The exact sort of razor you shouldn't buy.

Could well be - I read somewhere that some barbers intentionally shaped their razors like this.

I talked to a guy once whose grandfather was a barber since his youth. The grandfather had passed away, and his wife was selling his bits and pieces (women eh, who understands them?!) and the grandson knew I was interested in old razors, so he offered me all the shaving stuff - strops, hones, razors - for a pretty decent ballpark figure, which I agreed to. When the box arrived, every single razor was shaped like your one, which made me think. Some of the hones were broken and re-shaped, some of the strops were badly nicked and sanded down. Some of those hones were so dished that if you lapped them they would have been less than a quarter of an inch thick, so he had evidently used them as-is. It made me remember my fathers house - he bought it from an old farmer who sold the land on separately. Everything left in that house had been mended and re-shaped time after time - kind of like the contents of that old barbers box.

Since then I have come across a number of razors, from old barber shops, with that characteristic shape. I suppose that if you concentrate on the tip, then you are moving further and further up the blade, so the width (cross-wise, thickness) increases at the tip as it progresses further and further up the hollow grinding, while that at the heel would be much nearer to original and quite thin. The natural consequence of this is that from the shoulder, the hone wear along the spine increases as you get nearer and nearer to the tip - it has to, otherwise that sort of blade geometry couldn't happen.

But unfortunately that still doesn't explain why that shape came about - whether it was intentional or accidental, I mean. I wish I could recall where I saw the info that said it was intentional!

Regards,
Neil