I just received this Made in USA Milady Decolletee with the serial # M446831 which makes it a 1920 razor .Were the old style base plates numbered to reflect the number of a particular model produced or were the base plates used on all the 3 piece models randomly and reflect the total number of base plates regardless of model? Does a certain series of numbers reflect a particular model for example were the 400K series numbers assigned to the Milady model, were there K or N numbered Decolletees ? According to Wiki there were 999,999 M serial numbers in 1920 along with K and N serial numbers for a total of 2.1 million razors sold that year .
Glenn
Gillette Old style serial #s