I came across another old razor from my late father’s shaving tools.

I recall that dad received this razor as a Christmas gift.  It dates back to the late 1970s.   So, it’s somewhere near 40 years old.

This is the Barbershop Old Fashioned Luxury razor from the Franklin Toiletry Company.  The razor has a nice weight and heft to it and is well balanced.  From the enclosed informational card, I learned that it uses the Gillette Trac 2 blade cartridge system.

I was intrigued.  Since the razor was still in fairly good shape (and cost me $0.00), I toyed with the idea of buying a package of Trac 2 shaving cartridges and giving the razor a try.

Well, Trac 2 cartridges are $30.00 for a package of ten!  If you get three shaves from each cartridge, that works out to one dollar per shave!  That’s 30 bucks for one month.  Multiply that by 12 months for a year, and you’re looking at $360.00!  That’s the same amount of money many folks pay for cable television! (Even if you got six shaves per cartridge blade, that still works out to $180.00 per year!  30 bucks every two months.  Or, $15.00 per month times 12 months = $180.00.)

Contrast this to a safety razor.  I use The Godfather Razor by Vikings Blade.  This razor uses double-edge blades.  These blades cost anywhere from eight, nine, ten, or eleven dollars for a package of 100!    With this kind of blade you can get three to four shaves.  Some guys get five good shaves (some guys get more).  So, let’s just split the difference and keep things simple and say four shaves from one DE blade.  So, for approximately ten bucks (depending on the brand), you’ll get a little over an entire year of shaves!  Stated another way, it’s about two and half cents per shave.  

A package of 100 DE blades with each getting four shaves = 400 shaves.  $10.00 divided by 400 = .025 per shave.  Checking the math, .025 multiplied by 400 days = $10.00.

It’s a no-brainer.  Do the math!  Get a Safety Razor, learn the proper wet shaving technique, get a wonderfully close shave, and save a ton of cash in the process!

(Note:  Obviously, YMMV with the number of shaves you  get from a cartridge or double-edge blade.  Still, the cost of a safety razor using a double-edge blade versus a cartridge blade system is considerable.  And, needless to say, I did not buy the Trac 2 cartridges.)