Friday, October 19, 2018

The Minutian Empire

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.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy this article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

The art of noticing, I call it – the ability to look at an object and pinpoint those tiny little details that distinguish it in a sea of what appear at first blush to be the same darned thing.  We collectors dwell in minutia because it is those little details that can make the difference between just another two-dollar junker and an unusual variation costing hundreds of dollars.

The first 50 copies (now 51 – long story) of each of these volumes has been reserved for those hardcore, dedicated collectors who have supported this blog for years – good eggs I call “The Order of the Leadheads.”  These first copies are numbered and include a label inside the front cover, and volume 3, released just a couple weeks ago, commemorates what I call the “third glorious campaign into the Minutian Empire.”


Eversharps, more than any other brand in my opinion, offer an infinite pool of these rabbit holes, and over the last few month I’ve picked up quite a few examples, each of which has a tiny little twist that irk and delight me at the same time. 

First is this silver-plated Eversharp, shown next to what I consider to be its more “normal” counterpart:


Octagonal barrels on metal Eversharps were, I believed, earlier models that were discontinued before Eversharp redesigned its metal pencil line in 1924; yet this one has the longer tip, ribbed clip and redesigned guts indicating post-1924 production:




. . . along with the latest incarnation of Eversharp imprints, with the small, superscript “Wahl” preceding the Eversharp name:


Eversharp Checking Pencils have been an ongoing project here at the blog.  In Volume 4 at page 199, I showed an ultra-rare short model with military clip, along with the catalog reference to "Executive" gold filled and silver plated examples in the regular lengths.  Unfortunately, at the time I didn’t have the more normal versions to show you.  In Chicago I finally turned up the gold filled model (I don’t remember who had it), and in Raleigh Brian McQueen was able to supply a very tired looking but nevertheless heartily welcomed silver plate one:


One of these dollar pencils recently came my way, and it had what appeared to be an identical twin:


In fact, both bear advertisements for Eversharp’s Red Top Leads; but with one little difference: the slogans are different.


Eversharp Dollar Pencils have been another ongoing theme here at the blog.  By this point, color variations aren’t anything new to write home about, but this one really knocked my socks off:


On these Equipoised models, what appear to be the latest flattop incarnations abandoned the black nose cone in favor of a one-piece barrel with a longer tip:


Into the 1930s, this next shot shows another pair of coral “tempoint-styled” pencils - however, these are fitted with Equipoised mechanisms rather than the modified version of Charles Keeran’s 1913 design.  Note that the full sized version has a commemorative 1934 imprint, bordering on anachronistic rather than simply later production!


The shorter cap versions with military clips, however, seem to be even scarcer.  They appear at the top of page 61 in The Catalogue, and I reported them as “the most difficult size” to find; although at the time, I completely missed the fact that they had Equipoised mechanisms inside, and they should have been shown alongside the pencils in frame 7e. 


Coronets – more properly (and boringly) known as “All-Metal pencils” by Eversharp – have a few twists and turns of their own.  Bob Novak had to point this one out to me in Chicago, because I missed what was special:


“It doesn’t have the triangles,” Bob said.  I couldn’t remember whether I’d seen that variation, so I decided to splurge.  Bob was right:


I was thinking of the version with a simple row of rectangles at either end, not a simple row of smaller triangles.  Note that the engraving on the barrel is the same as on the “normal” one with large inserts – the inserts have simply been omitted:


The goofy repeater in the center of this next picture came my way at the DC show in August, with no trim bands at all and marked only with an Eversharp imprint on the back side.  It’s shown between an Eversharp Air-Lite, in the same repeating configuration but with a silver plated clip marked “Eversharp,” and an Eversharp Varsity, a twist-action pencil with that same unmarked, gold filled clip:


Into the 1940s, here’s a Skyline that turned up in Chicago:


I refer to these as a Skyline “Standard II,” with the striped upper barrel and thick center band.  I bought it only because it is so pristine and I thought it would be an upgrade, with two stickers, one indicating price and model and the other hawking the company’s leads:


When I brought it home, though, I found out I didn’t have one in this configuration, color and size – and speaking of size, it reminded me to tell you something.  Conventional wisdom teaches us there are three sizes of Skylines: Demi, Standard and Executive.  Conventional wisdom is wrong:


There were four.

Yeah, I know the Executive in that last shot isn’t a match, but as far as I know they weren’t offered in the Standard II configuration.  But speaking of Executives:


I’ve stumbled across something interesting about them.  While I was trying to fix one for a customer, I had reason to take them apart to see how the mechanisms were different from the standard sized pencils.  Imagine my surprise to find this:


One of my examples has a standard-size mechanism, with the quarter-inch difference in size made up with what appears to be a specially made, extra long eraser button!

Finally, into the 1950s Eversharp’s last quality effort was the Symphony line.  Towards the very end of the Symphony line, Eversharp did some weird configurations that must have cost the company far more than it could afford to specially fabricate.  This is one of them, courtesy of Robert (“Speerbob”) Speerbrecher:


The stacked coin band is a nice touch, and the silver trim and narrow Skyline-like top band are a bit different from the standard Symphony fare.  But then again, towards the end, none of these were exactly mainstream:


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