One of the great delights of real shaving is the wide range of different razors that you can own and use. This is a huge improvement from the monotony of the mutibladed system razors, where you are using exactly the same razor as tens of millions of other men and have no say in the matter. Today I shaved with an Eclipse Red Ring, a rare and fabulous razor made in Sheffield for just a few years in the 1930s and 1940s. Yesterday I shaved with a legendary Gillette Fat Boy, which were made between 1958 and 1961. And so on.

Each razor behaves differently, just like different makes and models of cars, but razors are far cheaper than cars so it is easier to give in to the temptation to acquire different ones. And as  pointed out in an earlier article here, eBay is the main market for these great old razors.

So when a batch of 27 razors came up this put me into  two minds. I already have most of what I want, for the moment. Yet some of the razors in there would have been good additions to the collection. Not only that, these things are rapidly going up in value as more men discover real shaving, so they had great investment potential as well.

Here is some of what was in this batch (for those of you who know a bit about the different models): 3 flare tip Super Speeds, 3 black handled Super Speeds, some Techs, a Milord, a Slim adjustable, 2 Gems, an Eveready, a Cosmo from Germany etc.  A nice, ready made collection.

The bids were very low so I stuck $70 on (they were in America) half hoping to get it and half hoping to be outbid. The sale finished in the middle of the night and made just $76. That is £50. Less than £2 per razor. Amazing. If you just split these up and sold them one at a time, with full details and descriptions, you would get several hundred pounds for them.

So there are bargains out there, even on eBay. The forums are also continually mentioning people finding very good razors at silly prices at car boot sales etc. I must say they have had more luck than I have. Of course the bargains will go once more people become aware of the increasing value of many vintage safety razors.