This razor with a nickel bottom plate, black resin coated aluminum handle and vertical knurling was debuted as the "Super-109" but later the same razor was called the "Super Adjustable". The Gillette Super-109 was priced at $1.95 in 1969 but due to the high USA inflation of the 70's had to have its list price raised to $2.95. This razor was called a Super-109 based on its handle length of 109.5 mm. Its companion razor the Super-84 had a shorter handle. When the Super-84 was discontinued, there was no longer a need to distinguish between the two razors and the Super-109 became simply the Super Adjustable and any list retail pricing was removed from the packaging. This razor with the nickel plated brass bottom plate was discontinued in 1976. Moving forward the bottom plate was made of black plastic and the razor was still called the Super Adjustable. This razor weighs in at 67 grams.
Manufacturing Modifications to the Super Adjustable near the end of it's life.
In 1976 for the W-1 models through to the final W-3 models, Gillette changed the base plate/blade bed from a roughly diamond shape stamp to a rectangular shape. Photo and information courtesy of master razor collector Achim aka Mr-Razor
Date Code Anomalies: The R-R "Black Beauty" and the Missing Year
There is a strange anomaly with the date codes for the Gillette Super-109 . It seems that Gillette decided to skip the date code for the year "Q". The theory is that it looked too much like the year "O" so they wouldn't use it. So they produced P-1, P-2, P-3, P-4 for 1970 and then R-1, R-2, R-3 and R-4 for 1971. But it seems this decision caused problems because there are Q-1 and R-R date codes for the Super-109s too! The Q-1 is more common than the R-R. Such that there is no premium for Q-1 razors but there maybe a premium for R-R razors due to their more limited availability. These maybe errors made by Gillette employees that they considered not important enough when discovered not to release the razors to consumers. As per Robert K Waits , A Safety Razor Compendium: The Book Page 447, The Q date code was mistakenly used in the first quarter of 1971
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