Thread: Call me dumb

what does the word mean "vintage" in describing a straight razor









c

Old, not new, Tc

Wikipedia say:
What time period is vintage?
Generally speaking, clothing which was produced before the 1920s is referred to as antique clothing and clothing from the 1920s to 20 years before the present day is considered vintage. Retro, short for retrospective, or "vintage style," usually refers to clothing that imitates the style of a previous era.

~Richard

IMO, the vintage era is from the 20's to the 70's. Straight razors from later production was limited to only a few from then to recent times. Dovo comes to mind.
Some names have been resurrected lately. Notably Geisen and Forsthoff, Boker, TI, and more.

Some are reviewed as having questionable quality, esp as-compared to earlier examples.
Of course, things a hundred years old and older fall into the antique category.
Most of those are quite good, FME.

JMO, YMMV

Pretty much as Geezer replied!
And no such thing as a dumb question, IMO.

This is not a dumb question at all.

The original meaning of vintage was "year of manufacture". That's it.

Today we use it many ways. It can mean old, collectible, classic, from a bygone era, and other things. In terms of our hobby, I would say "something from a bygone era" is sorta close to the mark.

On eBay, be advised that words like vintage, rare, and antique give greedy sellers apparent license to seek out ridiculously high starting bids or BIN pricing for straight razors in obviously poor condition. This is similar to eBay’s prefererence for the term pre-owned instead of used.

To my ears, it means any SR manufactured before 1970 maybe 1980

Originally Posted by bigman

what does the word mean "vintage" in describing a straight razor

Good question...

One hint is if the razor has a country of origin in it.

If it is marked "made in" and no longer made or the company is gone
it is "vintage".

Glenn answered part of this way back when...
http://straightrazorpalace.com/razor...ml#post1375275

Neil added this to the thread.
http://straightrazorpalace.com/razor...ml#post1375633

There are trademark and maker stamp marks hints to help narrow down
the date of manufacturing ... if the records are good the date is good.
If the records are bad who knows ;-)

I like to hunt for blades made in the golden age of steel post WW1 and pre WW2.
So before the Gillette blue blade patents expired about 1921. That was when open blade
razors saw relentless decline. Great razors made with crucible steel before this
"golden" age are still famous but getting rare.

So what tcrideshd said.... "Old, not new."

To use the U.S Customs standards vintage means older than 40 years and antique 100 years old or more.

Originally Posted by thebigspendur

To use the U.S Customs standards vintage means older than 40 years and antique 100 years old or more.

The bottle of Bordeaux I finished last night was a 2015 vintage, which - according to US Customs - I must now conclude was a sub-standard French fake and would thus explain my headache...



B.