All of the Good Points . . . None of the Bad

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 6, now on sale at The Legendary Lead Company.  I have just a few hard copies left of the first printing, available here, and an ebook version in pdf format is available for download here.

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I know they’re just pencils, workaday items that just don’t matter that much in the grand scheme of human civilization.  But as I tell these stories, I’ve come to appreciate that there are times when something passes into my hands that brings with it more than just the ability to make a dark line on a sheet of paper  - it brings along with it the baggage of rich history.

That’s what happened when this came along:

I’ve put together the story of the Dollarpoint Pencil Company here in many installments - the five-part detailed history was posted in 2014 (it starts in The Leadhead’s Pencil Blog Volume 3, page 47) and I’ve added a few follow up pieces to the story since then (see “What Became of Dollarpoint . . . Revealed” at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/11/what-became-of-dollarpoint-revealed.html and “The Handoff to Western” at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-handoff-to-western.html).

I inadvertently hoard Dollarpoints, because there are still so many gaps in what I know that I’m always hoping a different imprint or some other feature will fit into that puzzle.  When this one came up in an online auction, I knew it was only a matter of how many dollars it would take to book a one-way ticket for it to travel to Newark, Ohio.  At the end of the day, it was a lot cheaper than I thought it would be.  Sigh . . . sometimes I feel like I’m a cult of one.

Note that on the front of this salesman’s case J.E. Roach & Company is identified as “National Distributors” for the brand – Jesse E. Roach was the assignee of all the company’s design and utility patents, and the company named after him was sometimes identified as the manufacturer, sometimes as the distributor.  Roach was on the board of directors for Dollarpoint, as well.  ‘Twas quite the tangled web.

Inside the case are a nice grouping of Artpoint and Dollarpoint pencils . . . and a note left for posterity:

“C.G. Francis - First Pencil Samples for selling - approx. 1920.”  Not approximately, methinks – damned spot on is more like it.  All of the initial patents, both utility and design, were applied for in 1920, and the incorporation of the Dollarpoint Pencil Company was reported in The Bookseller, Newsdealer and Stationer on July 1, 1920.  In my 2014 series, I reproduced a snippet view from Modern Stationer, which wasn’t available for full viewing at the time.  “The new Dollarpoint and Artpoint pencils will be ready for the market soon,” the Modern Stationer piece indicated.

Since 2014, the full version has been made available, and while that volume of Modern Stationer started in 1920, it overlapped 1921 - this piece actually ran on February 25, 1921, and here’s a clearer copy of the announcement:

I have no idea who C.G. Francis was.  Perhaps he (or she) was a salesperson who received an advance order.  Perhaps Francis had some affiliation with J.E. Roach & Co. or with the stationer Cardinell-Vincent, which had the west coast agency for the brand.  Time will tell, but for our purposes, Francis was a person with the real inside track on what was about to be rolled out at Dollarpoint.

And their offerings, as indicated by the pencils inside this case, were impressive indeed:

The top and bottom examples in this picture are the company’s budget line, marked “Dollarpoint” at the nose.  They are slightly less hefty and lack the more intricate scrollwork found on the upper “Artpoint” line:

There’s a couple really interesting things about that top one.  First, it’s in a shorter size with a side clip – out of some 25 of these Artpoints and Dollarpoints I’ve found over the years, only one other example has come my way in this size, and it’s an Artpoint rather than a Dollarpoint.  Also, it still has its metal price tag of $1.00, fashioned as a neat little tab that fits under the clip:

The Artpoint ringtop also has a price tag - $1.50 for the heavier, more intricately detailed line’s smallest model:

The long Artpoint with a cap that looks a bit off is a bit worse for wear, but it appears to be corrosion that has occurred sitting in the case over the last century rather than wear from use.  As for the cap, it makes sense to include it in a salesmans’ case since it shows off one of the company’s other talents:

Just like the big boys, Dollarpoint offered custom enamel advertising emblems for the tops of their pencils.   Jevnes’ Fine Foods was a real operation: I found an undated photograph which was supposedly taken at Palos Verdes Estates, California in which one of their delivery trucks unintentionally made a cameo appearance:

The nicest piece in the bunch, at least to me, is that gold filled Artpoint.  It’s also in that rare short side-clip size, and while the plating on these was prone to wear, this one has fared very well in this case for the last century:

Just as the case advertises, “All of the good points . . . none of the bad.”