine going forward. These numbers are consistent with my previous experience. Don’t expect every one to hone straightforwardly and expect a 20% failure rate. By ‘failure’ I mean that you can’t reasonable\y invest the time and expensive hone wear to get a sub-$5 razor with significant defects in shaving shape vs better examples of the same razor.

If you understand this and are OK with it, they can be fun to hone and to give as gifts. The good ones go to your friends and the bad ones to your enemies, yuk, yuk.