That simply makes them both common doesn't it? Saying there are more Mach 3s doesn't make Fatboys rare. As others note,they are simply in high demand. They only made 8,000 Studebaker Hawks like mine yet you'd pay a lot more for a 57 Chevy Belair that they made a zillion of (500k+). Nothing to do with scarcity, everything to do with collectors' demand.
Maybe closer to three years: Perhaps, partial runs in D3 (introduction and shared distribution with Gold Executive Adjustable) and G4 (shared distribution with introduction of Slim), leaving D4, E1 - E4, F1 - F4, and G1-G3 (12 full quarters and two partials). Gillette were still selling their full line of non-adjustables, as well. Tom
Dude , that's like saying Pepsi is rarer then Coke ...the word loses its meaning when applied to items which are both commonly available.
Maybe people realized that an Edwin Jagger DE89 or Parker Variant shave just as well and at a fraction of the cost? Vintage razors used to be attractive because of the high quality, great shaves and reasonable cost. After prices went through the roof, they no longer represented such a good value. That became even more true when new razor manufacturers brought out improved designs. There is the collectble aspect, but most vintage razors sold nowadays we're produced, and still exist, in vast quantities. They aren't collectible, although most are reputed to be good shavers. My $20 Gillette Slim excels in this regard. The prices you noted, I think, are just nuts. As was the case with Fusion cartridges, the shaving public got sticker shock and the bubble burst. And for those who overpaid? No use in crying over spilled milk. Why not just enjoy the great shaves?
Here's a little observation Red Tips were made for six year and Fat Boys for four years. Yet a quick search finds only 41 hits for Red Tip razors and 175 hits for Fat Boys. With that ratio you have a better than a 4x chance of finding a Fat Boy tan a Red Tip.. Wow that's rare.
There's a fetishism among Fatboyists about their object of desire that doesn't exist with fans of a lot of other great and less common razors.
Remember that your birth year razor was only made for one quarter of one year. Now that is rare. And there are NO Gillettes that are my birth year razor. Can't get much rarer than that!
Except that Gillette apparently had enough 195 Adjustables in stock that they advertised them in some markets well into 1963. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
How's that ? Gillette was churning out tens or sometimes hundreds of thousands of razors per month. Given the total number of listings, all else being equal there should be 8-10 on eBay every day for each birth year/quarter. Should not take long to find a good example of any particular Fatboy absent unusual production gaps due to retooling or strikes or whatever. The only issue is being able to pick out what you're looking for when the date of manufacture is not indicated by the seller. That difficulty doesn't make the razor rare. Indeed, per my 57 Chevy comment it's in large part their ubiquity that makes them desired, the "everybody else has one (or five) so I must need one" factor.
True, but I'd be willing to bet that in 10-20 years, when estate sales switch over to a generation that grew up with cartridge razors, the supply of readily available fatboys will dry up. Edit: when I started this hobby, Fatboys were a lot less common. I blame estate sales and antique stores using eBay as a retail outlet for that reversal.
Birth year razors from 1980 on are rather scarce, and rarer the further into the '80's you look. '40's-'70's, I'd agree with you.
I'm guessing that's true, was just speaking about Fatboys which were produced when Gillette output had to be tremendous.
A conservative estimate would be one million Fatboys a year produced, with 90% broken or in landfills. That would still leave at least 400,000 out there...and I think that is a conservative estimate. I think there is closer to a million out there, still waiting to be found. People tended to hang on to Fatboys, even as they threw away other razors.
I agree about the competition heating up and driving down the prices on the vintage end. This shaving market while growing, still might have some limits and customer dollars and I noticed a whole lot of new offerings these days being offered not just in DE but SE...
Seven years ago, when I bought my Slim for $20, Slim's were more popular than the 195 and usually cost more. The reasoning at the time was that the Slim had a lower profile head, and hence was more maneuverable. I thought I was buying "probably" a 195, but what the heck, it was said to be a great razor, too. It was a pleasant surprise to open the package and find the razor was actually a Slim.
Twenty years from now, currently produced safety razors will be sold as vintage. The Gillette safety razors we call vintage were produced until the early 1980s, so only a little over 30 years ago. They were considered vintage when the current wetshaving revival started around 2000, when they would have been 20 years out of production.