Shaving gear images from 1943-1963 Montgomery Ward Catalogs

A peek at what shavers had to choose from "back in the day". Shaving gear from a few old Montgomery Ward catalogs I found at a flea market. The first pages are from a '43 and a '52 catalog and the last page is from a 1962 catalog. Less straight razors to choose from in the 60's :)

http://www.theaesthetics.com/assets/WARDS1.jpg
http://www.theaesthetics.com/assets/WARDS2.jpg
http://www.theaesthetics.com/assets/WARDS3.jpg
http://www.theaesthetics.com/assets/WARDS4.jpg
http://www.theaesthetics.com/assets/WARDS5.jpg

I cry when I see the prices.

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Originally Posted by Razorfeld

I cry when I see the prices.

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I cry even more when I see a modern price list ..lol..

I remember when gas was 18cents a gal,an O.U German made Browning was $300 bux at sears.
a 1966 Shelby Cobra was $6000.00 off the showroom floor,But I was only making $1.00 an hr in those days
I did buy a Browning on a two yr layaway plan.

Yep I remember getting gas and telling them to put in $5 and it filled the tank.

Sweet! Love those! Thanks for sharing!

That was so cool to see. It's amazing to see the price difference between then and now but inflation and the cost of living as gotten us all. Very cool post.:beer1:

DE blades are, today, quite a bargain by comparison.

If I ever have a time machine, I'm going to 1) stop Hitler, then 2) unfold those strops.

In 1966, well after any of those catalogs were printed, teachers made $4000/year n major US cities, and if you made $10,000/year doing anything, you were rich. In 2015 the defined poverty level for a family of 4 in the US is $24, 250. There are online calculators in which you can look up specific years and see what an item a dollar in 19xx would cost today. It would suggest to you (if you don't already know it) that many of us are "poor" financially today.

We are lucky and enriched, however, to have friends like the other members on this forum.

Thank you for the time machine! I had not thought about "Monkey Wards" for years. They were huge and on the border of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, MN. From the little town North of there we lived, MW was an all day trip, though the drive was only an hour during the 50's.
The Streets of Saint Paul: A Short History of Montgomery Ward on University Ave.
Afterward was a meal at the Nankin Chinese restaurant in downtown Minneapolis.
http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nankin_Cafe
Just ruminating...
~Richard

Very Interesting to see these old catalogs and the shaving gear they offered back then, here another Montgomery wards I posted a while back from 1895. http://straightrazorpalace.com/razor...zors-sale.html

Haircut anyone ? :)

Attachment 195221Attachment 195220

why would any one pay for shingles? i hear they are really painful. :)

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Originally Posted by tintin

why would any one pay for shingles? i hear they are really painful. :)

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This was my question as well...perhaps they were referring to a "Shingle Bob" cut? Something like:

Bob cut - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Please excuse my ignorance, but why do some of the "W. German-Made Razors" have a third pin through the scales?

Thank you for sharing these pages! I love seeing the razors and reading the description. A blast from the past.

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Originally Posted by CZMark

Please excuse my ignorance, but why do some of the "W. German-Made Razors" have a third pin through the scales?

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Lots of ideas about that!
My take is that they put the pin there to hold the scales apart and so save any bluing or plating on the tang. Usually the third pin was a sign of a better quality razor.
~Richard