We have a pretty good idea how Gillette's American factory's serial numbers for the New Improved razors line up against years of production from Phillip Krumholz's research for his book The Complete Gillette Collector's Handbook, presumably sourced from company records as late as this was. But we don't really have any idea about the razors made in other countries. We know that the letter suffixes were used to indicate the country of origin -- according to the information we have V = Spain, W = France, Y = England, Z = Canada -- but we don't even know where these various series ended. Presumably they made fewer than a million razors in each location, but exactly how many is unknown, at least as far as I'm aware.
Let's see if we can't shine at least a little light into this darkness. If you have a New Improved razor from any of these countries please post a photo of its serial number and let's keep a running tally of the latest ones we can find. Personally, I'm pretty sure that I've never seen even one from Spain, and possibly not from France either. But let's see what you guys have!
Let's see if we can't shine at least a little light into this darkness. If you have a New Improved razor from any of these countries please post a photo of its serial number and let's keep a running tally of the latest ones we can find. Personally, I'm pretty sure that I've never seen even one from Spain, and possibly not from France either. But let's see what you guys have!
