Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Living in Sin

"Hey Jon, you like weird [stuff], right?" said Keith Prosser last Thursday when I first saw him at the Ohio Pen Show. It was in the hotel bar, and I was taking a break after my first few hours of hunting for weird [stuff] at that exact moment – actually, I suppose that’s what I was doing from the moment I arrived until the show ended on Sunday.

Keith presented me with the weirdest [stuff] I’ve seen in a long time. It is so weird, in fact, that I broke two rules to buy it from him: it’s not American, and it’s not marked. I had a blast all weekend showing this thing off:


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3 comments:

John Hubbard said...

The "sin" pencils are fascinating, and reminded me of a post on Phil Munson's "Fountain Pen Restoration" blog. He described a Spors fountain pen with a compass on the top of the cap. When the compass was unscrewed from the cap, a set of five tiny dice fell out, very much like your sin pencil. Link to his post below...
John Hubbard

https://munsonpens.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/spors-fountain-pen-entertainment-center/

Jon Veley said...

You're right, John. I couldn't say whether there's a Spors connection other than general similarity, though. I have other pencils with dice on board that have no apparent connection to these (a topic for another day). I did an article awhile ago here on a "Biltwell" pencil with a compass on top, but that had a knife inside rather than dice.

According to Richard Binder, Frank Spors was a Minnesota importer who brought in all sorts of things from eastern Asia, not Germany. IF its Spors and IF Binder's right, these might have come from Japan, not Germany as I thought.

And the Spors logo shown on Richard's page answers another question I've had.....

philm said...

Frank Spors did also import from Germany. In conversations with his grandson, he did so up until WWII when he had to curtail this due to his German heritage and cousins being German Officers. Whether he continued to import from Germany after the War, I have no direct knowledge.