Death and Transfiguration Part I: The Death of Triad

"I don’t think that’s a Triad." Who would have thought that a simple statement like that could nearly start a rumble at a Pen Show?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning.

Triads – the "real ones" – are worth a small fortune. A perfect storm of beauty, rarity and the fact that they are accompanied by beautiful and rare matching pens swirls around them and drives the prices they realize up into the hundreds of dollars. The last one that came along in an online auction went for well above $800.00 – and I wasn’t the high bidder. Dammit. I still don’t own one.

Here’s a picture of Joe Nemecek’s Triad collection, as pictured on page 157 of The Catalogue:

The rear drive, heavy pencils on the left are what I’m talking about. The colors on some of these look just like the wild celluloid Mont Blanc used on its Oscar Wilde pencils recently. They have a cool triangularish top and are imprinted "Tri-Pen Co." and either "Providence R.I." or "Pawtucket, R.I."

But then there’s those other ones, like the three on the right in this picture, that just aren’t the same and truthfully just aren’t nearly as good. Sure, they’re triangular all right, and the clips look something like the "real" Triads, but they are a lot lighter, made with cheaper, blander plastics and have a simple, cheap nose drive mechanism stuck in the end of them. What’s more, most of them are advertisers.

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

From Whence Do You Come, O Ever Ready?

The American News Company advertisement from yesterday’s article, which rattled off a whole gaggle of trade names, answered a lot of questions about how several pen and pencil brands are related.

But it didn’t answer all of them.

For example, consider the "Ever Ready," one of the trade names American News Company was claiming as its own in 1922. Here’s an example that turned up at The Ohio Show year before last:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

So What Does "A.N.C." Mean?

During Thursday trading at the Ohio Show, I found this one – on Rich Lott’s table, I think:

It’s a nice but cheaply made "Peerless." I liked the color, and the clip was very prominent, too:

I tucked the Peerless away in my folder, but that "A.N.C." over the clip nagged at me. I’d seen it on several different pencils, but I’d never been able to draw a connection between most of them . . . although most looked as if they had been made by David Kahn, Inc. (makers of the Wearever, among other brands). One day, I resolved, I was going to figure out what that "A.N.C." stood for and write an article here about it.

I didn’t think I’d circle back around to this one so quickly!

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Document, Document, Document

It isn’t always the superstar pencils that everyone knows about that get my attention. Sure, I get a kick out of writing about a Waterman Patrician, because they are beautiful and there are some interesting variations.

But there’s also a lot of stuff out there that, to my knowledge, no one has really thought about yet, mostly because no one has yet thought it was worth thinking about. So when I find something that has a little bit of extra information with it that you might not ordinarily find, I don’t care that I may be the only person that cares. It might turn out to be the last piece that solves a puzzle I’m working on, whether it be now or ten years from now, or maybe some researcher will make sense of it long after I’m gone.

So I have a philosophy about such things – document, document, document, whether it looks like a gold mine or a dead end.
　
Today’s story is about one of those finds. It turned up at the Scott Antique Market in November for just a couple bucks:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Talk About Red

It was my first ever Philadelphia Pen Show last month. And it was the first ever pen auction for the Philadelphia Pen Show. As I looked at the items to be auctioned off at the auction preview, there was only one thing that interested me. I was going to be at the auction anyway, because I’d been asked to help out behind the table – but this one item was the only reason I got a bidder’s number.

This story is not about that item. Well, mostly not, anyway. The item I had my eye on was a red hard rubber Parker Vest Pocket pencil, which I wanted to complete the Parker Bridge Set I bought from Joe Nemecek last summer. So I didn’t want to go too crazy early on in the auction.

But then something else that was red came up for auction, that I hadn’t paid much attention to during the preshow:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

What I Did Over Thanksgiving Break

During my eight-week hiatus from blogging, I made a point not to write. There were plenty of times when I found things I wanted to write about, but I forced myself to stay away from my computer so that I could get caught up on other things and fully recharge my batteries.

And, with only one exception, that’s exactly what I did.

The only piece during that time that caused me to break radio silence came to me in an online auction along with a bunch of other things. Here’s the whole lot:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

A Bizarre Rendering of a Familiar Design

Dale Beebe was set up right across the aisle from me at the Ohio Show this year. He had this one sitting on his table and I looked at it all weekend. It’s not exactly something that fits in with my collection, I told myself. It’s too expensive, I told myself.

But then myself kept arguing back. It’s just way too cool, myself pleaded. You didn’t come to the Ohio Show to NOT spend money, myself begged. Besides, you know what a cool story this one will make at the blog, myself said, and who knows if you’ll ever see another one? Now there was a little bit of a whine in my voice.

Dale wouldn’t budge on the price. In the last couple hours of the show, I caved and paid it. Here it is:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Radical Surgery on a Skyline

In yesterday’s article, I commented that Skyline barrels, once damaged, were not designed to be repaired. However, there are time when it’s worth a shot. Take this one, for example, which I got for five bucks in a junk box at the Springfield Antique Show last summer – actually, I bought a bunch of things for five bucks, and this was just one of them:

The reason this was in a junk box was because the barrel is broken neatly in the center.

But what this particular dealer didn’t know, and I didn’t feel the need to enlighten him about, was that the absence of those ribs around the upper barrel could only mean one thing:

A plain upper barrel is a pretty sure indicator that the trim is 14k gold, and if I’d said something about that this pencil would surely have been melted down for scrap! What’s more, all of the trim on this pencil was just perfect, with no dents, so I thought if there was any way to salvage this one, it would be worth the effort. There’s no way to weld the halves of the barrel back together strong enough to last, but I did have another idea . . .

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Observations On The Skyline Standard II

I’m sure I don’t know everything there is to know about the Eversharp Skyline Standard II. These are the Skylines with the striped upper barrels and the wide center bands. They come with color matched derbies:

And also with gold-filled derbies:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

A Wooden Eversharp??

When Joe called me to tell me he’d found a wooden Eversharp, I was really excited.

When he told me that he found two of them and I could have the other, I danced shamelessly about the room!

But then, as we was describing it to me, it didn’t sound much like an Eversharp. Sure, the name was proudly written on the side of the barrel, but the mechanism just didn’t sound like anything Charles Keeran cooked up. It did, however, sound like something else that I happened to find at right around the same time, and I’ve found a couple other examples since. That’ the way it seems to go with these things – I’ve never heard of one, then five of them turn up all at once, then nuthin’.

Joe brought both of his examples with him when he came to the Ohio Show, and during our photo shoot after the show, we got his and mine together for a group shot:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Don't Be Too Quick to Dismiss This One

I picked this one up from Terry Mawhorter at the Philadelphia Show. He sold it to me primarily as a curiosity, since he’d indicated that a couple of Parker Vacumatic specialists had looked at it and dismissed it out of hand as cobbled together from parts:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Seen in Philadelphia

Arnold Cohen had a few great Cross pencils on his table at the Philadelphia show last month, including this nice fountain pen, ballpoint and pencil set:

And an interesting magic pencil, with lines reminiscent of the Cross Century:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

A Couple Keene Bits of New Information

At the Philadelphia Show, Leonard Finkel had this fantastic Keene pencil on his table:

I just had to have it, because I just knew how nice it would look next to the one I had at home:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Solved!

Back on May 21, 2012, I posted an article titled "There’s GOTTA Be A Connection" (see https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/05/theres-gotta-be-connection.html) about the Lyncraft, and a logo that was so close to Pencraft’s logo that it had to have been copied:

Since then, I’ve tracked down a few more examples of the Lyncraft:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Kindred Spirits?

I don’t remember where this one came from, but I picked it up at the Ohio Show:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Mr. Krell's Second Job

The story starts, as many of these do, with an online auction:

The first thing you notice about this one is its unusual triangular shape:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

I'm Better En-Dowed Now

I’d never heard of the Dow before last year, when an example bearing a patent date turned up and led me to write "The Real Housewives of Minneapolis" back on July 26, 2012 (see https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/07/real-housewives-of-minneapolis.html). I was so excited that Michael Little had an example during our swap-a-thon that I included it in the picture of killer finds in my Ohio Show Report. Here’s a closer shot of it:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Martin Borbeck's Busy Day

Snap-Fil pens, made by the General Manufacturing Company of Sioux City, Iowa, are a cult classic among pen collectors, with their pointy barrels, flattop caps and levers that open backwards from the direction you’d expect. I don’t have any on hand, but here’s a picture of one from the catalog in the online archives of the Pen Collectors of America (pretty handy membership to have, isn’t it?):

The patent for the Snap-Fil was applied for by Martin Borbeck of Sioux City, Iowa on March 23, 1919, and was issued as number 1,342,736 June 8, 1920:

But here’s the really neat thing: Martin actually received two patents on June 8, 1920. Earlier that same day, he received Patent number 1,342,416: for a lever-operated pencil, which he’d applied for on July 28, 1919:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

Messner's Got Me Beat by a Longshot

I was pretty pleased when I found this on Terry Sell’s table at the Ohio Show:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.

That's a What??

At the Ohio Show, Charles Harles had this one among all of the Moores in his pen folders:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.