Thread: Picked up a collection today!

Well, I was driving around up near the NW Arkansas/Missouri border today and happened to stop in at a flea market, where I found this very interesting collection of razors that I was eventually able to buy for $100:



The owner of the booth told me that the former owner of this collection was a barber himself and had collected these over the years. He had the leather rollup pouch made specially for his collection and it is still in pretty good condition.



The blades vary somewhat in make and condition, but only one seems to be in very bad shape as far as rust goes. There is one marked "Mizzoo" and several "Clifford Co. - Boston". One has a curious RE mark that I'd really like to identify:



Scales vary, but all seem to be horn to my untrained eyes.

Anyways! Now I'm trying to decide what to do with them all. Part of me wants to try my hand at restoration and reselling. Part of me wants to pick the 6 that I like the most and add them to my current lovely Tivoli to have a seven-day set. Part of me wants to keep the whole collection together since they have some history together and such a unique case. Any suggestions?

Awesome find good job on that steal

Great find!
I would separate the rusty one from the rest asap just incase those scales are rotting.
Get yourself some metal polish and paper towel and go to town, they look in pretty good shape as is!

Eric.

Nice find. The leather looks good and you should get some advice on bringing it back moisture wise. We do have some expert leather folks here who should be able to give you a tip or two. All the blades look good except the one that appears to be rusted all the way to include the edge. Looks like you can certainly work with the rest. A couple of the scales could be horn and the others look standard. Enjoy.

The only suggestion I have is to NOT get rid of the collection! Nice find, you probably just saved another bunch of razors from the scrap pile.

great find, some of those old razor rolls are fantastic and built with alot of love to protect precious Items,i have several that I have aquired over the yrs,here is one pic, will post another shortly,somebody spent alot of time on this item.

This was all hand tooled in deerhide.maybe a 100 plus yrs ago.

Restore them, keep em together, use em and enjoy em...nothing beats a find with history in it...

what a steal....i would love a matching set like that..thanks for sharing the pics

Based on the scales and collars, I'm almost certain the one marked with the R and E visible is a Wade and Butcher for Barbers Use ("WADE AND BUTCHER" over "FOR BARBERS USE", hence the R and E left after grinding). It looks like it has been reground. If you look under the tang you should see some grind marks where the angle changes from the monkey tail to the shoulder.