2/7/15

Perfume Econ 101 (The Not-For-Dummies Version): Max Factor Signature for Men - And It Doesn't Even Have Your Name On It.




My belief is that many vintage fragrance buyers are being ripped off. There are some fragrances that are worth paying top dollar for, but most are egregiously over-priced. When you consider the number of high-quality fakes saturating the market, and couple that with whatever true historical context certain vintages inhabit, it becomes very difficult to discern the bargains.

Here's a good example of a vintage rip-off: current prices for Max Factor Signature for Men, an American toiletry line released in 1950. There were Signature colognes, aftershaves, aftershave talcs, and deodorants, until the line was discontinued in the eighties, probably around the time Proctor & Gamble took over. Take a look at this LIFE Magazine advertisement from 1963, in which the version of Max Factor cologne that I own was priced at two dollars and fifty cents. Now adjust that price for inflation, and view it in 2015 dollars. The same bottle should now cost twenty dollars. If you're selling it and want to double your money, you could ask forty dollars for it, no problem. The stuff is fifty years old, after all.

Let's be generous and say you want to triple your money and get sixty dollars for it. That's not completely unreasonable either, for a long discontinued fragrance that most people have never heard of before. It was a somewhat successful fragrance, surviving thirty years in several iterations, and I certainly would agree with anyone who said it smelled good, although it's not my taste. When I reviewed it in 2011 I said it smelled a lot like Aqua Velva Musk, a cologne I happen to dislike, but I've been testing it more in recent days, and now feel it has much in common with Royal Copenhagen. Still not my thing, although certainly a decent scent. It's very musky, very powdery, very old-world barbershoppy. Every once in a while it hits the spot.

Now take a look at this recent Ebay listing for the exact same bottle of Signature. The seller, a Mr. Goldstar972, is asking $100 for it. What the fuck?

This guy isn't looking to double, or even triple his money. He wants to quadruple it! Now if this were something by Yves Saint Laurent or Chanel, I'd say maybe that's reasonable, given the product's pedigree. It's an old, forgotten cologne by downmarket Max Factor. Why would anyone price it at a hundred dollars? One answer: greed.

I can tell you that if you're in the market for Signature, but are discouraged by Ebay prices, you're better off just getting a new bottle of Royal Copenhagen. It smells a little better (fresher herbal notes up top) and costs around ten dollars for a three ounce bottle, and maybe twenty bucks for eight ounces. Now there are a couple five ounce Max Factors on Ebay that are going for under fifty dollars, but they're all "splash" bottles that have probably been tampered with. One is not full, and the other is an aftershave. The same size is also being sold by other sellers for over one hundred dollars, which should also raise eyebrows. None of these prices reflect what the stuff is worth now in 2015 dollars, relative to what it was originally worth in 1963.

Contrary to what some might think, perfume is not a design product that becomes more valuable with time. Perfume is "perishable." It goes bad, it goes stale. It doesn't last forever. Even if it does last, it changes. It becomes distorted. Time is usually not very kind to it. In the rare cases where it survives time's ravages (Ocean Rain is one), it's a crapshoot hardly worth taking unless you simply don't care about the money.

I've had some conversations in the past about collecting vintage signs. Some people don't understand why a large metal Coca-Cola sign from 1950 is worth a thousand dollars. They say stuff like, "It's just a rusty old sign for soda." Well, yes. It is a rusty old sign, true. But guess what? That rusty old sign still does exactly the same thing that it did in 1950 when it rolled off the press and was hung over a gas station somewhere: it sells Coca-Cola. It has no moving parts. It cannot break. It has not deteriorated to the point where you cannot read it and understand its message, and it now has the advantage of being over half a century old, which makes it a vintage item, and most likely very rare.

That bottle of perfume from sixty years ago? The chances that it does now what it did then are slim to none. Sure, it still does something, and probably possesses enough chutzpah to make its wearer feel more confident on a Saturday night, but it was definitely MORE effective within three or four years of its release. The biochemical materials that comprise its formula have changed, degraded, lost their strength, their balance, and while they are still detectable and perhaps pleasurable to the nose, they are not performing nearly as well as they used to. Therefore unlike the Coca-Cola sign that continues to perform just as well now as it did then, a vintage perfume's true value has barely kept up with inflation. The jerk on Ebay who is asking $100 for a used bottle from the sixties should really be pricing it at twenty to forty dollars. That is its fair value.

Design elements only appreciate in value when they retain their functionality. When that functionality declines, so does the price (just look at old cars). Would I pay a hundred dollars or more for Max Factor Signature? Maybe, if I didn't know better. But I do know better, and so should you. 

Besides, I already own the stuff. I found it when I was helping my friend clean his house, and he gave it to me. I can tell you that it's in the best shape it could possibly be in given its age, and I sure as hell wouldn't sell it for more than fifteen dollars.