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How does one know? Experience, there is no shortcut to it. There are great deals on ebay, but they are only great because only few people have the experience to recognize them as such.
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and if you decide to do that i'd strongly recommend you get the opinion of somebody of the experienced guys here *before* you buy it, a lot of 'razor hones' are useless piece of junk, yours was no...

you don't need a $80 hone to keep your razor sharp, but i am pretty sure Utopian is correct. Here's the way I see your options
- throw away the hone
- keep the hone and after a stroke your razor...