Cheap in a Way I Never Heard Of

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I’m always a sucker for a flattop pencil with a name not represented on the wall ‘o pencils:

This one is marked “Joffe” on the clip.  The name I’ve heard of, and I’ve got a distant recollection of someone telling me that the Joffe was an Eclipse subbrand - I think I heard it used in the same circles as names like Park Row, for example.

There’s not much to talk about with this one, as the name is almost the only thing worth talking about with these.  Almost.

I didn’t notice until I was editing the pictures that this one isn’t really a marbled plastic – it’s an all black plastic barrel painted to look like it’s marbled plastic.  I’m not entirely sure how masking off a plastic barrel and painting it would have saved on production costs, but that’s the only explanation.  It certainly wasn’t painted to look more expensive than a marbled barrel – only to look just as good.