My Plain Old Stainless Steel Skyline

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In the Eversharp Skyline series, the stainless steel-trimmed examples command higher prices than even the Command Performance solid gold ones.  It’s one of those rare instances in which the collector value of a non-precious variant eclipses the intrinsic value of its precious metal cousin:

I’ve posted about these once before, at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/01/good-thing-i-kept-my-mouth-shut.html.  This example is a little bit cleaner, picked out of a lot of things that sold for a song solely because no one was paying attention online that particular afternoon.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: damn, that stainless steel is classy:

I don’t think I’ll ever say it’s the classiest of the Skylines anymore, though.  Along came the DC show, at which An Tran arrived with a boatload of new inventory, including these two:

At first I only purchased one, and believe it or not it was the one with the imprint:

“1941 Safety Award / L.E. Smith.”   Neither the identity of Mr. Smith nor his dedication to safety interested me as much as having a year associated with this configuration: 1941, early in the Skyline’s run.  Why did I want the one with this information?  Because my initial concern was that an ordinary gold filled clip assembly might have been substituted for a missing stainless one, and the gold filled button from a presentation series pencil in place of the plain black one:

But I got to thinking about that concern as the show went on, and I believe this is the real deal for two reasons: first, An didn’t just have two of these -- he had five, an unprecedented number of stainless Skylines to pop up at any one time.  Second, while it’s possible to take five perfectly good Skyline stainless pencils, remove the derby and replace them with a gold filled clip and derby, no . . . I’ve replaced those derbies before, and why anyone would do one – let alone five – is beyond me.  Repair manuals say all you need to do is crush the derby and replace it, but that’s a deceptively simple instruction (see “Radical Surgery on a Skyline” for the ordeal that is removing and replacing one of these at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/02/radical-surgery-on-skyline.html).

That’s when I decided to go back and get a second one, without that imprint.  It was the last one An had of the five he brought.

So, now that I’ve concluded these are legitimate, I can say something I never thought I’d hear myself say:

I’ve got two really nice Skyline stainless pencils, and a plain old boring one.