Redemption

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

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There was a time, many years ago, during which I would look at a pencil critically, decide whether it “fit” into my collection, and if it didn’t I would send it on to a new owner.

Later, as I became more interested in the subject and the collection expanded, I resigned myself to being more of an archivist than a collector – every pencil “fit” somewhere, it was just a matter of figuring out where.  In most cases, it wasn’t all that hard to reacquire the pencils I’d let slip through my grasp, since after all they didn’t just make one of each.

One, however, eluded me for more than a decade:

About five years ago, my friend John Coleman sent me a picture of his example, and I wrote about my wayward Redipoint that July (see https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/07/i-wish-i-could-remember-what-i-did-with.html).  I’ll admit to having something of a selfish motive in writing that last article, since often one of my readers will come up with something I’m looking for after I let it be known I’m trying to find it. 

In this case, though, the article didn’t do any good, and it would be another four years before I’d cross paths with another example.  Funny, you’d think I would remember where and from whom I got it, after as long as a searched.

This is a Redipoint, and we know from the imprint that it was made after 1926, when old man Bigelow from Brown and Bigelow finished serving his prison sentence for tax evasion and had reclaimed the Redipoint brand from William Ingersoll, to whom he had sold it in 1922 (see “The Real Story of Redipoint” at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-real-story-of-redipoint.html).

Note the absence of the Ingersoll name from the imprint:

The trademark for this script is included in American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953 (my blog, so my shameless plug – the book is available at https://www.legendaryleadcompany.com/store/p86/American_Writing_Instrument_Trademarks_1870-1953_.html):

The Redipoint name in this script was filed before the incorporation of Ingersoll Redipoint, in 1921 – and in it, the date of first use claimed was in 1917:

In “The Real Story of Redipoint,” I characterized the incorporation of Ingersoll Redipoint as something of an outright sale, a handoff of the Redipoint pencil business from Brown & Bigelow to William Ingersoll in early 1922.  That my have been an oversimplification. 

The registration for the Redipoint Ingersoll mark is also included in the book, and it wasn’t filed until January 11, 1923, eight months after the new company was formed and by all accounts the transition was over.  The application for registration was signed by Herbert H. Bigelow, as Treasurer of the Ingersoll Redipoint Company, Inc.:

There’s one more detail about this pencil which helps to date it to even later than 1926.  That extra long top conceals a built-in lighter:

That lighter can be pulled out, and there’s something stamped on it:

“Redilite,” in the same script as the Redipoint trademark.  Of course, the Redilite trademark isn’t found in my book, since it doesn’t have anything to do with writing instruments, but fortunately it was pretty easy to find:

Many trademark registrations were filed long after the dates the mark was first claimed to be used, so it’s anybody’s guess how accurate that date might be.  In the case of the Redilite mark, however, the application for registration was filed on May 9, 1929, and the date it was first claimed to be used was April 1, 1929.

I think that date is rock solid.