Vintage Personna - any idea how old?

Anyone know how old these blades might be? My guess is late 60's to early 70's, is this about right?

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@Bizzyberry - mate, I am intrigued by this. I'm not sure I can help you date them but last year I was gifted a full unopened retail pack of 100 blades - n.o.s - marked Star Personna - platinum coated. Made in Great Britain. They were given to me by my neighbour - Mr Ahmed. When he sold up his corner shop - and retired - the blades were kept by him until he passed them to me. The blade wrapping is slightly different to yours - the outer wrapper is opaque white paper - with different branding, the inner wrapping is translucent - as yours have - but has no branding on it. Most importantly - the outer wrapper has the words - Made under licence (correct - sic) of Philip Morris Inc - Owners of the Registered Trademark Personna UK. From what little I have been able to find out online Philip Morris - yes, the tobacco company - sold on the Personna brand in 1961. Hope this helps - I'm very interested in the mention of Glasgow though - on the wrappers - the city where I live. I.
 
Advert for British made Personna blades, 1948.
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I've acquired quite a few of these blades over the last year.

Firstly there is a card of 60 in 3 packs which I bought from Greece via eBay. The seller said they dated from 1972, but until recently, I've had no way of proving or disproving:

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Note that except for the inner wrapper, which is plain transparent, markings on both blade and outer wrapper match those in the first post in this thread.

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I recently acquired a plain 'barber' box of the same blades. The blades themselves are identical to those above, however the box is dated 25 Feb 1975. Late 1960's through to mid 1970's now seems like a reasoned estimate of age.

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Even these carry the reference to being made under licence to Philip Morris Inc. What I suspect happened is that Philip Morris sold the manufacturing and distribution facilities, but retained the trademark to either avoid a write-off of goodwill on disposal or to potentially utilise the brand for other purposes in the future. A current example is Cadbury cakes and biscuits. Disposed of long ago, but the brand has been retained by Cadbury and licensed.


Looking at some of the chatter about these blades on the US forums, they are revered far more over there than here:

https://www.badgerandblade.com/forum/threads/personna-super-stainless-blades.478598/
http://shavenook.com/showthread.php?tid=25654
 
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...Looking at some of the chatter about these blades on the US forums, they are revered far more over there than here:

https://www.badgerandblade.com/forum/threads/personna-super-stainless-blades.478598/
http://shavenook.com/showthread.php?tid=25654

Not by this Yank!! I think Personna was still fiddling with their blade formulas and Gillette & Schick were eating their lunch. I have even used the lauded Great Britain version from that era and they were a major fail on my mug as were the U.S. Glydex versions. I am one of those who don't worship at the temple of the legendary Personna 74 as well. The Gillette Super Stainless ("Spoiler"), Platinum Plus and the Schick Krona-Chrome (renamed Super Chromium after takeover) & Plus Platinum were IMO flat out better blades. Of course, that's merely my opinion with which one dollar you can get a cheap cup of coffee to boot. ;)
 
Not by this Yank!! I think Personna was still fiddling with their blade formulas and Gillette & Schick were eating their lunch. I have even used the lauded Great Britain version from that era and they were a major fail on my mug as were the U.S. Glydex versions. I am one of those who don't worship at the temple of the legendary Personna 74 as well. The Gillette Super Stainless ("Spoiler"), Platinum Plus and the Schick Krona-Chrome (renamed Super Chromium after takeover) & Plus Platinum were IMO flat out better blades. Of course, that's merely my opinion with which one dollar you can get a cheap cup of coffee to boot. ;)


As always YMMV. I bought some NOS Schick Krona-Chrome and my thoughts mirror yours about the Personna from the same era. I can only concur about Gillettes though.

For me the Personna work best in a medium aggressive and above razor

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Not by this Yank!! I think Personna was still fiddling with their blade formulas and Gillette & Schick were eating their lunch. I am one of those who don't worship at the temple of the legendary Personna 74 as well. The Gillette Super Stainless ("Spoiler"), Platinum Plus and the Schick Krona-Chrome (renamed Super Chromium after takeover) & Plus Platinum were IMO flat out better blades. Of course, that's merely my opinion ;)

Oh, a Yanker eh?

Certainly everyone's entitled to their opinion about blades and I just wanted to mention that yours is wrong. No big deal...no offense meant of course, just saying.

Yep, when it comes to vintage DE blades I can't recall coming across a sharper and longer lasting blade than the 74. Pretty darn forgiving and smooth too, for what it is. Gotta be a reason people pay crazy money for em all the time. There, now you know better about how much you should actually love them and glad to help out.

Back to those SS Personnas in the thread, I have probably tried both the Super and regular SS versions but can't recall the shaves. Worthless comment, I know. I do remember trying both Personna injector blade versions and the Supers made a very favorable impression.

All done,

Martin
 
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