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Need Help for Antique Safety Razor Identification

Hello All,

Hello everybody, I hope you're enjoying the holidays :)

Anyways, as the title suggests I need some identification help from the more experienced wet shavers on this forum, especially those with some knowledge about antique/vintage safety razors.

So to get to the point, I was at my grandmothers place this weekend and happened to ask her if she still had my grandfathers collection of safety razors. It turned out that she did, so I now have eight new safety razors, along with a collection of antique blades, neither of which I know anything about.

What she could tell me was that, as far as she new, some of them dated back to WWI and before.

So, I figured that if anybody could help me identify and figure out exactly what I've got my hands on, it would be the very helpful gentlemen on here.

The limit is ten pictures per post, so i will add the last two pictures in the first comment. If anyone would like more detailed/specific pictures, just say which ones you're interested in and from what angle, so that I can make sure to get what you need.

Hope you find this to be interesting

Thanks to all in advance. Enjoy your Holidays :)

P.S. I could also really use some tips as to how to restore them. I'll have some time on my hands these days, so I'm guessing it will make for a nice little project. I've just read so many tips and instructions online, which are mutually exclusive that I'm not sure how to proceed with it.
 

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And here is the last DE Safety Razor, on the bottom I tried to take a picture of the word FASAN written, both vertically and horizontally, not sure if you guys can make it out.
 

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Esox

I didnt know
Staff member
In your first post.

The first razor, with the black handle is a Gillette Black Beauty. The last, a Gillette Slim. Both will have a date code on the bottom of the head. A letter for the year, and a 1 through 4 for the quarter of that year.

In the picture below, you'll see a D on the left and a 1 on the right, denoting, 1st quarter 1958.

gillette-date-code-bottom-number-letter-stamp.png


You can date them here: US Gillette Dating Information

Others will chime in about the rest I'm sure, I cant help with those.

Its nice to hear you have them. Things such as this are nice to keep in ones family.
 
Thanks for that info Mike, we're already getting somewhere. the black Beauty is from the first quarter of 1973, the Slim is from the second quarter of 1966.

BTW it might help you guys to know that I am located in Europe and my family had big ties with Germany in the past, so I'm guessing that most of them are in fact German.
 

Esox

I didnt know
Staff member
Thanks for that info Mike, we're already getting somewhere. the black Beauty is from the first quarter of 1973, the Slim is from the second quarter of 1966.

BTW it might help you guys to know that I am located in Europe and my family had big ties with Germany in the past, so I'm guessing that most of them are in fact German.

You're welcome. I wont be the least bit surprised if many of them are in fact German.

L2 is my birth year and quarter!
 
Just wanted to chime in and say great collection! Even more special that they were handed down to you by family!
 
You've got some really interesting ones there. The gentleman above said that most of them are German, which makes them pretty difficult to get hold of here in the States, if not in Europe as well. My recommendation to you is that you clean them with dish soap and polish them using a product called "Flitz", the liquid in the bottle, not the paste.

Flitz may be found in some auto parts stores or online. I've seen it work magic on old razors. It will preserve them and beautify them, even on the plastic elements.

I wish you all the joy of using them.
 
The one with the multiple flat sides is a "Rotbart" (rote-bart) brand razor, which in German means "red beard". It should have two cranes and the word Solingen on the handle's base. One of the others may be a Rotbart as well (the one with the knurled handle with the smooth band). Definitely Third Reich era. I think they're pretty rare, especially in that condition.
 
Thank you very much for that Info sharpstar90. The one with the multiple flat sides does not say Solingen at the bottom. Neither does the one with the knurled handle with the smooth band.
Once I started cleaning the one in the Henso box, I was able to make out the words Erwil Solingen at the base of the razor. None of the other razors fit in the box so well, so I guess that would suggest that the original one was lost in time, or am I wrong?
 
Thank you very much for that Info sharpstar90. The one with the multiple flat sides does not say Solingen at the bottom. Neither does the one with the knurled handle with the smooth band.
Once I started cleaning the one in the Henso box, I was able to make out the words Erwil Solingen at the base of the razor. None of the other razors fit in the box so well, so I guess that would suggest that the original one was lost in time, or am I wrong?
It's difficult to know. Nazi Germany went through a lot of irregular production fighting a total war. The razor may have originally come in that box because of necessity. If a soldier owned it, he may have put it in the wrong box just to store it and your Grandfather found it like that. It's hard to know.

Also, as far as the Solingen thing goes, it was known as "the city of blades" for its superior razor production. Production could have moved to another city, or they might have skipped the branding part of the manufacturing process to save labor.

Either way, they are an amazing piece of history. I often think of the German soldiers, many of whom were just trying to survive in a bad situation. Judas Priest, I think, wrote a song about them called "never the heroes" on their latest album. Movies paint them as the bad guys, but I often feel really bad for the average guy who found himself there.

But the real hero here is your grandfather! What a great monument to what he experienced back then. My grandfather went to Germany in 1945 or 46 right after the war. I never got to talk to him about it because I wasn't historically-minded until the opportunity was gone.
 
If you google "Fasan safety razor" you'll get a lot of information about that last razor - it's highly regarded, don't let the plastic fool you into thinking it's a cheap disposable.
 
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