Hi - I picked up a Gillette Made in England Tech razor today for my better half - before I give it to him I want to sound clever and know what im talking about but the date code has confused me. Looking at the usual date codes there is a letter then a number for the quarter but this one has a small "s" then an "F" Any info appreciated. Cheers Lainey
i tried to find an earlier post for you that contained all the info on how to use those date codes but was unsuccesful...i know for a fact someone will be along here shortly to help you though!
it is just a small "s" and then a capital "F" in the same place it would normally say for example F 1 - the head is impressed with the word Gillette and not etched if that helps - will try and get photo Cheers Lainey
If I recall the English made Gillettes didn't follow the same date coding that the US versions did. I could be wrong though.
i know its a 3 piece tech , and im sure some members will be able to narrow it down for you, it looks very nice
Tomnat you are correct. The English (and International) models did not use date coding like (or as much) the U.S. models did. Even the U.S. models have gaps in date coding. Lainey, here is a posting that someone had about a "British" tech and responses. If it is that razor then you have a very broad range of years. http://theshaveden.com/forums/threads/gillette-tech-is-it-the-real-thing.26922/#post-465824 Good fortune.
These particular Techs were made from the early 1960s until the late 1970s. Unfortunately as others noted, Gillette UK's date code system isn't known like Gillette USA's is. Generally to date a Gillette UK razor, one has to look at the date code on the blade(s) that came with the razor as those date codes were the same as USA. Why Gillette UK felt the need to use two different date code systems (one for their razors, one for their blades), still baffles us all...
Gillette management in the 1920s was found to be "cooking the books" in terms of overseas sales which required that they would not keep a valid track of razors. This had repercussions for the next twenty years concerning serial numbers... “During the early stages of the merger talks, AutoStrop had relied for its notions of Gillette’s financial condition on the minimal accounting contained in its handsome annual reports. Pressed for deeper details, the Gillette men politely but firmly demurred, hinting that further figures were probably not required at that point, and that in any case Gillette was under no obligation to supply them. Put mildly, seemed a rather odd position to take, and as the deal neared consummation AutoStrop began to have a nagging feeling that all was not it was said to be. At last Gillette could stall no longer, and submitted its books to scrutiny by independent auditors. By then, as an AutoStrop director would later say, “we had pretty well made up our minds that we would find something, but hoped that we would not.”What they found was a stunning blow to the AutoStrop directors. “The statement didn’t look as if it was for the same company,” one them recalled. By their own accounts, at least, the disclosure was also a shock to most Gillette board members as well.Put briefly — the only merciful way to put a situation that became catalyst for one of the most complicated litigations ever conducted the Commonwealth of Massachusetts — Gillette executives had for number of years been vastly overstating corporate revenues and profits. They had accomplished this feat of bookkeeping legerdemain by recording as completed sales all shipments of blades and razors overseas subsidiaries, whether or not the goods had actually been sold dealers. This had been done ostensibly to reduce foreign income- tax payments, and the theory was that things would even out from year to year as sales were completed. In practice, though, the procedure became the key element in flights of bookkeeping fancy that made sales seem to be rising steadily, when in fact overseas warehouses were bulging with unsold — and, with introduction of the new razor and blade, virtually unsalable — merchandise that was carried on home-office books as having already been disposed of at a tidy profit. More darkly, as it turned out later, the whole exercise seemed also to be a means by which the ruling Gillette triumvirate of Fahey, Pelham, and Thompson assured themselves of fat bonuses, computed as a percentage of reported earnings.”Source King Gillette – The Man and His Wonderful Shaving Device by Russell Adams page 158 and 159.The new management made a decision to eliminate coding in the 1930s in the US and continued that practice until 1950. They continued to not track overseas items via serial numbers to help to reduce the possibility of a "year models" that could become obsolete as occurred in the 1920s.
