Help dating a Gillette Criterion(pics)

[IronHammer]

Unfortunately, dating the blade won't help in this case. That Blue Blade is from 1932 or later (although that one appears to be a very early one by looking at the hue of blue of the wrapper) and wouldn't have come with that set. If you are interested, you can determine the exact date of the blade by looking on the blade itself and finding a letter on one side and a number on the other, indicating what year it came from. See this wiki page for date codes. It probably would have come with Kro-Man blades, one of the rarest and hardest to find Gillette blades because they were badly flawed and were only released for a few months.

[mblakele]

We tend to place all the serial-numbered Deluxe razors in 1930. Not sure if it is 100% accurate, but here is what we have at http://wiki.badgerandblade.com/US_Gi...ng_Information

1930: In this year only De Luxe models were numbered, starting with 1-D, and often the final D was omitted.

By mid-1932 Gillette had been granted all three of the patents associated with the NEW and listed at http://wiki.badgerandblade.com/Categ...tte_NEW_Razors. So from this point razors could have appeared with those patent numbers on the guard plate. However the NEW Deluxe models with those patents are usually dated to 1935. Possibly Gillette made enough 1930 sets to last several years, especially given the economic conditions?

[the beav]

Nice razor; you can stabilize the crack with some glue if you'd like. Look around the search if you're interested.

[elmerwood]

Nice score. I haven't found one yet that doesn't have a small crack. Regardless real minty.

[BBrad]

We tend to place all the serial-numbered Deluxe razors in 1930. Not sure if it is 100% accurate, but here is what we have at http://wiki.badgerandblade.com/US_Gi...ng_Information



By mid-1932 Gillette had been granted all three of the patents associated with the NEW and listed at http://wiki.badgerandblade.com/Categ...tte_NEW_Razors. So from this point razors could have appeared with those patent numbers on the guard plate. However the NEW Deluxe models with those patents are usually dated to 1935. Possibly Gillette made enough 1930 sets to last several years, especially given the economic conditions?

Henry Gaisman, the new owner of Gillette after the takeover by Auto-Strop, did not favor the production of Deluxe models, especially in light of the economic problems that both the country and Gillette were facing at that time. He also eliminated serial numbering of Deluxe razors. The patent numbers (and reissue numbers) appearing on all Gillette razors circa 1932 were the result of the merger with Auto-Strop and the reassignment of Probak patents to the Gillette corporation.

[dillon_b12]

Unfortunately, dating the blade won't help in this case. That Blue Blade is from 1932 or later (although that one appears to be a very early one by looking at the hue of blue of the wrapper) and wouldn't have come with that set. If you are interested, you can determine the exact date of the blade by looking on the blade itself and finding a letter on one side and a number on the other, indicating what year it came from. See this wiki page for date codes. It probably would have come with Kro-Man blades, one of the rarest and hardest to find Gillette blades because they were badly flawed and were only released for a few months.

Thanks for all the great info. I had a found an older post that showed the original advertising with the Kro-Man blades so I figured they were not the originals. I'll probably check the date code later today.

[BowTieGuy]

Beautiful set!

[bakerbarber]

That's an awesome score!

[MacDaddy]

We tend to place all the serial-numbered Deluxe razors in 1930.

I believe that there was some amount of production at the end of 1929, too. So we're talking about a few months of '29, all of '30, and (at most) a month of '31 for serial numbered razor production.

However the NEW Deluxe models with those patents are usually dated to 1935.

This is something that I've seen people say but haven't really seen much if anything in the way of supporting documentation for. There have been some sets turn up with National Recovery Administration stickers on them, implying that they were at least sold, if not made, during the time that the NRA was active (1933-1935). And we know that there were ads for them as late as '34-'35. What I still haven't seen is any reason to think that they weren't making them, even at a reduced rate, in the years before then.

Henry Gaisman, the new owner of Gillette after the takeover by Auto-Strop, did not favor the production of Deluxe models, especially in light of the economic problems that both the country and Gillette were facing at that time. He also eliminated serial numbering of Deluxe razors.

The serial numbering does coincide with his taking over the company. Krumholz says that his source material indicates that it was stopped no later than Feb 1, 1931. However, I don't know that I would say that he was opposed to the production of the DeLuxes. Not saying that he wasn't either -- just that I wouldn't attribute their scarcity to his opposition when the economic conditions of the day more than explain it, especially when they do seem to have stuck around in the advertising until they were superseded by the TTOs.

Thanks for all the great info. I had a found an older post that showed the original advertising with the Kro-Man blades so I figured they were not the originals. I'll probably check the date code later today.

The Kro-Man blades were something of a public embarrassment to the point where they actually took out large mea culpa ads like this one, which of course gave them the opportunity to promote their new better and cheaper Blue Super-Blade. It's conceivable that if the set you have there hadn't been sold by the time Gillette recalled the Kro-Man blades the store owner may have been able to exchange the blades with Gillette. So they might still be "sort of" original.

[dillon_b12]

Thanks a lot for all the help guys! Lots of interesting info here.