The RazoRock Keyhole brush is a perfect exemplar of the tectonic shift in the shaving brush landscape. It’s a very nice brush indeed — in appearance, in feel, and in performance — and it costs $10. If what you want in a shaving brush is its usefulness, it makes no economic sense to pay $250 for a brush that does the same task.
I do understand how some possessions serve a dual function: their stated purpose and also as status markers. An ultra-expensive watch, for example, has a social task in addition to telling the time (reliably, one hopes, since a watch whose cost is but a fraction can tell time perfectly, setting itself daily with the atomic clock). But unless one carries around his shaving brush to show it to others, the impression it might make in one’s social circle is zero. If what you want is good lather easily generated, get a $10 brush with a good grip (I particularly like the Keyhole grip: very secure) and a good synthetic knot, and put the extra money in the soap.
And, speaking of the soap, I do like Mystic Water tallow-based soaps, which in some cases (like today’s soap) include lanolin:
A dark brown soap made with Guinness stout and scented with a smooth beer fragrance that is blended with creamy oatmeal, orange peel, butterscotch, farm-fresh milk, almond, and vanilla. It doesn’t smell like actual beer but it is a warm, comforting scent. Fragrance and lanolin.
For those who miss Mickey Lee Soapworks’ The Drunken Goat, this is a good choice. It does not include goat milk but it does have the Guiness stout, and its ingredients are good:
. . . shaving soap is made with beef tallow combined with stearic acid, shea butter, castor oil, sustainably sourced organic palm oil, avocado oil, aloe vera, bentonite clay, silk protein, allantoin, and extra glycerin. It offers exceptional protection, glide, and post-shave skin care and is excellent for even sensitive skin and tough beards. Most of my shaving soaps also include lanolin, and I use both botanical essential oils and high quality fragrances in my soap.
One benefit of using a different razor daily is that each day I get a fresh experience of the razor’s performance, undimmed by my having grown accustomed to it, the wearing away of novel experience that reduces the unusual in time to the ordinary. For example, in today’s shave with the Maggard Razors V2 open-combf, I was struck anew by its surprising excellence — it is both extremely comfortable and extremely efficient. And today, with my hands feeling a little slick, I noted too the excellence of the Maggard Razors stainless-steel MR7 handle: very grippy, and feels good in the hand — plus it’s modestly priced (as is the V2OC head).