Hazelcorn's Guide to : Kampfe Bros. Wedge Blade Satr Safety Razors & Kampfe Safety Razors (all editions)

[Walid]

Author: Howard Hazelcorn
Subject: Kampfe Razors
Pages: 59 Pages
Edition: This is the third Edition of the Book. Limited
Date: Unknown -Probably early 2000
Colors: Yes
Price at printing: Unkown


About the Author:
Hazelcorn was a famous collector and mostly he collected phonographs. Unfortunately he's no longer with us, he passed away in 2020.
His estate included his phonograph collection but no razors apparently. It is possible that he sold his collection a few years before.


About the book:

There is no date on the book and Hazelcorn made only 30 copies of this one (mine is number 12).
The third edition includes razors that were unearthed later.
What's special about the book is the rarity scale He ranked Kmpfe razors from 1 to 6. 1 for most Common and 6 being the rarest. He also gives an estimation of the price they should be sold at. What contributes to the increase or decrease in price is the availability of the box, the type of box, Tin of wooden box and the items included like blades , stroppers, strops, etc...

The book contains pictures of all the Razor heads known and a catalogue of Kampfe razors from 1906.
Some of the pictures was provided to him by another collector: Renzo Jardella and credit was given in his first page.
Hazelcorn wrote 22 pages with somewhat weird Font, Most of the pages were made using a template. The rest of the pages are photos of razors and a printed catalogue.

With only 30 produced this book is considered very rare.

 

[sɐǝɹpu∀]

Very rare indeed.
My observations and remarks:

• The first edition was published in 1991 (the second edition says so)
• I have not been able to pin down the date of the 2nd edition. Somewhere halfway between 1991 and...
• The 3rd edition is from 2007 - source: Waits compendium bibliography.
• The second edition sold for $19.95 (it says so on the cover)
• The font!!! The man must have been a child of the psychedelic 1960s...
• The rarity scale is interesting. It has changed from the 2nd to the 3rd edition, but only at the beginning of the book.
• The entries for individual razors in the 3rd edition still show the rarity estimates of the 2nd edition. A sure sign of copy and paste. Or just re-use.
• His valuations are 15 years old by now. There are more collectors now and there was a tiny bit of inflation since then. Take his valuations as a lower bound on a bad day.
• For the 3rd edition, he used the 2nd one and placed "amendments" (in a slightly different font weight, that's how you can tell) on top of the original page and photocopied again...
• The third edition has the HR-P1 - THE ULTIMATE UNICORN - Why is it only valued at $1200-$1600 when the HR-S1/S2 are valued at $1200-$1800 ?? Surely... Even I have been able to look at both S models.
• Why on earth did he only publish 30 copies? You need to know someone who knows someone just to have a look at them... Ridiculous.
• Does anyone have a first edition I could "have a look" at? The model numbers were all different in the 1st edition and I'd love to see rarity/valuation over time...
• Most of the information in the 2nd and 3rd editions is available on my website

 

[Walid]

I didn't know there was a price on the second edition. I assumed he was lazy and didn't put any. There was no price on the Third edition. He probably didn't sell it then.
He might have given it to people who purchased his second edition. Maybe they complained about the low quality of the materials and the thinness of the content.

 

[sɐǝɹpu∀]

I didn't know there was a price on the second edition. I assumed he was lazy and didn't put any. There was no price on the Third edition. He probably didn't sell it then.
He might have given it to people who purchased his second edition. Maybe they complained about the low quality of the materials and the thinness of the content.

Thinness of content? We are using it until this day as the best source about Kampfe razors (although hardly anyone has seen a copy - I have seen all three editions, but that's another story) - the third edition has a lot more in it, like the Kampfe catalogues...

 

[Walid]

It is a book for collectors. Usually collectors have a fair amount of knowledge, So relative to the audience, in my opinion it's thin. I personally have a Gem, a Kampfe catalogue and 20+ Kampfe razors in their boxes and tins, add to that the strops, the brushes, soaps, etc..
When a guy like me reads this book, I get a little extra information. But I will keep the book as a reference. For someone who doesn't know much about Kampfe (Say a Gillette collector) Then it's not that thin.
But again, you have see it relative to the time and the targeted audience. At that time the reach of such books was not huge due to technological, financial and logistical constraints. Only a sophisticated Audience will see it and seek it.
At that time helping a fellow collector was always good, because believe it or not, there was almost no financial transactions between collectors. They would just trade razors between themselves. When eBay started the game changed. Collectors acquired visibility and the collecting game became more efficient.

 

[Walid]

I just want to be fair with Hazelcorn, He was the first to make a book about razor collections. He did have some of the Razors, I just knew today From Renzo Jardella that his 2 HR-1P were from Hazelcorn's collection. He probably started a trend of writing books about vintage razors. After him, books started to get richer in details and better in printing quality and presentation. But all built on top of his work. All used his naming convention and gave him credit for that.

 

[efsk]

Back then, the way to do stuff was xeroxing. He managed to do so quite well, and tried to show the differences in the razors as that's how he classified them. I think he succeeded quite well in that aspect. So yeah, kudos to mr Hazelcorn.
I'm very happy with my 2nd edition, no idea how many of those there are. It's a bit thinner than yours: only 40 pages, including front and rear cover.

 

[Walid]

Back then, the way to do stuff was xeroxing. He managed to do so quite well, and tried to show the differences in the razors as that's how he classified them. I think he succeeded quite well in that aspect. So yeah, kudos to mr Hazelcorn.
I'm very happy with my 2nd edition, no idea how many of those there are. It's a bit thinner than yours: only 40 pages, including front and rear cover.

The second edition is rare too. All of the editions are rare. They're out of print and will never be issued again. So hold on to yours. I might contact his son to see if we can make his work available again but in a different format with better font and preferably in a digital format.