You’re listening to Wet Shaving Talk powered by Sharpologist.com where we’re dedicated to preserving the art and skill of classic shaving. I’m your host Joe Borrelli and today is October 16th, 2026.
Today On The Show:
Gillette Psycho/Prison Razors
HHN 2026 Everything Smells like Hallows
Straight Razors: Escher Stones Increase in Value.
Fall Seasonal Special 10/28/26
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Gillette Psycho/Prison Razor
The Gillette “Psycho” Tech (officially the Gillette Security Razor) is a highly collectible vintage safety razor designed for prisons and psychiatric hospitals between the 1950s and 1980s.
Here is a brief summary of how it works and why it is famous:
- The Locking Mechanism: To prevent inmates or patients from weaponizing or swallowing the blade, the razor locks the blade completely inside the head. It cannot be unscrewed by hand.
- The Master Key: Only institutional staff held the proprietary brass hex key required to open the hollow handle and swap out blades. Gillette shipped these in a 10-to-1 ratio (10 razors for every 1 key).
- Rarity & Value: Because keys were strictly guarded and kept by staff, original keys are incredibly rare today. Many collectors now use modern reproduction keys to open them.
- The Shave: Underneath the lock, it features the exact same head as a standard Gillette Tech, providing a mild, smooth, and beginner-friendly shave.
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Straight Razors: Escher Hones Increase in Value
Current Market Landscape
The current secondary market reflects how steep the appreciation has been for these stones:
- Pristine & Rare Stones: Highly sought-after variations—like a 7-inch Yellow-Green Escher & Son stone or a 10×2-inch original label stone—command premium prices ranging from $1,050 to $1,495. Increase of over 400% in 5 years.
- Standard Label Stones: Standard-sized vintage stones (such as 8-inch Dark Blue or Water Stone varieties) with intact labels generally trade between $500 and $995.
- The “Barber’s Delight” Premium: The ultra-rare “Barber’s Delight” labeled stones are historically known to fetch an additional $500+ premium, sometimes stretching past $1,300 depending on the pristine nature of the packaging. [1]
- Budget Alternatives: Unlabeled Thuringian stones (which are often structurally identical to Eschers but lack the branded verification) or smaller sizes can still be found closer to $100 to $190.
What Drives Their High Value?
- Finite Natural Supply: Escher stones are historical German Thuringian slates mined primarily in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Because the original veins are exhausted, the world supply is entirely fixed.
- The Label Is Everything: Unlabeled Thuringian stones don’t fetch near the same value. The original paper labels provide a definitive “provenance” that collectors are willing to pay triple-digit premiums for.
- The Gold Standard Finisher: Beyond collectibility, straight razor enthusiasts view Escher stones as the absolute benchmark for achieving a smooth, comfortable shave edge (equivalent to a 12,000 to 15,000 grit application). On forums like Badger & Blade, users generally agree that few stones match the perfect balance of speed and edge quality that an authentic Escher provides.
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HHN 2026: Everything Smells Like Hallows
I recently took my annual trip to Halloween Horror Nights and noticed one thing. Everything smells like B&M Hallows. I’ll tell you all about it.
- Key Notes: Oakmoss, vetiver, black pepper, cocoa absolute, labdanum, and cedar.
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Fall Seasonal Special
The 11th Annual Fall Seasonal Special is coming!
This show is solely dedicated to the Fall releases by all vendors and artisans alike. It’s the top show for the year and the most fun in my opinion.
This year I will bring back the “Archive” Portion of the Show for all notable items in the past that are no longer produced.
Links to previous shows:
2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016
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Our show is powered by Sharpologist.com, “What Your Father Didn’t Teach You about Shaving”
Special Thanks to:
Mark aka Mantic 59
Most of All……….YOU!!!!
Don’t forget to check out my blog site www.shavestraightandsafe.com for the tips and interesting wet shaving stories!
Please feel free to contact me at joe.wetshavingnews@gmail.com
Subscribe to my You Tube Chanel for videos regarding some interesting wet shaving content.
Don’t forget to check out my book “The Modern Guide to Straight Razor Shaving” available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and at Pasteur’s Pharmacy in NYC.
If you’re a vendor and would like to be featured on the show please contact me!!
Transcript (Generated using Transcript LOL)
You’re listening to Wet Shaving Talk, powered by Sharpologist.com, where we’re dedicated to preserving the art and skill of classic shaving. I’m your host, Joe Berrelli, and today is October 16th, 2026. Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast, and we’re in full-fledged fall season. That’s right, this is the last show before the fall seasonal special, so I apologize, it’s a little shorter than usual, just because I’ve been working on that one, so that’s got a lot of content in it, and kind of, what I do is I get a certain amount
of time that I can use, so I like to kind of cut this one maybe a little bit shorter than usual, because the seasonal special tends to end up being a lot longer than a regular show, so. Fall is in full season as again, full-fledged fall, whatever you want to call it, it’s here. Really enjoying the fall season with my wet shaving stuff. I have everything out, all my fall stuff that I usually use year after year.
Looking for some more purchases as well. This is when I usually make most of my purchases on software because of, I just like the fall season. I think the scents are really interesting and I also, I’m a big fan of Halloween and fall in general. using all that stuff and really enjoying and having a good time.
So today on the show we’re going to talk a little bit about one razor that I didn’t talk too much about during the dedication to Gillette month because I wanted to save it for this show. The Gillette Psycho slash Prison Razors. Yes, it’s Halloween, time for some spooky stuff. If you have these razors, if you know about them, they’re really cool to talk about and they’re actually very good to shave with and they have a little bit of an added function that you don’t see with other safety razors.
We’ll talk about that and a little bit of the history on those and a little bit about all, I guess you could say a little bit of a summary of the Gillette cycle, Gillette prison or a couple of them called the Gillette, I guess, hospital razors. We’ll talk about those and how cool they are to collect and how they’re coming. They’re actually a little bit more scarce now than you would think. So HHN 2026, everything smells like hallows.
I’ll tell you what that really means when we get to that part of the show. Very interesting and I thought it was a great take on my part when I was there at an event recently. So I’ll tell you a little bit about that. I don’t want to spoil it yet.
and straight razors. So etcher stones are increasing in value. If you guys are straight razor fan, I’m going to tell you a little bit about these, these actual rare stones that are great for honing and becoming more and more scarce out there. And, and which is making their value increase, uh, actually a lot in the last six months to a year and the last five years, an astronomical amount.
And of course, we’re going to talk about a little bit about a pregame of the fall seasonal special, which will be coming out on the last week of October, a couple weeks from now. And it will be right before Halloween to give you something really cool to listen to and to enjoy and give you a little bit of time to purchase some stuff as well. So without further ado, guys, let’s get on with the show. All right, so the Gillette Psychotech, I guess you can call it, or the Gillette Prison Tech, whatever way you want to say it.
But it’s really called the Gillette Security Razor. I believe that’s the way Gillette called it. That’s what their name and number, whatever it was for that razor, was out there. It really was designed for prisons, psychiatric hospitals, and areas where people were not allowed to take the blade out of a razor to hurt themselves or hurt someone else, and was made for about 30 years, from about in the 1950s to the 1980s.
So a brief summary on how these things work is they have a locking mechanism that requires a specialized key to open it up so you can actually take the top cap off the razor. So usually they’re two-piece razors, right? You got the top cap and you got that. Sometimes I think they’re three-piece, but for the most part, all the ones that I’ve seen are just with the top cap, right?
So these razors come off and it makes it so you can take the actual locking mechanism will open it so you can take the blade out and then lock it and then you can’t take the blade out now. Unless it’s unscrewed with that special key. Usually with these kits there was about seven or eight to a box and one master key to that to the the actual key to open it. It would take about or it was maybe seven or 10 razors per box.
And it has a brax, like a hex key that goes in and open it. Now the person that would have it would be like one doctor or one person that would own the actual, I guess you could say the key and would open up the razor. and it would allow the top cap to come off. And some of them were three-piece, but most of them I think I saw were all just two-piece razors, where just the top cap went out.
And if there’s anybody else that knows anything, mine, I have two techs, two psycho techs myself, and they’re two-piece razors. And they’re from, I believe, the 1970s, 60s. They’re techs, so they’re more mid-range. So you open it up, you can load the blade, close it, and then you can’t take the blade out.
Now, as we all know, you could still cut somebody or cut something with a safety razor blade, but you can’t remove the blade, so I guess it limits the ability of the actual damage that that blade can do. So the shave, when you talk about the actual rarity about this razor and the shave on these razors, they’re very mild, smooth. They’re basically a Gillette tech. I mean, as you guys know, I’m a big fan of the fat handled tech.
I think they’re a little bit more aggressive than a regular tech, I would say maybe, but I don’t really notice that much of a difference. And I think more of the long lines are more collectible because they are harder to find. Now, because of these, a lot of the keys are very, a lot of people can find the psycho razors or the prison security razor, you want to call it, but they have a hard time finding the key because there was a 10 to 1 ratio, 7 to 1 ratio, whatever it was, and some people lose the keys.
What’s good is that Razer Emporium, they make a replica of it that fits right in and also you can use a very thin hex screw socket or a nut driver that can go in there to open it up. I mean, you can use a regular tool to do it, but also you can find a replica key and buy it with the chain and everything. I believe that Razer Emporium actually sources the original, I guess you could call it the The chain, the ballpoint chain that comes off of it, they actually sourced those parts from the original place that they got the steel from those. So I thought it was really cool when I saw that.
At least that’s how it was, I think, a few years ago. So Gillette Security Razor, the Gillette Psycho, the Gillette Tech, the Gillette Security, whatever, Gillette Prison, whatever you want to call it. Razor that is very collectible fun to shave with and great and just make sure you really sanitize it now I’m just kidding after about 50 or 60 years. I’m pretty sure that anything that’s on them is good But also the unique story and there’s razors, you know, hey, where did they come from?
Was it who used it? I think they’re great for Halloween. I like to use mine the week of Halloween all the time. I like to post pictures of it on the online forums and just have some fun with them.
I personally have two texts, and I have an original key, but the chain on it’s broken, so I still have an original key. I got it several years ago, and it’s been in my collection since. Now, a lot of people ask, what’s the value in these? So I remember I bought the pair and the key for about $80.
This was about eight years ago, seven years ago, it was a while ago. I could tell you now that I’ve seen them going for like box sets going for several hundred to, you know, or an old razor that’s kind of beat up without the key, maybe, you know, 30, 40, $50. I mean, they’re not too much, they’re not out, they’re not that, Rare, I mean, they are rare. They were never sent, I guess you could say they were never sold publicly, but there were a lot of them out there and still a lot of box sets available if you were looking for that.
But yeah, I would say to get one with the key, you’re probably looking at it in the $100 range, maybe $150, $200 with the original key. If not, just get the replica key. It does the same thing. Actually, it looks very similar and it does work.
So I think that would be the way to go on that. But yeah, the Gillette Security Razor, we salute you. Sorry for missing you on Gillette Month, but we wanted to make it for a separate like entity for kind of to warm up for Halloween. Now I’m going to skip around, I’m going to talk about the straight razor, the etch-it razors first before we get into the HHN segment of the show.
And I am a straight razor user as you guys know and a lot of you as well use straight razors and there’s always a need to learn how to hone your razor and honing your razor is actually a big skill and I guess it coincides with the actual hobby itself. Being a straight razor enthusiast, all of us have the idea of wanting to hone, if not maintain our razors because it’s part of the fun, right? It’s probably about 50% of the actual hobby of a straight razor is honing and stropping and all that, right?
Maintaining your blade. What better way to do it than with the best razor hone out there now etcher hones are It’s a brand of of razor of like a honing company that made hones for a very long time from the late 1700s till about the 1950s 60s these hones are known to be the best ones that are out there And I could tell you right now personally. I do have one.
I purchased one several years ago After being on my wishlist for a long time, I usually have my wet shaving wishlist and there’s a lot of items on there. You guys know I wanted a bottom dial. I eventually got one. I wanted a toggle.
I eventually got one. BBS1, I got one. All these other things that I’ve purchased were on my wishlist. This was one of them, and this was one of the last things that I bought because of the expensive price on it.
I mean, it wasn’t as much as some of the other items, but I did save up for some time. But they have gone up a lot in value, and I’ll tell you why. These razors, these are, excuse me, these stones are known to be very, very fast cutting, very good to maintain your blade with, and hone from the ground up. There’s several different types of grates.
So you have… You have the yellow green which tend to cut the fastest and I think the smoothest. Those are really good. Those are the best ones you can get, the yellow, the green ones.
Then you have the standard stones like the dark blue or the light blue. I personally have a dark blue and it’s like a lighter blue colored hone and that tends to cut really good for finishing so it’s very high, I guess, high grit. And then they have like the Barber’s Delight, which are kind of like ones, the razor, these hones were natural, but they were made with what you call the grit, right? The actual like, when you know, when you have like, when you’re using wood and you have the sawdust, when you grind the old stones, there would be dust on the floor and they would condense these up and mix them and compress them and make a hone out of
them. Those are more along the lines of, I guess you could say, the Barbers of Light. Some of those, they cut very well, they’re very nice and more budget, but they’re not truly like a piece of the actual stone. Now, these stones came from Germany and they were Thurigian.
So, Thurigian is, or Thurdjian, I believe you say in German. Again, I don’t… I get this all the time. I don’t know how to say a lot of, you know, stuff on, pronounce a few of these things.
But these hones are, actually come from a certain quarry. So etcher is a brand name. It’s not the actual stone. Like we call them etcher stones because of the name and they were known for the highest quality.
But there are a lot of other ones that come from the same quarry that you could still buy. Some of them even today are still being produced out of that area with that type of stone. so these just became very collectible because they were very they were used widely for over 150 years and they’re actually a really good brand now how do you know how much these are worth so talking about the value the yellow i guess the yellow green ones etcher stones with the original label original box everything will cost you about fifteen hundred dollars right This is about 400 to 500% increase over what it was when I purchased mine six or seven years ago, or whatever it was when I bought it.
I paid $300 for a labeled stone, and mine was a dark blue. Now those are worth about 1,000. I guess you could see. They’re going on auction.
They’re not out there. This company stopped making stones almost, what, 70 years ago? So whatever’s out there is out there. So if you drop one and break it in pieces or whatever, or they fall apart, or the label comes off, that’s it.
Those are gone. So there’s a few collectors out there. There was one gentleman online that was a woodworker. He had hundreds of these stones in the box.
He was selling them and I regret I’d never bought one off the guy at the time because at the time I just didn’t think I needed one. And I regret that because he was going on and I think he sold his collection over a matter of years and he was selling them for a pretty good price, fair market value at the time now, which would be about 400 to 500 times more now than it is then. So these stones are very, very valuable.
What drives their value? Of course, the Etcher stones are really there. The natural supply is kind of gone. The quarry that was used for these original veins was used up.
I believe they’re not bringing them from that particular area of Germany anymore. They’re still doing thurigans, but they’re not doing that type. And that is coming up. And that was stopped about 10 years ago.
They’re just like a company that was out there saying, hey, we found one last rock from where Etcher used to get their stones that they’re harvesting. I guess they don’t do it anymore. I’m not too sure if there’s any more left or a particular grade is still there. Also, what drives their value is the label on the box.
The label is the most important part. I have one that has a partial label on it that you can see it, and you can still see the dark blue part on it, but it’s gone. The gentleman who I purchased it from actually used a lacquer to cover the label so it wouldn’t get damaged from water, and it would stay on the stone, so I appreciated that. You can also use, some guys use clear nail polish that will seal it and will keep it clean and keep it from getting wet, so if you want to use it, because I do use mine.
And then it’s just, if you look at it, like the yellow green, I think it’s around 12,000, the darker one, dark blue is more like 15,000 grit. These things just really do work well. I can tell you that using them, in my i use them as a finisher and to maintain it i use mine i have two i have one that’s labeled one that’s not i’m not sure where the other one’s from but i did get one and that one was much less they hold a really good edge on your blade when you use them i can feel that i usually don’t need to use a pasted strop afterwards now if you guys know if you’ve listened to the content before I really like also, I love cotticals from Belgium.
I think they’re still being made today. I think they’re great stones. I think they’re very great to use for the one stone honing method. I use them on all of my blades.
But I do like to finish all my razors now on the etcher that I do have. And I do use it quite often. And I would get a bigger one if I could, but I just don’t think that that, no. $1,000 price range is just right.
I think you can do very well with getting a regular hone or synthetic cones. I think they do well. I think it’s more along the lines of just the collectability of them. They do work very well, but can you get the same effect from a from a synthetic stone?
I think so. Yeah, I think it’s all about technique at that point. I think if you get a 15,000 grit Chinese water stone, will it be the same? Well, maybe not.
It may not cut as fast, but you’ll get a good edge off it. So really, it’s about collectability. I wanted to talk a little bit about it because I’ve been looking at them again. I saw how much they’ve gone up in value and how rare they’re starting to get.
So if you are in the market for one, guys, I would get it as soon as possible because there’s only a certain amount of supply out there, right? They’re not going to be here forever. I know there are a lot of them out there, but that’s why they’re just not as many that are labeled anymore and able to purchase the natural stone from the natural quarry instead of getting the composite ones. So take a look, guys.
If you have any questions, always feel free. Email me joe.wetshavingnews at gmail.com. So then moving along to talk about my recent experience. So HHN 2026.
So recently, and this is something that my wife and I do, and I’ve been doing since I was probably about 20 years old, 21 years old. I like to go to Halloween Horror Nights in Universal Studios Florida, right? I’ve been going to it. I’ve been a big fan since I was probably old enough to go.
I think the first one I went to was in 2003, maybe, with my friends, and I’ve been going consistently. And I stopped going in 2011, was the last year my wife and I went, and that was the last year we went until 2024, when we said, you know what, one day, had a family, you know, we have a lot going on, hey, we want to do this again. We started going, so then the last three years, 24, 25, 26, I’ve been making a plan.
You know, I don’t get out very much, hard to believe. But I recently said, you know, we my wife and I we have you know Of course our son and we have a lot going on with our jobs and stuff like that It’s tough for us to take a vacation alone, you know just for the two of us So this is the only time of the year that we do we take one night we go we plan it out I plan it out usually for us about you know I’d say six months in advance make sure we have the time off and everything we go we enjoy the night kind of feel like I guess that we’re We’re in our early 20s again, like when we started going to these events, and then really just enjoy the time.
So I went on Wednesday of this past week. So this is Friday, I just went a couple days ago, just got back. And I could tell you guys that when I was there, I went into the haunted houses and all that stuff, and I could tell you that everything smelled like Barrister and Man Hollows. How do I know?
I wore it the day I went. So I was shaving, I was smelling, and I was like, man, this stuff smells like hallows. So I wanted to share this with you guys. So if you like haunted houses and you like Halloween, this to me is the most perfect scent for it.
Now, I know Barrister and Mann did not make it this year, so what I’m going to do is I’m going to look for alternatives when we do the fall seasonal special, and I will be able to tell you guys what is the closest thing to it, if not, possibly purchase on eBay. I have multiple years of Hollows at home. I usually buy it every year.
I think the last year I didn’t get it because I have so much of the older ones. but I really enjoy using it, and this does smell like, every jantarazo in there is like, oh, it smells like halos. It smells exactly like halos. So, if you’re looking for a Halloween scent, this is it.
Look for something like that. Now, the key notes on this is, is really it’s like oak moss and stuff like mossy like dirt it smells just like i guess like i i guess like mildewy right or whatever you want to say and that’s kind of what it is so i think um that’s when you go into a haunted house that’s what you would send i don’t know if these guys at halloween horror nights like have hollows and they’re like yeah this is a perfect scent because it smelled exactly like it like it was just like like man it smells like hollows and since i used the aftershave when you use a good aftershave you have it kind of in your hands even if you wash your hands several times in a day you’ll still have it and i would smell my hand and go oh man it still smells the
same still have that scent so it was and plus i sprayed a little bit of the of it on my shirt so i kind of had that and i would say oh man that’s exactly spot on so I thought it was cool to share if you’re looking for like a real cool haunted house scent. Hollows is it. There’s a couple more out there like that.
I think that are close to it. And I think, you know, a lot of them are really good. So I think Barrister, man, I hope you guys come back out with it because you guys nailed it. Nailed the haunted house scent.
That’s what I’m going to call it. I’m going to call it the haunted house scent moving forward. And that just kind of represents that to me. All right, and the fall seasonal special is coming up on the next show.
That’s why I kind of cut this one a little bit shorter than usual. And the reason, yep, that’s it. Well, it’s not too much shorter. I’m going to take a look at it now.
It’s still about 20 minutes. So check out the old shows, guys. This is the 11th. So I’ve got all the links from 25 to 2016.
This is technically our 11th show, 10 years or 11 years of doing this. And it’s just, I look forward to it every year. I love doing this show. I spend a lot of time on it, working on it.
and a lot of research, but it’s a lot of fun. I also make a lot of purchases, too, I guess, because this is kind of like my favorite time of the year for wet shaving. So check out the shows, guys. If you have any questions, comments, or anything like that, or anything you’d like to see featured on it this year, anything different, let me know, because I’ve already started it.
I’m going to have it all completed by next week, ready for recording the week after for the week of Halloween. So looking forward to bringing that show to you guys and having another really good, successful year. All right, that concludes the podcast for this week. Remember guys, our show is powered by sharpologist.com, what your father didn’t teach you about shaving.
Special thanks to MarkMantic59 for everything that he does in the wet shaving community, and that he’s tried the Pumpkin Spice or Atomic Pumpkin Shave Soap recently. So Mark, I saw that, interested in seeing and hearing more long-term use on that one. So great, great review on that. So that was pretty cool to see.
And of course, most of all you guys, the listeners, Without you, there’d be no show. Don’t forget to check out my blog site, ShaveStraightAndSafe.com and always feel free to email me at joe.wetshavingnews at gmail.com. Remember, check out my book, The Complete Guide, The Modern Guide to Straight Razor Shaving, available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Pastors Pharmacy, eBay, and most book retailers. All right, guys, that concludes the show for this week.
Until next time, shave straight and shave safe. Bye-bye now.
