Why I Have So Damned Many

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I’ve been trying to get better about keeping duplicates out of my collection, so when I upgrade something I’m happy to take what it replaces to the next show and release it back into the wild.

When it’s a duplicate...

Take this, for example:

This WASP Clipper isn’t one you see very often, and to find it on a price card?  With spare leads and erasers?  Yeah, the paper is a little ragged, but when have you ever seen a WASP product card?  Oh, and with a price sticker???

Wow – a dollar price tag, with fifteen cents’ worth of erasers, plus a container of lead – all for 95 cents?

So, I figured, I’d take the one in my collection with me to the Triangle Show, where I would have no trouble finding it a new home.  Except I hadn’t noticed a couple things:

First off, the example I have is missing the eraser, and then there’s the clips . . .

The one which came with a product card has that neat WASP clip with a stylized “W” at the top, while the example I already had is adorned with a flat clip.  So even though the pencils are otherwise identical, including the imprints, I guess I’ll keep both of them.

Speaking of imprints, this next one was an accident.  I fell in love with it when it showed up in an auction:

When it arrived, I was excited to take it to the museum and see how it looked next to the other colors and . . .

Dang.  I already had one, and the color on the one I had was nicer than the new addition.  But, as I always do before I consign something to the sale pile, I took a closer look, and whaddaya know:

One is a Clipper, while the other is a "Thinline."

And then there was this . . . one of these, I don’t remember which, came from the Philadelphia “Snow Bowl” show of 2016, at which I was a little bored, with cash in my pocket, and buying a pencil knowing it was probably a duplicate but picking it up because it was sooooo cheap:

and on closer examination:

One has the earlier "WASP/Vacuum-Fil Pen Co." imprint.