They're a funny thing those Gold Dollar. Reading around you might think they're not good, or just cheap and cheerful, but John June of JJ Shaves uses them as a start point for his JJ Shorty series, which are reshaped GD with custom scales. They must be decent steel for him to want to put the time into modifying them and to put his name on them. I haven't tried either a GD or a Shorty, and if I hadn't got lazy and started using DE so much, I would have bought a Shorty by now. Perhaps I'll fix that soon.