A Taste of Normal

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In that recent article I published about the Waterman Patrician (https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2020/04/putting-that-first-year-designation-to.html), there was something in that first picture that bugged me.  If you are OCD like me, you already know what I’m talking about:

Yeah.  My banded turquoise has the same clip from the Waterman Number 7, rather than the traditional Patrician clip . . . and (cue fingernails on a chalkboard) it doesn’t match the clip on all the other banded Patrician pencils in that picture.

The reason has been my fascination with “closeout” Patricians made in the late 1930s, using leftover parts from the Patrician line blended with parts from later models.  I’ve written about those several times here – most recently at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2016/12/three-patricians-from-ohio-pen-show.html (if you’ve got the Leadhead’s books, the seminal article explaining these - “With Apologies to Mr. Nishimura,” is in Volume 2, starting at page 37).

Patrician pencils, especially in the more desirable colors like turquoise, are expensive.  Given a choice between a “normal” one and a closeout edition, I’ve found the latter more interesting; satisfied with what’s in my collection, I haven’t been going out of my way looking to drop a fair amount of change on something that feels . . . frankly, a little anticlimactic.

But with that picture sticking between my ears like a pebble in your shoe, I happened to stumble across normal, and at a reasonable price:

So there’s a nice range of Patrician pencils in turquoise, from bandless “first year” (not really), banded normal, banded but with a No. 7 clip as Patrician clips ran out, and at bottom, one made after Waterman’s supply of Patrician clips, bands and longer nose sections had all run dry:

Staging all those pencils from the first picture was a bit of a pain in the rear, and I’ve not gotten around to reshooting it.  Guess for now, I’ve just pulled that pebble out of one shoe and put it in my other one!