Rarer than Rarer (than Rare)

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A few weeks ago I posted my first article of these harder-to-find Autopoint pencils, with rounded upper bands and round plastic caps with a slight hump on the top:

Tough to find, I’d reported of the oversized models.  Of the thin model shown at the top?  Dang near impossible, I’d reported, and the backchannel chatter from the Autopoint set confirmed that observation.

In fact, you so rarely see those thin models that when you do, you’re likely to breeze right on by . . . especially when it’s a thin model in a disguise.  As I was preparing to go to Baltimore, I didn’t have room for my great big bin of “junkers” from the Philadelphia Mother Lode, so I combed through them a bit more to cull out some of the better ones to bring along.  I’d already been through this bunch twice, and it wasn’t until that third pass that I noticed this one in there:

Yep, it’s a demi-sized, clipless thin model!

And it packs one more surprise, which must have been what threw me off with this one: the cap isn’t plastic.  It’s made of anodized aluminum:

That makes three variations on this theme so far:

Rare, more than rare and holy cow.