Sunday, December 27, 2015

The Sum of the Parts

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 4; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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A few months back, my friend Dan Linn listed this one in an online auction:


At the time, I was sorely in need of a clip to finish another oversized Autopoint, so I bid on this just for the clip.  It wasn’t until it arrived that I noticed what’s pretty obvious in this picture: the trim is nickel plated – what Autopoint referred to as “Silvonite” –  rather than green gold filled.

Come to think of it, I had never seen one in this configuration, and when I looked this up in the 1927 Autopoint catalog, my suspicions were confirmed:


“Regular Autopoints,” models 11 through 16, were offered in solid colored bakelite barrels and with either Silvonite, gold filled or 14k Green Gold Filled trim.  “DeLuxe Autopoints,” models 17 thorugh 19, came in the translucent barrels such as this “jade,” and were cataloged only in 14k Green Gold -filled trim.

Not that it particularly matters.  A weird variant which can be assembled from readily available parts is never worth more than the sum of those parts.  I kinda liked the look of the pencil I got from Dan, so I pulled a couple duplicate black Autopoints with Silvonite trim, and a couple translucent barrels I had lying around, and after a few minutes:


Uncatalogued?  Yes.  Rare?  No more so than the parts with which I put them together.  Nice?  I think so.

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