Shedding Another Mystery

After World War II, the mechanical industry underwent a transition. Before the war, there wasn’t much of a distinction between companies making pencils as writing instruments and those which manufactured pencils intended as promotional giveaways. In general, companies just turned out pencils, some better than others, and if a customer wanted pencils made with an advertising slogan on them, the companies would gladly oblige.

Postwar, there was a much brighter line. Companies tended to specialize more, with some turning out mechanical pencils intended to be sold as quality writing instruments, while others were devoted almost entirely to making advertising pencils. Usually, the mechanisms inside these pencils were cheap nose-drive screw mechanisms, and since they were cheaply made, they haven’t yet attracted broad collector interest. Values of advertising pencils are usually driven by what is advertised on them rather than what who made the pencil itself.

Although there was a proliferation of advertising specialty companies proliferated beginning in the late 1940s, very few of the dozens of new trade names under which advertisers were sold actually made the pencils themselves. An established company, such as Brown & Bigelow or Ritepoint, would supply generic pencils to an advertising specialty company, which would then screen print the customer’s advertising on to customers.

Not much has been written about these connections to date. Since interest in these is starting to take off and I’ve got piles of these pencils evidencing these connections, I’m going to start throwing out there what I’ve been able to figure out about these so far.  For starters, take these:

"Shedd-Brown" pencils turn up every so often, and on most of them, there’s no outward indication that there was no Shedd-Brown Company that actually made pencils . . .

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.