The "Leadies"

When I started this blog, the day after the end of the Ohio Pen Show last year, I set out with the goal in mind to write an article daily for a year and see how things stood at the end of it. One well-wisher commented that he hoped I could find enough material to write about.

Obviously, finding stuff to write about hasn’t been a problem. In fact, every time I dip my toes into the infinite pool of pencil history I usually end up doing a cannonball. Here’s just part of the pencils I’ve got waiting to be photographed and given their due here . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

Leadhead's Tread: The Ohio Pen Show

It feels good to be home.

As it is every year, I’ve been running around across pretty big chunks of the country all year long, meeting people, talking pencils and even buying one or two . . . give or take a few. Each November, when I walk in the door at the Crowne Plaza hotel in Dublin, Ohio, it feels like crossing a finish line after a long, long journey home.

There’s more to that statement than it might sound. Yes, I live a mere forty minutes or so from the hotel – close enough that I usually commute back and forth for a couple days – so of course I’m home. But the more people I talk to at this show, the luckier I feel that I live here, because I think most of us that come to this show agree that it wouldn’t matter in what city this show is held. No matter how far away you live, this show feels like home.

People usually start trickling into Columbus on Wednesday afternoon. I picked up Michael Little at the hotel on Wednesday. We said hello to a few people in the hotel bar, but since we didn’t see any trading going on in the trading room, we scooted on home to Newark where, as Janet described it, we looked like a couple kids playing with baseball cards. By the time it was over, in the wee hours of Thursday morning, Michael and I each had a big pile of things we’d pulled out of each other’s stuff. The next morning, we started trying to figure out who owed money to whom, but after we horsed around with the math for awhile we decided we both felt like we’d gotten a good deal so we called it even. . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

Gilliam's

In two separate online auctions, I found pencils marked "Gilliam’s".  The small ringtop is marked "Gilliam’s EZERITE 14k Gold Filled Pat," and the larger one is marked "Gilliam’s True-Point Sterling." . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

Worth The Price Of Admission

For the bargain basement price of 99 cents, I won a small group of tired pencils in an online auction, including this one.

It’s a leadholder, and the barrel is so thin that someone actually cracked it in a couple places just by tightening the clutch around the lead. But it has a few interesting features. Around the top is a name I hadn’t heard of before:  "Beegee." It seems that the only reason I hadn’t heard of this one is that so few of them survived (did I mention how thin the barrel was?), not that there weren’t many made. The earliest advertisement I could find for the pencil was in the June, 1914 edition of The Magazine of Business . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

The Pencil Formerly Known as Prince?

I’ve had a few of these over the years, and sadly I let them all go, because the pencil itself is pretty unremarkable.  And the only marking appears to be what looks like the letter W, or maybe an M.

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

EVRDA

Here’s another great one from the "why haven’t I ever heard of this one before" file. 

Around the top is imprinted "Nickel Silver Pat. Applied For EVRDA" . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

The Second Carey

The Carey pencil I scrounged up at the DC show and blogged about here on August 22 ranks right up there as one of the most significant things I’ve found this year. So imagine my surprise when I received an email from Tom Heath shortly after the article ran: he had another one!

With a last name like Heath and my discussion of the Heath clip and the pencil’s manufacture by the George W. Heath Co., I took his email as adding additional information to my knowledge of the pencil. But still, I remembered one of the rules of life one of my friends used to live by: "It never hurts to ask." That rule served me well this time, and a second example of the Carey made its one-way trip to Ohio. Here they are shown together, the smaller example from DC and Tom Heath’s full sized one with floral engraving . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

Lebolt

After the DC show, in the afterglow of my Cary and Heath leadholder finds, I was much more in tune to leadholders than I have been in the past. When this one popped up in an online auction, I thought at first I was onto another Carey or Heath.

This one is in sterling, with a fine engraved pattern that calls to mind a sterling engraved Wahl Eversharp . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

Another Dorky Pencil

My daughters have been coming to the Ohio Show with me as long as they can remember, usually just for a couple of hours (not much there to entertain them, since I’m pretty preoccupied throughout the show).

Several years ago, early in my collecting, my primary interest was in finding Eversharp Doric pencils. Many of the examples pictured in The Catalogue came from those early years. When my older daughter was maybe all of nine years old, she came to the Ohio Show and we spent some time roaming around and looking at all the pencils in the room. At one point, she saw an attractive pencil she thought I’d like and excitedly she pointed it out to me. "Daddy, there’s a really nice pencil!" she said.

So we looked at it together. I pointed out all the things I liked about it, and after we’d admired it for a little while, I put it back on the table.

"Aren’t you going to buy it?" she asked me.

"Sweetie, it’s a really nice one," I said, "but it’s not a Doric."

"But Daddy," she said without missing a beat, "I thought all your pencils were dorky."

There wasn’t a person within earshot that didn’t break out laughing at that one – myself included.

Anymore, I don’t buy Doric pencils very often. They are featured on pages 65 to 68 of The Catalogue, and any more I find it difficult to find one that adds much to my display. However, when this one came along, I had to bite . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

A Little Piece of Chicago

At the Chicago show, this cute little ringtop caught my attention, just because I liked the look of it. 

"Pratt Food Co. W.L. Hill, Jr." This pencil has classic Chicago lines, with a squared off top and that black band around the nose. It appears to have been made by National Pen Products in Chicago, but there’s another imprint on the other side:  "Welty’s." At times like these, it’s both a blessing and a curse to have one of those brains packed with useless bits of information, kind of like a garage filled with spare parts you keep because you might need them someday. I knew I’d heard that name before, and I thought it was in a pen magazine article I’d read a few years back.

So I dug out my stack of Pen World magazines and started digging, and I finally found what I remembered: in the February/March 2004 issue, Michael Fultz wrote an excellent article titled "Welty on his Way," providing a fairly comprehensive history of the exploits of William A. Welty (1873-1958), first as founder of The William A. Welty Company of Waterloo, Iowa, which he founded in 1905 and left in 1915, then later in Chicago, where he founded William A. Welty & Co. of Chicago around 1920. Although Fultz indicates that Welty returned to Waterloo in 1925 to form the Waterloo Pen Company, he also indicated that a 1927 catalog for Norris, Alister-Ball Co. of Chicago advertised Welty pens – and pencils!

I haven’t been able to lay my hands on that catalog, but I bet if I ever do, this little guy is pictured in it!

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

What The??

There’s a guy who has been set up every month I’ve attended the Springfield Antique Show. In the busy months, like the Extravaganza weekends, he’s in the same place as he is during the off months, when he looks like he’s been stranded aground ‘way out there after the tide went out. He has display cases out in the direct sunlight, and only recently – after many of his pencils had warped into writing instruments suitable for a Salvador Dali painting thanks to the heat – did he think to keep the lids propped open a bit to prevent his wares from cooking.

Don’t get me wrong. He’s a really nice guy and I have bought some things off of him over the years. This summer I found something on his table that I just haven’t been able to explain. Here’s the pencil part . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

OK, Maybe I Had The Second Prettiest Wasp . . . Or The Third

I’ll never learn not to put "est" on the back of a word. When I found a lovely rust and teal example of a WASP pencil (that’s the Sheaffer brand - WASP stands for W.A. Sheaffer Pen Company), I’d proudly announced over at Fountain Pen Network that I’d found the prettiest WASP.

As I was cruising around the online auction sites a while back, I saw a picture of another one, but I just wasn’t sure what the true color of it was. I figured what the heck- at worst its another example in the same color, and I love that color. But at best. . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company

One Wild Goose Chase

Today’s story started for me a few weeks ago when I found this pencil at the Springfield Antique Show.  When I pulled it out of a dollar junk box, I thought it was probably a Presto that I could use for parts. However, my expectations were exceeded when I looked at it more closely:  "Selfeed Made in USA Reg.U.S.Pat.Off." Now that’s different!  Here it is next to what I normally think of when it comes to an oversized Selfeed . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company