My Lunchbox Special

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Life in a small town means that at lunchtime, with my office and home separated by just four minutes from doorstep to doorstep, I take a break from the rigors of practice to go home and let out the dog.  It may sound mundane, but when I’m talking to lawyers in large firms and in big cities, I think they envy my life.  I never fail to appreciate it.

The other day, while Zoey the black lab was moseying around and patrolling the perimeter of the backyard, I pulled out my phone to check the online auctions... just checking items ending soon to see what was up.  There, with less than fifteen minutes to go, was a junk lot of 22 items.

OK, 21.

There was one pencil in that lot that had me throwing in a crazy bid, waiting eagerly to see if anyone else noticed what was lurking in those terrible photographs, poorly described and surrounded by junkers . . . and nobody did.

It’s an Eversharp in arguably the rarest and most desirable color Eversharp used – “flamingo.”  Better still is that this is an unusual model, the short full-girth stubby model with the military clip:

The series was unusual in that there are manufacturer’s imprints both on the cap as well as on the barrel, as you can see in the above picture.  Both ringtop and military clip models were offered, although the ringtops are harder to find – harder still intact, since the rings weren’t very well secured.  Here’s the ones I’ve found:

Note that the trim bands are slightly different on my new flamingo example, both in width and positioning; and that great mottled hard rubber example at the top lacks any bands at all.  For some reason, Eversharp appeared to play more with band placement on the hard rubber models than other ones - it’s the only color in the Tempoint-style series that comes with or without lower bands.

These appear in Wahl Eversharp’s 1928 catalog, and there’s a copy at the Pen Collectors of America’s library.  They were shown in both ringtop and military clip models in rosewood (mottled hard rubber with more of a woodgrain pattern than the more burled appearance shown above), red hard rubber and black hard rubber . . . but not in flamingo.  Here’s the page showing the rosewood pencils in this series:

There’s another variation on these, fitted with a top bushing which has the second manufacturer’s imprint on it.  I’ve found two of them:

The company’s 1929 catalog doesn’t include any gold-filled trim models, relegating this size to a utility line with nickel-plated trim.  The 1926 catalog at the PCA library shows pencils with the longer metal tip ends rather than the two bands shown here, so I think that’s too early.  I haven’t been able to find a full 1927 catalog, so I’d say it’s a good bet that 1927 is when these were made.

The flamingo example is a welcome, uncataloged addition to an unusual series – not quite luxury line, but not quite utility model, either.  But where it really takes a nice place in the museum is in the flamingo club:

And I never noticed until I took this picture that the earlier models were made with a slightly darker flamingo than the Equipoised models!