I’m officially done yoinking vintage Injectors on eBay.

I do this every time I find something old that kicks ass — I go just a little nuts, rounding up backups for the object of my desire, then backups for the backups, then different colored backups, then backups for the different colored backups, until I’ve got several dozen of said object when I really only need one.

I’ve got a drawer full of vintage Gillette adjustable DE razors I hoarded once I tried this razor and fell in love with it. I still do — not only is a great shaver, but it’s probably the single coolest razor of them all. So naturally I had to score two or three dozen of them — hey, you never know, and they haven’t made these for decades. Maybe I’ll put the kids through Harvard when I sell these at Sotheby’s another decade from now. I saw that Metallica documentary where Lars sold off his entire art collection for 20mil, and it was all crap. I figure three dozen clean Gillette adjustables ought to bring in a nice, sweet haul.

And now I’ve gone and done it with Injectors. I won my first one on eBay a few weeks ago, and it gave me such an amazing shave, even with stock Schick blades, that I started buying up every decent Injector I could find, on eBay, in antique stores, anywhere.

Before I knew it, I was awash in Schicks, Eversharps, and a bunch of really zany unusable razors that came in some lots of razors I had to bid on to get at the Injectors. Any masochists out there want an old Gem razor that takes box-cutter blades? How ’bout a rusty Flicker that still has, I kid you not, vintage pubes crusted to the blade? Maybe it was Marilyn Monroe’s, or Bea Arthur’s? Any “Maude” fans out there? Make me an offer!

I cleaned up these old Injectors the best I could — first I gave ‘em a serious scrubbing with a Radius toothbrush and liberal amounts of Bartender’s Friend (no, not a sawed-off under the bar, but rather, the abrasive cleanser), and then I boiled the bejesus out of ‘em for half an hour or so till they were cleaner than the day they shaved their first puss.

I’m telling you, these old Eversharps with the bakelite handles and gold-plated brass heads are tough little buggers! You can boil the hell out of them and they come out looking perfect — the later 70s and 80s Injectors with the plastic handles can’t go near boiling water or they melt (I learned this the hard way, sorta melting the handle on one of these:

— it still shaves perfectly fine, but it looks a little Dali-esque now — say, didn’t Dali date Bea Arthur at one point? Anyone want a matched set? They’re priced to move!)

One thing I’ve noticed about these bakelite Eversharps is that even though they all look exactly alike, some shave a lot better than others. Eyeballing the safety bar and the razor gap, they all look nuts on, yet some of the bakelites don’t seem to get all the whiskers while others shave like a dream no matter what blade you feed them. It’s not that some of these dogs won’t hunt — the worst Eversharp I’ve got can still give a decent shave, but the best ones in my stable are truly God’s razors, capable of straight razor quality shaves with embarrassingly little effort.

Today I picked the best Eversharp of the litter — a saucy, orange-handled number I named “Brenda Starr”, and fed it a new Feather Pro Super blade I’d clipped down to size. I lathered up with Taylor’s rose cream and a Vulfix #2235 badger brush, and proceeded to get the very closest and most amazing shave I’ve given myself to date. Honestly, it was stupefying. I even back off a lot on the downward pressure, because these scary-sharp Feather blades are at their most terrifying when brand spanking new, but damned if I didn’t get the best shave I’ve ever give myself.

It felt just like that mythical straight razor shave I got at Truefitt & Hill’s (Dovo Shavette with a Personna blade, Pacific Shaving Oil, T&H hot lather from a Campbell Lather-King, lotsa hot towels and painstaking skin stretching by the master barber who wielded the blade, and T&H aftershave balm to finish), except my neck wasn’t red with irritation afterward.

I kept stroking my face all day, faceturbating right in front of my wife, kids, and my mother-in-law, because I couldn’t quite believe how close my shave was. I’m rubbing my face right now, ten hours later, and it still feels freshly shaven (Shaved? Shuven?). Amazing.

But that’s it. No more eBay Injectors. After the auctions I’m already watching are done, I mean. Starting……….now. Oh, there’s an adjustable and I don’t have one of those yet. Okay, starting……now!

Wait! Some guy misspelled schick, injector, razor, and the words “no” and “reserve”. Art, is that you? Okay, last one and then that’s it.

I am officially out of the Injector bidding game, starting………