Personna DE Blade Help

[Koken]

Recently I found a few packs of Personna Double Edge Super Platinum Chrome Blades made by American Safety Razor Company in a thrift store. The back of pack says: "These Super Platinum Chrome Personna Blades are manufactured from the highest quality materials. We start with the finest stainless steel obtainable. Our high speed machines hone each blade edge to an unsurpassed sharpness. We alloy this with high-grade platinum, tungsten, and chrome to give the cutting edges unsurpassed strength and durability. Finally we coat each blade with the miracle polymer Vydax to give it smoothness that approaches perfection. The result is a blade that gives you clean, close and smooth shaving results, stroke after stroke, shave after shave."
Has anyone ever tried these blades before? I shaved with one this morning and quite possibly had the best BBS shave ever. Any info would be greatly appreciated.

[djm2]

How much did you pay? Check this out:

http://cgi.ebay.com/10-PERSONNA-74-BLADES-TUNGSTEN-PLUS-NOS-/190492078702?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2c5a36726e

[klassic1]

Well, lets see, I use Personna. Not the red's but the $2 packs from Sally Beauty Supply....I have to say, I have no complaints on the smoothness of the shave.

I suppose reds are that much better.

[BroJohn]

Koken --

Even though the hang-card is not marked Personna*74, those blades should be the *74's, and should provide 10~20 excellent shaves each. They are the best blades ever produced and have been out of production for many years.

Enjoy.

-- John Gehman

[haiti222]

When there was the management buyout of ASR because Phillip Morris wanted to dump it, PM wanted their name off the packaging ASAP (the previous packaging had that ASR was a division of PM on the back). This was the first packaging of DE blades after the buyout. It appears to have been hastily produced. Many of the packages like this actually had the prior generation of blades in them (P74's). Look to see what is written on your blades themselves. Also, note that not all blades in the previous generation had writing on them at all (but the ones in that 1977 time period seem to)......

It has not been proven that all the blades in this packaging are P74's, but many of them clearly are. One reason for doubt that ALL of them are is that the ad copy you quoted refers to the Tungsten in the blade (which ASR seems to have retained for at least a while). The ad copy does not mention the Titanium coating that was also only on the P74's. The ad copy talks about a Platinum coating which was not believed to be on the P74. Of course this means that, at the very beginning of the new packaging, the ad copy is probably slightly inaccurate.

I have been shaving with the only other known blade to have a Titanium coating, the SuperMax Sunrise, and wow it is an incredibly good blade (it has more than enough shaving power, but without irritation on shaves 1-3, and it works perfectly from shave 1).......

[klassic1]

Koken --

Even though the hang-card is not marked Personna*74, those blades should be the *74's, and should provide 10~20 excellent shaves each...

-- John Gehman

WOW!:blink:

[Koken]

When there was the management buyout of ASR because Phillip Morris wanted to dump it, PM wanted their name off the packaging ASAP (the previous packaging had that ASR was a division of PM on the back). This was the first packaging of DE blades after the buyout. It appears to have been hastily produced. Many of the packages like this actually had the prior generation of blades in them (P74's). Look to see what is written on your blades themselves. Also, note that not all blades in the previous generation had writing on them at all (but the ones in that 1977 time period seem to)......

It has not been proven that all the blades in this packaging are P74's, but many of them clearly are. One reason for doubt that ALL of them are is that the ad copy you quoted refers to the Tungsten in the blade (which ASR seems to have retained for at least a while). The ad copy does not mention the Titanium coating that was also only on the P74's. The ad copy talks about a Platinum coating which was not believed to be on the P74. Of course this means that, at the very beginning of the new packaging, the ad copy is probably slightly inaccurate.

I have been shaving with the only other known blade to have a Titanium coating, the SuperMax Sunrise, and wow it is an incredibly good blade (it has more than enough shaving power, but without irritation on shaves 1-3, and it works perfectly from shave 1).......

Thanks for the very informative post, the blades from my pack only have Personna written in top left and bottom right corners on each side along with Made in USA at far right of blade on one side and D2 on far right of blade on other side. I can only imagine how good these would perform in a slant considering I used a Parker 22R today...

[haiti222]

You are welcome. Personna undertook a very gradual decrease in quality after the buyout (as it worked to pay off loans, including a governmental loan to keep the business in the US). BIC was contracting with ASR to make blades for their disposables, and PM wanted to sell to them. This did not happen (antitrust issues?) and the management buyout took place.

These blades would be very good, even if they had platinum and not titanium.
I have some of the Super+ Platinums-(sold as store brand) from the time period, and the big issue with them is that they are not that sharp. They are very smooth and forgiving, and have decent longevity (a week). They also have good quality control and are ready to shave right out of the wrapper.

[ShavelockFoams]

Nice find. Shame that we don't make blades like that any more.