I was in an antique shop recently, and as usual I lost time while I was in there. It was about twelve-thirty when I stepped inside, knowingly leaving my watch in the car, and when I returned it was three o'clock. In fairness to myself, this isn't your average little broom closet antique shop. This is a massive Walmart-sized bazaar of anachronistic oddities, so steeped in various dust-covered items that it would likely take a year to account for them all.
It was an hour into my visit when I spied this little tin of Colgate shave talc sitting on an ancient bookshelf, its yellow and blue label shining in the sunlight through an open door nearby. I figured it would be empty, but I was wrong. The damn thing was practically full, and I could tell it was the original talc because it smelled of Skin Bracer and rusty nickels. I dropped one scalding hot Hamilton on it and took it home. The talc has been in my bathroom ever since, a room which I recently repaired and re-painted by the way (it is now solidly and unerringly pink).
What struck me was the company insignia on the back, which says "Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Co." Apparently a Missouri-based firm run by the Peet family purchased the Colgate Company in 1928, added their name, and eventually dropped the "Peet" in 1953. So my tin was manufactured sometime after Coolidge, but before Eisenhower. I figure it falls into the Truman years, roughly between 1945 and 1953. Its condition is too good to be any older than that, and Colgate's Helvetica font is suggestive of early 1950s postwar stoicism. Still, the packaging is bare enough and worn enough to be from the war itself, so who knows.
The powder itself is just talc, simple and unembellished. It works well on freshly-shorn skin, but I have my Clubman talc for that. I figure I'll just hold on to this item as a conversation piece, and given its condition, I really lucked out on that front!