I'm having a hard time working out just who would buy this $100,000 Zafirro Iridium razor. It would have to be someone very rich, and very, very hairy. I'm thinking Robin Williams, but he's way too smart to drop the price of a cheap apartment on a bathroom accessory.

What could possibly justify this price? Well, nothing, but that doesn't stop Zafirro from trying. The two blades are made from white sapphire and "launch a new era of shaving" (the era of shaving whilst broke, I guess). These blades are sharpened using "high-energy, ionized particles". Included in the price is ten years worth of cleaning, servicing and sharpening.

Then we get on to some more convincing reasons for the jacked-up price. Zafirro uses some very expensive metals for the construction. The handle, for instance, is made from iridium, a metal "from meteorites" which is "10 times more rare than platinum."

If you thought that buying objects made from ivory or woolly mammoth tusks was non-PC, then you'll be happy with Zafirro's environmental policy: "Due to the limited global supply of iridium and the expense associated with manufacturing, only 99 of the Iridium line will be made." Why make any at all?

It gets worse. The screws that hold the razor together are machined from platinum, and Zafirro calls the "leap" from regular razors to sapphire-bladed razors a "quantum leap" like that "from vacuum tubes to transistors, CB radios to the iPhone."

It's all so depressing. If Zafirro sells a single one of these, the world will be a worse place. And if you do buy one and manage to cut yourself on the 100-atom thick edge of the blade, I have something to help. Maybe I can interest you in a tiny square of toilet paper, made from the wood pulp of the Bois Dentelle. This is a tree so rare that only a few remain, up in the high cloud forests of Mauritius. I'll sell you a sheet for just $10,000.

Zafirro Iridium [Zafirro via Book of Joe]

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