A Tool You Will Use For The Rest Of Your Life
Editor’s note: Fair warning, what you’ll find below has nothing to do with investing. But it has everything to do with something I believe is just as important: the small decisions a man makes each day that dictate how he experiences his life.
In 1905, a 24-year-old German orphan named Hans Wilsdorf set up a small watch-importing business in London with his brother-in-law. He had no money. He had no factory. He had no name.
What he had was an idea everyone else thought was stupid.
At the time, serious men carried pocket watches. Wristwatches were for women, considered jewelry – delicate, fragile, unserious. “A passing fad,” one industry observer called them.
Wilsdorf disagreed.
He believed wristwatches were the future.
In 1908, he registered a short, easily pronounceable trademark to put on the dials of his watches: Rolex.
In 1910, he submitted one of his small wristwatches to the official Swiss watch testing center in Bienne, the first wristwatch in history to be submitted.
It came back with the Swiss Certificate of Chronometric Precision. The first wristwatch ever to earn one.
The industry was unimpressed.
So in 1926, Wilsdorf patented the first truly waterproof watch case. He called it the Oyster. And in 1927, he did something nobody in the watch business had ever done before.
He hung a Rolex Oyster around the neck of a 26-year-old English swimmer named Mercedes Gleitze, and sent her into the English Channel.
She swam for over 10 hours in 51-degree water. When she was pulled from the sea, the watch was still keeping perfect time.
Wilsdorf then bought the entire front page of the Daily Mail on November 24, 1927, to announce “The Greatest Triumph in Watch-Making.”
The world’s first celebrity endorsement of a luxury timepiece. The world’s first tool watch. The Rolex Oyster sold, at the time, for about $50.
What happened next is the part everyone forgets.
For decades after that front page, a Rolex Oyster was not particularly expensive and not particularly rare.
It was just a good watch. A tool. The kind of thing a doctor or a pilot or a serious working man might buy, wear for thirty years, and pass to his son.
Then something happened that nobody in 1927, including Hans Wilsdorf, could have predicted.
The world ran out of them.
The early Oysters were used. Worn. Banged up. Lost. Most of them are gone – lost in attics, scrapped for parts, dropped in lakes. The ones that survived, in good condition, with their original cases and crowns and dials intact, are now among the most valuable mechanical objects on the planet.
In October 2017, Phillips auction house in New York sold Paul Newman’s personal Rolex Daytona – a watch he’d worn on his wrist, given to him by his wife with the engraving “Drive Carefully, Me” – for $17.8 million.
It originally retailed for $200.
Most early Rolexes will never be worth $17 million. But the principle that Hans Wilsdorf accidentally proved in the 1920s and 1930s is now an iron law of collectors’ markets:
The most valuable versions of any collectibles are the earliest models.
Why I’m telling you this
When we set out to build the Genesis razor in 2014, we made a decision early on that has defined the company ever since.
We weren’t building a hygiene product. We were building a tool… a real tool, of the kind that men have always owned in small numbers and used for the rest of their lives.
Walk into any guy’s garage and you’re sure to find dozens, if not hundreds, of high-quality steel tools. Hammers handed down from a father. A torque wrench from a grandfather. A pocket knife that’s been resharpened for forty years.
These are not consumer products.
They’re inheritances. I wanted to build a razor that belonged in that category.
So we interviewed 30 design firms from around the world, looking for the right mix of artists and engineers.
We landed on a leading industrial design studio in Brooklyn, New York. We spent the better part of three years and more than $1 million in R&D before we sold a single unit.
The result is a razor that is – and these are not my words, these are the words of one of the many journalists who’ve written about it: beautiful, precise, and collectible as industrial art.
Men always love their best tools.
Whether it’s their watches. Their fine leather wallets. Their hand-stitched English shoes. The Genesis sits in that category, and for some of you reading this, it already does.
What makes the Genesis special isn’t just the design. It’s how it’s made.
Hand-assembled from 316L-grade German stainless steel — the best in the world.
Manufactured using cutting-edge metal injection molding technology, which allows for extremely precise designs while maintaining the unbelievable strength of forged steel.
Treated with a military-grade PVD coating that makes it virtually indestructible and permanently resistant to corrosion.
That’s why we can guarantee it forever.
Every razor is hand-polished. Every razor is individually numbered. There’s a seven-digit serial number laser-etched into the steel of the floating head so you know your razor is one of one.
But for the next small batch of them, there’s going to be a second mark.
At OneBlade we’ve made limited runs of the Genesis before. A few engraved editions for special occasions. A handful of one-offs for friends. But nothing like this.
The Porter & Co. Edition is the first time we’ve taken the standard Genesis — the razor that has, for a decade, been the centerpiece of the OneBlade catalog — and authorized a small batch for Porter & Co. customers.
Only 1,000 have been manufactured – and at last count, about 347 remain. And I want to offer one to you.
Now, I’m not in the business of selling collectibles, so I won’t pretend to know exactly what one of these will be worth in 20 years. But I am a connoisseur of cars, watches, and other rare collectibles.
And I can tell you what’s happened with other rare razors.
Vintage Gillette razors from the 1940s – mass-produced, unremarkable, sold for a couple of dollars at the time – now routinely trade on collector forums and at vintage auctions for hundreds of dollars.
Mid-century European safety razors from the 1960s go for even more among collectors.
Recent limited editions from boutique razor makers – produced in runs of 100 to 200 – have sold on the secondary market for 2x and 3x their retail price within months of release.
But at OneBlade, we’re building something different.
We’ve engineered the Rolex of Razors and – like the razors themselves – I’m building OneBlade to pass onto my children, and hopefully my grandchildren.
But that’s not the real reason I’m writing to you about it.
I’m writing to you because the Genesis is, first and last, an essential tool.
A handcrafted object that you’ll pick up and appreciate every morning. A razor you’ll still be using when you’re handing your son or grandson his razor 20 years from now.
A tool that was built with the kind of precision you would normally find inside a Swiss watch. And for #00 readers, this limited-edition will also carry the Porter & Co. brand.
Now, the Porter & Co. Edition Genesis retails — like every Genesis — for $300.
But because I’m the founder of both Porter & Co. and OneBlade, and because I want to bring both worlds together, I’ve authorized a special discount you won’t find anywhere else.
Visit the OneBlade site right now, and $300 is the price you’ll see.
But if you enter the code PORTER15 at the private link below, you’ll unlock an exclusive 15% discount that is not available anywhere else.
It’s the lowest price we’ve ever offered the Genesis – and it’s available only to you as a Porter & Co. reader.
Every order includes the special-edition engraved stand, 10 Feather FHS blades (what shaving aficionados describe as a “miracle of metallurgy”), and free shipping.
Every razor is backed by our forever warranty.
And you can get yours by going here… but before you do, think back to where this letter started.
In 1927, you could walk into a watchmaker’s shop in London and buy a Rolex Oyster for about $50. Nobody lined up for one. Nobody thought it was special. It was just a good watch.
The men who bought those watches didn’t know they were buying a piece of history. They just knew they were buying the best tool they could find.
Now, I’m not going to tell you that the Porter & Co. Edition Genesis is the next Rolex Oyster. I have no way of knowing what it will be worth in 20 years from now…
But I do know this:
Only 1,000 were manufactured… and only 347 remain.
And when they’re gone, they’re gone.
Get Your Porter & Co. Edition Genesis now.
Use code: PORTER15 to get 15% off.
F. Porter Stansberry
Stevenson, Maryland