A Specific Interest in a General Pencil

When this bland little pencil turned up in a lot of random items online, I had to bite:

This plain-looking pencil even has a generic name on it – "General":

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.

This One Doesn't Bug Me So Much

Maybe Joe’s right. Maybe I am a little bit Patrician crazy.

I mentioned awhile ago, while discussing the Sheaffer desk pencil, how desk pencils generally bug me. Heck, they don’t even fit on the same shelves or the same drawers as all my other pencils! But when this one popped up in an online auction, I just couldn’t resist:

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.

And Real Colorful, Too

Realite was a Chicago company established as a separate concern in late 1921. Here’s an Realite advertisement from the November, 1922 edition of Office Appliances:

As Autopoint fanatic Jim Stauffer recently documented, Realite purchased the Autopoint Company in 1923 and the combined company was renamed Autopoint Products Co. and later simply Autopoint Company. But that doesn’t mean the new Autopoint Company abandoned the Realite name entirely – in fact, it maintained the brand for decades after the merger and made some really interesting pencils in spectacular colors I’ve not seen elsewhere.

Take this one, for example – it was the last purchase I made at the Baltimore Show this year, and it was cheap since it was missing the cap (fortunately, I keep a few duplicates of these on hand just for such an emergency):

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.

At Least It's Where The Sun Don't Shine

Last August at the DC Show, Joe Nemecek sold me a Parker Bridge set, which included the bases for all four suits, one of which was boxed and included the correct pencil:

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.

Re-memo These?

Back in January, I wrote about a Ross-Memo pencil I’d picked up when I went to a boat and RV show ("Take a Memo – Pencils Are Everywhere," January 23, 2012):

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.

They Get Ugly

A while back, Matt McColm asked me if I wanted a couple more All-Rite pencils, one black and the other blue. I do get a kick out of the All-Rites, which were made in Hackensack, New Jersey and put out quite a few campy magazine ads in the middle 1950s (see "They Really Were . . . All Right, That Is" on May 13, 2012). The company was purchased by the Eagle Pencil Company around 1964 or 1965.

At first, I declined, because I have a black and a blue one:

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.

The Long-Awaited Laughlin Article

I’ll admit I’ve been dreading writing this article.

Back when I posted my report on the Michigan Pen Show last summer, I posted a picture of this Laughlin set I picked up as a teaser, promising to write more about it later:

I knew that Laughlin is a "cult" brand – a relatively obscure manufacturer whose devotees are really, really, REALLY fanatical. And what have I learned?:

Never tease a cult.

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 "Pleasing Contrast"

Here’s one more that was on Andy Beliveau’s table at the Philadelphia Pen Show. I was so glad that I finally found sufficient time to pull up a chair, with loupe and camera in hand, and really study the things that he had there. You really do have to study hard to get all of the nuances that I knew would be there.

Take this one for example:

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.

And Then There Were . . . 7 1/2?

Categorizing Sheaffer Pearl Center Pencils (Pearlies) is the kind of thing that can drive you a little bit batty. I devoted pages 144 to 146 in The Catalogue – probably more than anybody cared to know – and in the year or so since the book came out, I’ve done a couple articles here showing off other variations that have come to light since. As it stands, there are seven distinct variations on the Pearlie theme:

From left, these are the flat ball clip, the flat broad Sheaffer clip, the flat broad Fineline clip, the humped Sheaffer clip, the ribbed horizontal Sheaffer clip, the ribbed vertical Sheaffer clip, and . . . whatever that last thing is.

At around the time I was picking up all these Canadian Sheaffers, I saw this one in an online auction:

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.

Since We're North of the Border . . .

David Isaacson wrote a nice article for the Pennant (that’s the magazine you are missing if you aren’t a member of the PCA) a while back about Canadian Sheaffer Balances and the subtle ways in which they differed from their American cousins.

Sometimes, when articles on an obscure subject are published, dealers hop on the bandwagon and bring examples like what they’ve read about to the next show. Usually, when I’ve got an article like that one rattling around in my head, I may notice things along those lines that I wouldn’t have noticed before.

And of course, you can’t rule out the dumb luck that seems to bring things to my doorstep more often than not.

But lately, equal parts of availability, observation and dumb luck have brought a few Canadian Sheaffers home to live at the museum, and it’s worth pointing out what makes them just a little different from what you normally see around here.

First, here’s a set I decided to splurge on as a birthday present to myself – because it included one of those pesky pens, I wouldn’t ordinarily have paid this much for it, so I needed a better excuse than usual to spend the extra money:

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.

Sheaffers, Eh?

The Michigan show was a lot of fun, but in a different way than the DC show is fun. In DC, you’re constantly busy – buying, selling, trading, and when all else fails, socializing until just a couple hours before it’s time to get up and start buying, selling and trading all over again. At smaller shows like the one in Michigan, there’s much more time to talk with people. You’ll make more friends than money at these things.

Such was the case with Bob Everett, who was sitting with Mike Kirk right behind me. Bob had brought a case or two of Sheaffer pens and pencils, and Mike was helping him identify what was what from copies of old Sheaffer catalogs Mike had brought along. I hadn’t met Bob before, but as we got to know each other I found out that he certainly comes by his interest in Sheaffer honestly – his father, Clyde Everett, was President of Sheaffer Pen Canada from 1957 until 1970.

I was able to help a little bit with dating the pencils that Bob had brought with him, and there was one pencil among all the others that, as I looked it over, I just had to ask him whether it was just for lookin’ or for sellin’:

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.

And Now A Word From Your Local Moose Lodge

Back when I was discussing the Dur-O-Lite Ejector Pencils on September 29, 2012, the example I was showing off had "Loyal Order of the Moose" imprinted on the barrel:

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.

Now Was That So Hard?

I’m a little obsessed with patents. Whenever I run across a pencil marked only with a patent date or patent number, I get that tingly, goosebumpy feeling and I can’t wait to look it up.

So when this one turned up in an online auction, I had to get it:

This tiny pencil is only marked around the nose:

"Pat. Jul 11 99."

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.

Blown All Out of Proportion

Matt McColm directed my attention to this one, and I snatched it up immediately:

It looks pretty ordinary, unless you notice that the clip just looks a little bit out of whack for an Eversharp, like something’s out of proportion here:

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.

. . . And The Ones I Left Behind

I didn’t buy everything I liked at Andy Beliveau’s table in Philly that I wanted to, for two reasons. First, I couldn’t afford to. Second, some of them weren’t for sale. This one fit into both categories:

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.

The Ones I Picked Up . . .

As I mentioned a few days ago, the Philadelphia Show was the event at which I finally had an hour or two to really study the things on Andy Beliveau’s table. And I didn’t just study and chat, either – I actually brought home a few Victorian "magic" pencils from Andy’s table. Here’s the ones I brought home from Philly, five of which came from Andy. As for the sixth, I don’t remember which one that was or where I got 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.

My "Monster Tuckie"

I thought about running this one yesterday, and then I thought – since I’m not entirely convinced this is a hack job – that running it almost on April Fool’s day might be perfect.

Here’s the pencil:

It’s sort of a Sheaffer Tuckaway - or rather, like a TUCKaway. Here’s the behemoth next to a normal-sized Tuckaway that Joe Nemecek brought for me to the Philly 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.

In Celebration of the Day

Here’s a Sheaffer that turned up in an online auction. I remember that I didn’t pay to much for it, because I wasn’t too sure about 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.