Question. What do all these soaps cost?
I currently use AoS and that is a little bit spendy for me.
I currently use AoS and that is a little bit spendy for me.
"Mass" shaving soap comparison (we need YOU!)
- Thread starter mercury895
- Start date
CADE $10 for the refill puck. Skip the pricy bowl. Go to local L'Occitane shop to buy.
Arko $3 for a stick...value
Speick $6 for a stick
Tabac $8-12 (prices vary widely with or without bowl)
Conk $4-6
The rest I don't know.
I would put the 3 most common milled French shea butter soaps above everything on your list - Pre de Provence, Institut Karite, Provence Sante Green Tea (haven't tried the Verlain). Speick is my favorite "tallow" containing soaps. It lathers easily, doesn't dry out, stays very slippery on your face and cleans up easier than the other tallow type soaps. It's good for travel or shredding into a bowl...and it smells like soap. I've given up on the pour and melt soaps because they don't hold up in a scuttle.
Code:
Soap price size $/100g $ with bowl
DRH: $15 / 100g $15 ($29 with bowl)
L'Occitane Cade: $10 / 100g $10 ($44 with bowl)
MWF: $14 / 125g $11 ($35 with bowl)
Penhaligons: $30 / 100g $30 ($65 with bowl)
Tabac: $10 / 125g $ 8 ($15 with bowl)
Irisch Moos: $10 / 100g $10
T&H: $16 / 100g $16 ($42 with bowl)
La Toja: $ 6 / 125g $ 5
Speick: $ 6 / 50g $12
Arko: $ 2 / 75g $ 3
QED: $13.50 / 142g $10
Proraso Green: $ 8.5 / 150g $ 6
Colonel Conk: $ 3.50 / 64g $ 5
Mama Bear: $ 9 / 113g $ 8
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1 (worst) - 10 (best)
-DRH 6. Great scents, contains tallow, not a favorite.
-L'Occitane Cade No experience
-MWF No experience
-Penhaligon's English Fern new formulation (as the old one is hard/expensive to find and would be impossible to replace in time) No experience.
-Tabac/Irisch Moos 8. Great performer, consistent results, great scents. Old favorites, regular rotation.
-T&H luxury shave soap No experience.
-La Toja 4. Decent scent, decent performance.
-Speick 4. Good scent, decent performance, not a favorite.
-Arco 5. Decent scent, good performance, not a favorite.
-QED 7. Great scents (threatening to overpower, at times) and great performance. I prefer triple milled or tallow alternatives, but QED is an exception.
-Proraso Green No experience.
-Conk's No experience.
-Mama Bear's 6. Fantastic scents, almost too many to choose from. Better than good performance, fell out of rotation. Sue is fantastic.
Additional soaps:
-AOS 9. Fantastic scents, fantastic performance, go-to soap.
-Pen's EF Tallow First 9. Fantastic scent, fantastic performance, not in regular rotation, but definitely a favorite. -1 for being out of production.
-Monsavon 8. Great scent, great performance, tallow!
-Pre de Provence 8. Another consistent performer, clean crisp scent, a favorite non-tallow soap.
-GFT Violet 7. Scent can be strong, very floral and somewhat powdery. Great performance.
-DRH 6. Great scents, contains tallow, not a favorite.
-L'Occitane Cade No experience
-MWF No experience
-Penhaligon's English Fern new formulation (as the old one is hard/expensive to find and would be impossible to replace in time) No experience.
-Tabac/Irisch Moos 8. Great performer, consistent results, great scents. Old favorites, regular rotation.
-T&H luxury shave soap No experience.
-La Toja 4. Decent scent, decent performance.
-Speick 4. Good scent, decent performance, not a favorite.
-Arco 5. Decent scent, good performance, not a favorite.
-QED 7. Great scents (threatening to overpower, at times) and great performance. I prefer triple milled or tallow alternatives, but QED is an exception.
-Proraso Green No experience.
-Conk's No experience.
-Mama Bear's 6. Fantastic scents, almost too many to choose from. Better than good performance, fell out of rotation. Sue is fantastic.
Additional soaps:
-AOS 9. Fantastic scents, fantastic performance, go-to soap.
-Pen's EF Tallow First 9. Fantastic scent, fantastic performance, not in regular rotation, but definitely a favorite. -1 for being out of production.
-Monsavon 8. Great scent, great performance, tallow!
-Pre de Provence 8. Another consistent performer, clean crisp scent, a favorite non-tallow soap.
-GFT Violet 7. Scent can be strong, very floral and somewhat powdery. Great performance.
- Thread starter
- #47
So the only absolute consensus is that there is, without a doubt, no one soap to rule them all. However, as a somewhat objective party and scents aside, the breakdown/consensus seems to be something along these lines (there will no doubt be people that disagree, but this is what I gleaned from it). For posterity's sake I have included the full names of all the soaps as well as their accepted abbreviation:
Categories:
Excellent and expensive: Art of Shaving (AoS), Czech & Speake (C&S), Penhaligon's (Pen's) English Fern (EF)/Blenheim Bouquet (BB) (both old formulation with tallow)
Excellent and reasonably priced: Mitchell's Wool Fat (MWF), Tabac, Irisch Moos (Moos)
Excellent and inexpensive: Arko, Speick, Cella, La Toja, Valobra, Palmolive, Proraso Green
Pretty good, but expensive: Truefitt & Hill (T&H), D.R. Harris (DRH), L'Occitane, Pre de Provence (PdP), Institute Karite (IK)
Pretty good and reasonably priced: Crabtree & Evelyn (C&E), Geo F. Trumper's (GFT), Monsavon, Provence Sante
Similar soaps and level of quality (quite good), differing levels of cost (from most to least expensive): QED --> Gentlemen's Best --> St. Charles Shave (SCS) --> Mama Bear's --> Prairie Creations
Satisfactory and inexpensive: Ogalla, Colonel Conk's
For the sake of others seeking comparison information, I would have also liked to include the type of soap (e.g. Proraso Green (soft soap), Tabac (tallow), Mama Bear's (glycerine), Truefitt & Hill (vegetable), etc.) in this list, but I don't know them offhand and I figured that it would be quicker to just open it up to B&B to amend it (if there are glaring errors in where I listed a soap in terms of pricing, then those could be amended as well). Again, I need to mention that this is in no way, shape, or form, a definitive and concrete list--rather its intended purpose is to serve as a source of suggestions, for members new to shaving soaps, for what soaps are out there and at what relative price points (so please don't crucify me for this
). Also, it needs to be mentioned that this list is irrespective of scents and would most likely change if they were taken into consideration.
Overall this thread has been great! Your collective input is priceless and I know that I--and I am sure a few others--have a better idea of what soaps to try over the next few years
.
Categories:
Excellent and expensive: Art of Shaving (AoS), Czech & Speake (C&S), Penhaligon's (Pen's) English Fern (EF)/Blenheim Bouquet (BB) (both old formulation with tallow)
Excellent and reasonably priced: Mitchell's Wool Fat (MWF), Tabac, Irisch Moos (Moos)
Excellent and inexpensive: Arko, Speick, Cella, La Toja, Valobra, Palmolive, Proraso Green
Pretty good, but expensive: Truefitt & Hill (T&H), D.R. Harris (DRH), L'Occitane, Pre de Provence (PdP), Institute Karite (IK)
Pretty good and reasonably priced: Crabtree & Evelyn (C&E), Geo F. Trumper's (GFT), Monsavon, Provence Sante
Similar soaps and level of quality (quite good), differing levels of cost (from most to least expensive): QED --> Gentlemen's Best --> St. Charles Shave (SCS) --> Mama Bear's --> Prairie Creations
Satisfactory and inexpensive: Ogalla, Colonel Conk's
For the sake of others seeking comparison information, I would have also liked to include the type of soap (e.g. Proraso Green (soft soap), Tabac (tallow), Mama Bear's (glycerine), Truefitt & Hill (vegetable), etc.) in this list, but I don't know them offhand and I figured that it would be quicker to just open it up to B&B to amend it (if there are glaring errors in where I listed a soap in terms of pricing, then those could be amended as well). Again, I need to mention that this is in no way, shape, or form, a definitive and concrete list--rather its intended purpose is to serve as a source of suggestions, for members new to shaving soaps, for what soaps are out there and at what relative price points (so please don't crucify me for this
). Also, it needs to be mentioned that this list is irrespective of scents and would most likely change if they were taken into consideration. Overall this thread has been great! Your collective input is priceless and I know that I--and I am sure a few others--have a better idea of what soaps to try over the next few years
.
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Those conclusions didn't make complete sense to me, so I checked for myself.
To be honest, the list made a lot more sense at the more expensive and better end, but less sense toward the cheaper and "pretty good" end. That lead me to think about the kind of bias that shows up in reviews from people that have less experience with different products. This led me to suspect that the same people tend toward less expensive products. This led me to eliminate the ratings of people that scored only a few of the products. As I looked over the data, a couple of other discrepancies were immediately obvious, so I adjusted a little further. Here's what I actually did.
To get the prices and availability I did a search and tried the best I could to get a representative, but low price. I had particular trouble with La Toja. I also had some trouble finding current prices for Sir Irisch Moos stick, as if it's no longer available. A few others were also hard to find.
Here's what the columns mean.
Sorted by score, with rank, cost per 100g, number of responses, average score, and type of product.
Aside from Trumpers, the top of the list is dominated by tallow soaps, followed by the mixed palm/tallow D R Harris, with all of the other non-tallow soaps at the bottom. The confidence of Trumpers rank is lessened by the low number of responses. I have to wonder if the high rating for Trumpers is due to the old tallow formulation, which is still on the shelves at some stores.
Cella stands out as an excellent value for the money, but with a low confidence (low number of responses). Other value products on the list are Tabac and Arko. (But see the notes for Arko.)
Sorted by # of responses, with rank, cost per 100g, number of responses, and average score.
The largest number of responses is for soaps in the $8-16 range ending with Truefit & Hill. The cut off is clear at Arko and AoS, both of which stand out as extremes in price.
Some of the price vs. # of responses is better illustrated in the chart sorted by cost.
Sorted by cost per 100g, with rank, cost per 100g, number of responses, and average score.
What stands out is the high number of responses in the $8-16 price range. It seems natural that there would be fewer responses for higher priced soaps, but there's clearly a drop off at both ends of the price spectrum.
There doesn't seem any obvious relation of price to rank.
The following soaps were mentioned and survived the first cut, but were eliminated for one of the reasons above:
Notes
Not everyone played by the same rules. Some respondents stuck to the original list, while others rated additional products. Once the first respondent did this, others tended to follow this procedure.
The one outlier in the data, defined by a score that's more than 1 away from any other score, is in column b which gives AoS a score of 2, where the other scores for AoS are 4 or 5. Removing this outlier gives AoS an average score of 4.83, giving it the highest average score. I left the data & rank alone due to the low confidence.
Other scores that seem unbalanced (from the expected normal curve) include a single low score for Speick and Harris, and a single high score for Arko. Given the number of responses for these soaps, the relative positions for Speick and Harris based on average score would remain the same if these outliers were removed. Arko would receive an adjusted average score of 3, moving down several positions. I left the data & rank alone due to the low confidence.
The dominance of tallow soaps seems suspicious. Could this be more indicative of the quality of tallow soap users than of the product itself?
Selecting a number for some of the written responses is inaccurate, to put it mildly.
To be honest, the list made a lot more sense at the more expensive and better end, but less sense toward the cheaper and "pretty good" end. That lead me to think about the kind of bias that shows up in reviews from people that have less experience with different products. This led me to suspect that the same people tend toward less expensive products. This led me to eliminate the ratings of people that scored only a few of the products. As I looked over the data, a couple of other discrepancies were immediately obvious, so I adjusted a little further. Here's what I actually did.
- I added all soaps mentioned, including the ones not in the original list.
- I eliminated any responses that rated 4 or fewer of the requested soaps to eliminate bias from people unfamiliar with the products. Half of these respondents had clearly different opinions from the rest of the group, and tended to rate the soaps much higher.
- I eliminated any soaps that had fewer than 3 responses. While none of this is statistically significant, 1 or 2 responses isn't really useful.
- I cross referenced this with the current tallow thread and price list there. This put C&S and Penhaligons back on the list just for the price reference, but without ratings. Both were originally eliminated for too few responses.
To get the prices and availability I did a search and tried the best I could to get a representative, but low price. I had particular trouble with La Toja. I also had some trouble finding current prices for Sir Irisch Moos stick, as if it's no longer available. A few others were also hard to find.
Here's what the columns mean.
- The first column has the letter v to mark soaps that were volunteered and not on the original list. Most of these were eliminated from this list for having too few responses. This list was clearly biased by high scores, for the obvious reason that people might naturally mention other soaps they liked in a thread whose purpose is to rate and find good soaps to try, but won't go out of their way to mention soaps they don't like that haven't even been mentioned.
- Name of the product
- Rank, in the order of average scores with 1 highest. See the notes for Aos and Arko about some questionable data.
- Typical price
- Size of the product
- Price per 100 grams of the product. This allows a more direct comparison of cost.
- Type of soap indicates tallow, stick, soft, melt pour, triple-milled, etc.
- Next comes a list of scores labeled a-q which represents the ratings from posts in this thread. I fit these in a 1-5 range as best as I could, which involved a bit of pretend mind reading, so you can certainly argue with these numbers. They're essentially in order, so you can kind of match it up with the thread if you really have the inclination.
- The number of responses for that soap in the a-q columns.
- The total rating of all responses for that soap in the a-q columns.
- The average score for that soap in the a-q columns.
- Additional notes on the product
Code:
[b]v Soap rank price size $/100g a b c d e f g h I j k l m n o p q #responses points score notes[/b]
Arko 9? $ 2 75g $ 3 tallow stick 5 4 3 3 4 4 3 3 8 29 3.63
v AoS 3? $26 120g $22 3 mill tallow 2 5 5 5 5 4 5 7 31 4.43 ($45 with bowl)
v Cella 4 $11 150g $ 7 tallow soft 4 4 5 5 4 5 22 4.4
Colonel Conk 17 $ 3 64g $ 5 melt & pour 3 1 2 2 3 2 1 7 14 2
Czech & Speake $33 90g $37 3 mill tallow ($90 with bowl)
D R Harris 10 $15 100g $15 3 mill palm/tallow 3 3 5 4 2 4 4 4 3 3 3 5 4 3 5 3 16 58 3.63 ($29 with bowl)
v Geo F Trumper's 1 $17 80g $21 vegetable 5 5 5 4 4 19 4.75 ($30 with bowl)
Irisch Moos 5 $10 100g $10 tallow stick 4 4 5 3 4 5 4 5 5 4 10 43 4.3
L'Occitane Cade 11 $10 100g $10 vegetable 2 3 3 4 4 5 6 21 3.5 ($38 with bowl)
La Toja 13 $ 6 50g $12 ??? stick 3 4 4 2 4 13 3.25 Is this still available? where?
Mama Bear 15 $ 9 113g $ 8 melt & pour 5 2 3 1 4 2 3 4 3 4 2 3 12 36 3
MWF 2 $14 125g $11 tallow + lanolin 5 4 5 5 5 4 5 4 5 4 5 4 12 55 4.58 ($35 with bowl)
Penhaligons $30 100g $30 vegetable ($65 with bowl)
Proraso Green 14 $ 9 150g $ 6 soft 4 4 2 4 2 3 6 19 3.17
QED 12 $14 142g $10 melt & pour 2 3 3 3 3 5 3 4 4 9 30 3.33
Speick 8 $ 6 50g $12 tallow stick 5 4 3 4 4 4 4 5 3 4 5 4 3 2 14 54 3.86
Tabac 7 $10 125g $ 8 3 mill tallow 5 4 3 4 2 3 4 5 3 5 4 5 3 4 4 4 16 62 3.88 ($15 with bowl)
T&H 16 $16 100g $16 palm 3 3 4 2 2 4 1 3 8 22 2.75 ($42 with bowl)
v Valobra 6 $10 50g $20 tallow stick 3 4 5 3 12 4Sorted by score, with rank, cost per 100g, number of responses, average score, and type of product.
Code:
[b]soap rank cost # score type[/b]
G F Trumpers 1 $21 4 4.75 vegetable
MWF 2 $11 12 4.58 tallow
Art of Shaving 3 $22 7 4.43 tallow
Cella 4 $ 7 5 4.4 tallow
Irisch Moos 5 $10 10 4.3 tallow
Valobra 6 $20 3 4 tallow
Tabac 7 $ 8 16 3.88 tallow
Speick 8 $12 14 3.86 tallow
Arko 9 $ 3 8 3.63 tallow
D R Harris 10 $15 16 3.63 palm/tallow
L'Occitane Cade 11 $10 6 3.5 vegetable
QED 12 $10 9 3.33 m&p
La Toja 13 $12 4 3.25 ???
Proraso Green 14 $ 6 6 3.17 vegetable
Mama Bear 15 $ 8 12 3 m&p
Truefit & Hill 16 $16 8 2.75 vegetable
Colonel Conk 17 $ 5 7 2 m&pAside from Trumpers, the top of the list is dominated by tallow soaps, followed by the mixed palm/tallow D R Harris, with all of the other non-tallow soaps at the bottom. The confidence of Trumpers rank is lessened by the low number of responses. I have to wonder if the high rating for Trumpers is due to the old tallow formulation, which is still on the shelves at some stores.
Cella stands out as an excellent value for the money, but with a low confidence (low number of responses). Other value products on the list are Tabac and Arko. (But see the notes for Arko.)
Sorted by # of responses, with rank, cost per 100g, number of responses, and average score.
Code:
[b]soap rank cost # score[/b]
D R Harris 10 $15 16 3.63
Tabac 7 $ 8 16 3.88
Speick 8 $12 14 3.86
MWF 2 $11 12 4.58
Mama Bear 15 $ 8 12 3
Irisch Moos 5 $10 10 4.3
QED 12 $10 9 3.33
Truefit & Hill 16 $16 8 2.75
Arko 9 $ 3 8 3.63
Art of Shaving 3 $22 7 4.43
Colonel Conk 17 $ 5 7 2
Proraso Green 14 $ 6 6 3.17
L'Occitane Cade 11 $10 6 3.5
Cella 4 $ 7 5 4.4
G F Trumpers 1 $21 4 4.75
La Toja 13 $12 4 3.25
Valobra 6 $20 3 4The largest number of responses is for soaps in the $8-16 range ending with Truefit & Hill. The cut off is clear at Arko and AoS, both of which stand out as extremes in price.
Some of the price vs. # of responses is better illustrated in the chart sorted by cost.
Sorted by cost per 100g, with rank, cost per 100g, number of responses, and average score.
Code:
soap rank cost # score
Art of Shaving 3 $22 7 4.43
G F Trumpers 1 $21 4 4.75
Valobra 6 $20 3 4
Truefit & Hill 16 $16 8 2.75
D R Harris 10 $15 16 3.63
Speick 8 $12 14 3.86
La Toja 13 $12 4 3.25
MWF 2 $11 12 4.58
Irisch Moos 5 $10 10 4.3
QED 12 $10 9 3.33
L'Occitane Cade 11 $10 6 3.5
Tabac 7 $ 8 16 3.88
Mama Bear 15 $ 8 12 3
Cella 4 $ 7 5 4.4
Proraso Green 14 $ 6 6 3.17
Colonel Conk 17 $ 5 7 2
Arko 9 $ 3 8 3.63What stands out is the high number of responses in the $8-16 price range. It seems natural that there would be fewer responses for higher priced soaps, but there's clearly a drop off at both ends of the price spectrum.
There doesn't seem any obvious relation of price to rank.
The following soaps were mentioned and survived the first cut, but were eliminated for one of the reasons above:
- Crabtree & Evelyn
- Czech & Speake
- Gentlemen's Best
- Institute Karite
- Monsavon
- Ogalla
- Palmolive
- Prairie Creations
- Pre de Provence
- Provence Sante
- St Charles Shave
- Penhaligons
Notes
Not everyone played by the same rules. Some respondents stuck to the original list, while others rated additional products. Once the first respondent did this, others tended to follow this procedure.
The one outlier in the data, defined by a score that's more than 1 away from any other score, is in column b which gives AoS a score of 2, where the other scores for AoS are 4 or 5. Removing this outlier gives AoS an average score of 4.83, giving it the highest average score. I left the data & rank alone due to the low confidence.
Other scores that seem unbalanced (from the expected normal curve) include a single low score for Speick and Harris, and a single high score for Arko. Given the number of responses for these soaps, the relative positions for Speick and Harris based on average score would remain the same if these outliers were removed. Arko would receive an adjusted average score of 3, moving down several positions. I left the data & rank alone due to the low confidence.
The dominance of tallow soaps seems suspicious. Could this be more indicative of the quality of tallow soap users than of the product itself?
Selecting a number for some of the written responses is inaccurate, to put it mildly.
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Awesome work! I feel all edumacated now. thanks for your efforts. 
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Nicely done Steve....nicely done.
I am still studying this. A real challenge in intrepretation of the various responses too.
This adds a few soaps to my must try list for sure.
Thanks
I am still studying this. A real challenge in intrepretation of the various responses too.
This adds a few soaps to my must try list for sure.
Thanks
- Thread starter
- #51
@SiBurning
Your post is ******* awesome! This is much better than I could have ever hoped. Well done good Sir!
Your post is ******* awesome! This is much better than I could have ever hoped. Well done good Sir!
I love crap like that. Nice job!!
Imagine if B&B was linked to a database listing all shave products. You could add products to your inventory, note what you used in your shave, rate products, etc... And it all would be xml-enabled, stats, etc... You could create any combo of stats you could think of regarding shave stuff. Powerful.
Imagine if B&B was linked to a database listing all shave products. You could add products to your inventory, note what you used in your shave, rate products, etc... And it all would be xml-enabled, stats, etc... You could create any combo of stats you could think of regarding shave stuff. Powerful.
- Thread starter
- #53
These are the only two vendors for La Toja shave sticks that I could find:
http://vintagescent.com/shaving-soaps-c-2/la-toja-shaving-soap-stick-p-11
€5.95 = $8.77 USD
http://www.orceserranohams.com/pages-shop/bathroom.htm
€3.75 = $5.53
I don't know what the total cost would be when you factor in shipping though.
http://vintagescent.com/shaving-soaps-c-2/la-toja-shaving-soap-stick-p-11
€5.95 = $8.77 USD
http://www.orceserranohams.com/pages-shop/bathroom.htm
€3.75 = $5.53
I don't know what the total cost would be when you factor in shipping though.
We ought to ask a mod to delete the quote in The National Razors post as SiBurning has edited his data table....moveing MWF way up the list.
Now I am even more glad MWF is my next soap.
It is even better to see Tabac taking its rightful place as a mid range soap rather than its usual overhyped status.
Now I am even more glad MWF is my next soap.
It is even better to see Tabac taking its rightful place as a mid range soap rather than its usual overhyped status.
Thanks....
The simple equation is this: y=soap you have x=soap you don't own. x-y=x
x is all that matters. x must be found even if y is superior
x is all that matters. x must be found even if y is superior
- Thread starter
- #58
Great work Steve, awesome.
- Thread starter
- #60
Damn. So does this mean that a "'Mass' Shaving Soap Comparison 2.0" featuring the following soap needs to be put into effect?:
-Crabtree & Evelyn
-Czech & Speake
-Gentlemen's Best
-Institute Karite
-Monsavon
-Ogalla
-Palmolive
-Prairie Creations
-Pre de Provence
-Provence Sante
-St Charles Shave
-Penhaligons
The possibilities are endless
-Crabtree & Evelyn
-Czech & Speake
-Gentlemen's Best
-Institute Karite
-Monsavon
-Ogalla
-Palmolive
-Prairie Creations
-Pre de Provence
-Provence Sante
-St Charles Shave
-Penhaligons
The possibilities are endless
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