More About the Last Hurrah

A lot of what John Holland put out towards the end was really, really terrible. Like Eversharp, Holland kept going long after the company should have quit. There was one relative bright spot as the company slipped into history, though: the company put out some neat calendar pencils that I’ve written about here a couple of times (check out http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/05/ill-never-surprise-jack.html and http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/06/jacks-back.html).

I’ve got just a couple more sentences to add to this last chapter of the Holland story:

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.

After Rex

(Note: this is the second installment in a series about the John Holland Gold Pen Company.)

During the mid-1920s, The John Holland Gold Pen Company offered pencils which were made by the Rex Manufacturing Company of Providence, Rhode Island. Sometime prior to 1930 or 1931, Holland quit buying from Rex and began to offer pencils of the company’s own unique design. Even though these were more cheaply made, they nevertheless had a distinctive look that makes them very easy to spot in a lineup.

I found a couple Holland sets at the Ohio Show this year – you heard right, the Leadhead picked up a couple nibby things to go along with the pencils! Here’s the earlier of the two:

The box looks to be earlier than the set itself. Maybe Holland was going for the retro look – this is more Victorian than deco – but if history is any guide, my bet is that Holland was using up older boxes:

Here’s the set itself:

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.

A Few Hollands of Note

The John Holland Gold Pen Company of Cincinnati, Ohio is a favorite of mine, and not just because it hails from my home state. During the company’s heyday in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century, Holland produced some of the finest and most interesting products out there, including several fascinating pencil designs.

Even though the company was well past its prime in the 1920s, John Holland having passed away and leaving the company to be mismanaged into oblivion by his children, there were a few twilight moments worth mentioning. Here are two of them:

These are in the Rex patent family of pencils (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/03/prequel-lets-make-that-birth-death-and.html).

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.

One Last Bit to Add

Solving the Selfeed puzzle was one of my proudest moments. Not only was the long-lost history of who made these pencils finally brought to light, but the convoluted path leading to that history was a story in itself (the article was published at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/11/one-wild-goose-chase.html).

There was just one last little nagging issue that I couldn’t shake. Here’s the pencil that kick-started that story:

I couldn’t help thinking that there might be a piece missing from the top, and those suspicions were confirmed when this one showed up in an online auction:

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.

Two Out of Four Horsemen Ain't Bad

This one surprised me when it showed up in an online auction:

Looks kind of like an Eversharp with that two-piece nose, doesn’t it? But that top just doesn’t look like an Eversharp, and on closer examination, there’s two neat surprises here:

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.

Small World

Over this last weekend, Saturday morning started as usual with a cup of coffee and a quick check of the online auctions, where I placed bids on two pencils that were closing later on in the day. Then I was off to the Ohio State Fairgrounds for January’s Don Scott Antique Show..

The January show is usually a pretty sedate affair, with the frenzy of the huge November and December shows behind and drab weather. A lot of what you see is the same stuff that was there in the previous two months – actually, it’s mostly the stuff that didn’t sell. Still, I enjoy going – it’s something to do, and I still find a few neat things.

This time, I got something a whole lot better.

It started when I was delighted to see a couple Victorians in a showcase:

When I asked for a closer look, the guy pulled the black hard rubber one out to show me first. With a loupe, I took a good look at the imprint:

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.

I Keep Meaning To Do This

On page 116 of The Catalogue, you’ll find a picture of some interesting Parker pencils which I refer to as "Parker’s Weird Utility Pencil."

Somewhere along the line, I learned that Parker called these the Parker 100 - not to be confused with the company’s recent recycling of that number about 10 years ago. I meant to mention that here, and I was so convinced I had done so that when it came up in an online discussion a couple years ago, I tore my hair out trying to find where I’d written about it.

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.

I Thought I Knew

When I ran across this one at the DC show, I couldn’t remember whether I had one like it:

The hallmark at the top was one I recognized, and which I had written about here before:

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.

A Very Convincing Disguise

The first thing I found at the DC show last August is the kind of thing I don’t usually buy:

It’s not marked, and it’s clearly not American – two strikes and usually that’s an out in my book. On the plus side, though, it’s a really interesting pencil to look at . . . and I’ve already written about them before:

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.

Before Sheaffer Put on the Togs

This one turned up at the Chicago Show last May:

If it doesn’t look like much, that’s because like so many other weird Sheaffer variants, it looks just enough like what you’d normally expect to see. I picked this one up because I just liked the look of it, even though I was sure I had several just like it at home. Then I put it down. Twenty minutes later, I was back. "He wants it. He wants it not. He wants it. He wants it not."

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.

At the Other End of the Sheaffer-Lovers' Club

Back in October, when I posted about this one, I was fairly confident it was Pat Mohan who showed it to me:

It wasn’t. It was Mike Kirk. Pat knew it wasn’t his for two reasons;

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.

Better than "Innie" and "Outie"

Parker 21 pencils don’t get a lot of attention, due to "matching pen syndrome." Some pencils, like Waterman Patricians, are worth a lot more than they would be otherwise solely because of the pens they match. Others, like Parker 21 pencils, are worth less than Parker 51 pencils – even though they are exactly the same on the inside.

Until recently, about all I could tell you about the Parker 21s was that some of the clips were convex and others were concave – or, since no one gets too upset if you trivialize a 21, I called them "innies" and "outies," to borrow a belly button reference.

At the Raleigh show last summer, I was offered this grouping of pencils, and I had to accept for no reason other than that they took my vocabulary up a few notches:

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.

Just Because It Exists

Condition is everything, some will say. Pass on an example with issues and wait for a clean one – so goes the conventional widsom. "They didn’t just make one," I’ve even been known to say.

But when it’s just a buck or two in a junk box, and it fills in a little bit of a story I’d like to tell, I don’t play according to Hoyle:

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.

The Eclipse I Hated To Buy

At the end of the DC show last summer, John Hall and I had packed up all of our stuff on Sunday and were enjoying some last-minute shopping before heading home. That’s when I found this one:

I didn’t want to buy it.

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.

Myk Daigle had this interesting piece in tow, marked "Eureka" on both the locking ring as well as on the nib.  The sleeve rotates and slides forward to reveal a thumb-filler pressure bar, and is marked with the patent date of May 29, 1906 -- referring to patent number 821,940 issued to John Holland.

Who Gave This To Us?

This one has just enough interesting stuff going on that it’s fun to think about:

Now before all you Parker guys get your panties in a bunch, I’m not suggesting this is some rare . . . whatever. Bits and pieces of this one, however, have me scratching my head a bit. Let’s start with the tip, which has the typical Parker dimples around it. For grins, I pulled off the top of this one and posed it next to a 1930s Parkette:

Inconclusive. There’s so many different variations on these mechnaisms that I couldn’t rule the innards out as genuine Parker.

Next, I compare the clip to a comparable example, as seen on a 1930s Parker Vacumatic:

Again, I’d call it inconclusive. The clip is slightly different from a known Vacumatic, but note that there are fewer "feathers" on either side of the arrow, and the border on either side of the word "Parker" flare outwards on the Vacumatic clip. Still, I don’t know if that means it’s a counterfeit Parker clip or another variation on the theme. Then there’s the jewel on the top:

Aluminum, like a first year Parker 51. Finally, as to that lower barrel, I don’t know why there’s two gold filled bands on an otherwise white metal-trimmed pencil. Furthermore, I haven’t seen that plastic used on a Parker before, which has me reading the cryptic imprint and nodding in agreement:

"Who Gave This To Me?"

Passion for Pockettes

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