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score! gold flare tip?

I just shot this one down as a $7 buy it now...

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http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSAA:US:11&Item=110329508726

I usually pass these things by but this looks like one of those "rare" gold tone flare tip super speeds. The tarnish looks uniform on it so im optimistic there is no brassing and it will polish up like nicely.
 
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Tough call. Sometimes the buildup on the razor along with the lighting & digital technology does very funny things with the coloring. I hope you score a gold one but if you don't $7 is OK for a regular old silver flare tip. Good luck - may you find the white whale!
 
By the looks of it I'm pretty sure once you give it a bath and scrub behind it's ears your going to find a shiny Nickle plated Flair Tip. I don't see any signs of gold plate anywhere on it but I have seen plenty that look just like it before cleaning.
 
Last July I bought this razor on eBay WITHOUT asking questions. The pic below includes the auction pic and my pic of the razor UNTOUCHED, right out of the box.

:eek: Lighting & digital photos are not 100% reliable.
 
By the looks of it I'm pretty sure once you give it a bath and scrub behind it's ears your going to find a shiny Nickle plated Flair Tip.

+1 Whenever i see a gold one that I might be interested in I always send a message to the seller and ask what the color really is; they are always silver and not gold in color...
 
FWIW- while it may be remotely possible that the gold tone in the photo was intentional, I believe it's much more likely that it's simply a case of a "white balance" problem. If the camera was set to to a white balance for incandescent lighting(plain old light bulbs- which tend to make everything look yellowish/golden on daylight film- or in digital cameras with incorrectly set white balance), betcha it would have clearly shown a silver razor. Ebay- and for that matter, the whole cotton pickin' world- is filled with people who simply point & click, no matter what. For close-ups of small items, 3 things would fix about 98-99% of all problems. White balance, Macro,& a small tripod. No foolin'. :wink:
 
FWIW- while it may be remotely possible that the gold tone in the photo was intentional, I believe it's much more likely that it's simply a case of a "white balance" problem. If the camera was set to to a white balance for incandescent lighting(plain old light bulbs- which tend to make everything look yellowish/golden on daylight film- or in digital cameras with incorrectly set white balance), betcha it would have clearly shown a silver razor. Ebay- and for that matter, the whole cotton pickin' world- is filled with people who simply point & click, no matter what. For close-ups of small items, 3 things would fix about 98-99% of all problems. White balance, Macro,& a small tripod. No foolin'. :wink:

Ditto that!
 
Here is the real Gold Flair Tip. I picked this one up at the end of last year.

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Yeah and someone outbid me at the last second on one of these today. The case wasn't as pristine as yours Ray, but I was gonna love that girl so much :mad:

Oh well, my bank account seems to be directly linked to eBay anymore. There have been some really sweet razors there lately, and I really really have gotten some good deals recently.

So I'm not mad. My wallet is :biggrin:
 
I just shot this one down as a $7 buy it now...


http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:B:EOIBSAA:US:11&Item=110329508726

I usually pass these things by but this looks like one of those "rare" gold tone flare tip super speeds. The tarnish looks uniform on it so im optimistic there is no brassing and it will polish up like nicely.

You mention the tarnish looking uniform . . . That should be a clue as to whether it is gold plated or not, since gold doesn't tarnish at all. It may get covered with soap scum and other dirt held by the soap scum, but once that is cleaned off, the plating on a gold razor will not be tarnished. Most other metals used on razors will tarnish to varying degrees, but not gold.

I will wager that your razor will clean up to be a nice shiny nickel plated Superspeed . . . nothing wrong with that for $7.00.

Regards,
Tom
 
FWIW- while it may be remotely possible that the gold tone in the photo was intentional, I believe it's much more likely that it's simply a case of a "white balance" problem. If the camera was set to to a white balance for incandescent lighting(plain old light bulbs- which tend to make everything look yellowish/golden on daylight film- or in digital cameras with incorrectly set white balance), betcha it would have clearly shown a silver razor. Ebay- and for that matter, the whole cotton pickin' world- is filled with people who simply point & click, no matter what. For close-ups of small items, 3 things would fix about 98-99% of all problems. White balance, Macro,& a small tripod. No foolin'. :wink:
Luckily for them then the "mistake" is to the sellers' benefits. One suspects, however, that if the white balance settings were resulting in lower bids on higher priced items (if gold was showing up as nickel, for example) then the problem would be addressed fairly quickly.

I don't believe that much of the garage sales days of Ebay are around anymore. It's mainly comprised of large-scale operations or even the e-tail portion of a regular retail operation. Such visual (mis)representations of a product would be inappropriate if advertised by Amazon. I doubt that many of these pictures are taken under any lighting other than commercial florescents and I'm not aware of any camera, commercial or otherwise, that is set to compensate for incandescent lighting by default.

In any case, what is often the case is that the sellers either use someone else's picture or reuse their own from a single product. The pictures posted are more often than not a different item than the one sent to your mailbox.

The real test is to compare the box of razors against BurmaShaver's photos. That said, I suspect he'd be hard pressed to replicate a "white balance error" as perfectly as was done with the sample he was bidding on.

But whatever, it's definitely caveat emtor but I'd still say these are hinky business practices, at best.
 
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