Can anyone help identify this DE Razor?

These style of razors, Club, Hospital, Cooper, etc all appear during WWII from about 43 onward.

What documentation do you have to date the Hospital and Clubs?

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The handle itself. First off Hospital and Club (the American one) are the same company different brands, Hospital didn't get into selling razors or blades until 1945. If they were selling either you'd see mention of it in the ad space over at newspapers.com. Hospital's main product from 1905ish until 1945 was toilet paper. Now on to that handle the earliest instances of it are reliably dated to the Cooper Kant Rust razors which came onto the market in 1943 when finally dropped the old Sweedo style handles for good outside of straggler excess inventory that was sold along side the Kant Rust razors until the end of WWII. The only way to date them any earlier is show Hospital or Club had any other razors with different style handles. The razor heads were most likely made by Star for Hospital also. ASR under the Star brand doesn't get into DE razors or blades until after WWII started, the bakelite ones were done for military contracts primarily but also sold at retail they also started making DE blades in 1942. That puts that razor head design no earlier than that. The later Star razors with the brass handles that have the same style of razor head show up starting in either 1946 or 47. I've also seen a few examples of Star branded razors with that same style cast head and in a nickel or silver style of plate matching the handle so that would put the Star razor head like the one you see on the Hospital razors between 43 - 45 or 46.

That's a reasonable assessment. I don't know on what basis others claimed prewar production for the Hospital razors. Never did make much sense to me.

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What documentation do you have to date the Hospital and Clubs?

Sent from my LG-US998 using Tapatalk

The handle itself. First off Hospital and Club (the American one) are the same company different brands, Hospital didn't get into selling razors or blades until 1945. If they were selling either you'd see mention of it in the ad space over at newspapers.com. Hospital's main product from 1905ish until 1945 was toilet paper. Now on to that handle the earliest instances of it are reliably dated to the Cooper Kant Rust razors which came onto the market in 1943 when finally dropped the old Sweedo style handles for good outside of straggler excess inventory that was sold along side the Kant Rust razors until the end of WWII. The only way to date them any earlier is show Hospital or Club had any other razors with different style handles. The razor heads were most likely made by Star for Hospital also. ASR under the Star brand doesn't get into DE razors or blades until after WWII started, the bakelite ones were done for military contracts primarily but also sold at retail they also started making DE blades in 1942. That puts that razor head design no earlier than that. The later Star razors with the brass handles that have the same style of razor head show up starting in either 1946 or 47. I've also seen a few examples of Star branded razors with that same style cast head and in a nickel or silver style of plate matching the handle so that would put the Star razor head like the one you see on the Hospital razors between 43 - 45 or 46.

That's a reasonable assessment. I don't know on what basis others claimed prewar production for the Hospital razors. Never did make much sense to me.

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My take based upon the research is the parent companies of brands like Hospital and Berkley which was selling wind proof lighters also decided to get into the razor blade business and in turn razors to go along with those blades when they saw an opening to grab market share from Gillette who had most their resources redirected to military contracts and wouldn't have been able to respond to their incursions.