Saturday, April 11, 2020

That Thing I Hate To Do

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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Here’s a couple of pencils I’ve written about before, by way of introduction:


Each has a nearly identical perpetual calendar built into the barrel - the days of the week section rotates, so you always know what day it is.  Clips on these two both have that turned up end, and the ball on one is slightly larger than the other:


While one has a Hicks hallmark, the other is marked for Edward Todd:


The article in which these two appeared back in February, 2015 (https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-patriarch-of-family.html), and the hypothesis of the article was that Hicks would have made these both on its own account as well as for Edward Todd, in light of the fact that both were made under the Hicks patent, number 1,259,738 issued on March 19, 1918:


But that’s not why I’m writing about these today.

When I was browsing through the collection in the course of writing those ruler pencil pieces, I stumbled across another pencil along these lines which I hadn’t written about, and it seemed a real shame not to do so:


You would think I would remember picking up something like this, especially since I’m sure I paid a hefty price for it:


It’s an Edward Todd, and it’s solid gold.  It’s been my mantra . . . I hate paying for gold . . . just because the intrinsic value of the metal is usually what these things are worth.  I’m interested in the history, and given a choice between the same piece in solid gold or some other metal, I’d rather buy more history than better metal.

Unless, of course, a solid gold piece has a feature I’ve never seen before . . .


I may not remember when I bought this, who I bought it from and I’m sure I’ve blocked out of my mind how much I paid, but I do remember why I did it this time.  This is the first and only one I see with a rotating window revealing the months of the year, as well as the day of the week!

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