The Email from March

Note:  this is part two of a series.  Part one is found at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2014/10/an-entirely-new-take-on-riedell.html

Last March, as all the pieces were falling into place with respect to the Riedell Repeating Pencil and I thought I had a pretty good handle on things, I received an email from a guy named Bob Leslie that set me back on my heels. Bob had been doing a bit of genealogy research, and while he was scouting around for whatever he could find concerning the "Riedell" branch of his family tree, he stumbled across my Mechanical Pencil Museum.

Bob doesn’t collect mechanical pencils, but he already knew more about the Riedell than I did. He indicated that his grandfather, Charles Martin Riedell, was a CPA from New Jersey with offices in New York – and that in the late 1920s, he embarked on a little side venture selling the Riedell Repeating Pencil. Even more exciting was that Bob's grandfather had passed down some of the pencils to his family members, several of whom - including Bob - still had them in their possession!

I replied to Bob quick as a jackrabbit and asked him if any of his family members would be willing to share pictures of what they had with me, and Bob said he’d check with his cousins and let me know. Shortly after that, I started receiving pictures from Lynn Riedell, and I was delighted to see that in addition to Riedell pencils, the family also kept this great advertising sign:

Lynn also shared with me pictures of some of the pencils he has – the largest spread of Riedell Repeating Pencils I’ve ever seen, in fact . . .

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 3, 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.