An Autopoint Update

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Out of all the books I’ve written, A Century of Autopoint is my masterpiece.  I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying to write something that good again.

Of course, no book is ever complete, and fortunately I never promised that what it included was all there would ever be to discover.  Two years later, I am proud to report that no glaring omissions or errors have been brought to my attention; however, a few things have come my way that are worth mentioning.

For starters, an online auction had alarm bells ringing and emails hitting my inbox from Autopoint fans near and far.  This is something I would have liked to have included in the book:

These fill an interesting gap in Autopoint’s early history, the short version of which is as follows: Charles Keeran founded the original Autopoint in 1918, but things didn’t really get rolling until 1920.  In 1921, a series of poor decisions and unavoidable circumstances resulted in a shake-up, and Keeran left Autopoint to join a new startup, the Realite Pencil Company.  Realite’s fortunes rose as the original Autopoint declined, and Realite announced that it has “merged with” Autopoint in June, 1923.  That was a kind way of putting it – Autopoint was falling apart, while Realite needed bigger and better manufacturing facilities.  The merged company was named Autopoint Products Company, and Charles Keeran was made its first (albeit short-lived) President.

All of the evidence available when the book went to press suggested that the Realite name was abandoned immediately upon the merger, and it wouldn’t be revived as a lower-budget brand name for many years.  That’s what makes this find important: the pencils themselves are Model 12 pencils (see A Century of Autopoint, page 60), but the boxes in which they are packaged are the only known examples which have both the Realite and Autopoint names on them.

The instruction sheets are also unusual.  One has an Autopoint instruction sheet and the other features a Realite; since the sheets are otherwise identical, this further establishes that both Realite and Autopoint-branded pencils were made briefly after the merger:

Also included in this lot were a few of Autopoint’s patented (by Charles Keeran) lead and eraser containers, which were marketed by Realite before the merger (see A Century of Autopoint, page 50).  Although Autopoint also marketed cartridge like this under its name through the 1936 catalog (A Century of Autopoint, page 188), the Realite name was thought to have been dropped from them, as well – this lot included a few of the Autopoint-marked cartridges:

Yet there were also several cartridges bearing both the Realite and Autopoint names:

Moving into Autopoint’s golden age, these two pencils also came my way in recent months.

The larger model 48 came by way of my friend Ibrahim Abou-Saad, who listed it in an online auction.  I’m always a sucker for an unusual color, and even though I have a Model 48 in white (see Figure 8-73 on page 121 of A Century of Autopoint), the large Autopoint imprint on the side of this one is worth the price of admission:

Autopoint fans will instantly recognize the other pencil as a Model 19X in Ivory, which I described as “the undisputed king of the Deluxe Autopoint line,” described (but not pictured) in Autopoint’s 1927 catalog and fully illustrated in the 1930 catalog.  The photo at the top of page 102 shows examples from my collection, but I didn’t have one in ivory – at the bottom of the page, I had to cheat and include a picture from Jim Stauffer which included an ivory example like this.  Call it greed . . . call it my OCD tendency to want one picture which included them all . . . I paid heavily but I got my wish:

This next group left a bad taste in my mouth:

These would have been included in A Century of Autopoint, had I bought them when they were first offered to me.  I was about halfway through writing and layout for the book in the summer of 2019, and I knew I would see hundreds of my friends at the DC Show that August, which would provide me with opportunities galore to photograph rare examples and acquire others for inclusion in the book.  I widely publicized that I would bringing the draft of the book and that I looked forward to seeing other examples.

One dealer, whom I won’t name, brought these along with many others, packaged in a leather Autopoint folder.  So many had John E. Horn’s name on them that it was clear this was a mostly intact salesman’s sample case – with the gaps filled in with common Autopoints you’d find for $2 at a flea market all day long.  This dealer offered it to me, but at an exorbitant price.  There was no breaking up the “set” (which wasn’t a set to begin with), there was no borrowing it to photograph the interesting specimens for inclusion in the book . . . and when I balked at the price, his response was that he’d just wait until after my book came out, then he’d be able to sell them for a lot more.

The good news - if an experience like that will yield any - is that when I declined at that price, he tried to play some good friends of mine against each other to get the best price he could out of the lot.  We all know each other.  All of his marks were people that were already contributing to the book.  We talk to each other.  By show’s end, nobody wanted anything to do with him or his folder full of Autopoints.  To quote John Hall, “I’d rather run them over in my f***ing driveway.”

By the time the Philadelphia Show rolled around in January, 2020, A Century of Autopoint was in print.  This dealer was in attendance, and he’d given up on the extortion plot.  These pencils were scattered around on his table, and for a price that wasn’t too far out of line, I finally brought them home.  

From the top, the Glidden Soya Plastic marked example isn’t completely foreign to me - a black example from Jim Stauffer’s collection is pictured on page 196 of A Century of Autopoint.  

I had to buy the next two down, in what Autopoint called “Water White” clear Bakelite, because I couldn’t remember whether the ones pictured in the book were mine or my Dad’s (we combined our collections as we shot these golden age examples).  Besides, both had Mr. Horn’s name on them.  

The thin model with a round upper ferrule is a Model 18BG “Streamline De Luxe,” and the one pictured on page 119 of A Century of Autopoint was my Dad’s.  “Diamond Cut” caps were added in November, 1937, and faceted upper ferrules to match were added shortly thereafter - and the Water White Model 58G shown on page 120 of A Century of Autopoint belonged to Jim Stauffer.

The next Model 58Gs, in that salmon-pinkish color, were ones I was particularly keen to add to my collection.  

Dad has a barrel in this color from Autopoint’s factory archive with an attached paper tag indicating that the company found the material “unsuitable” (see page 194).  On page 118, I show an earlier Model 58G from Jim Stauffer’s collection in this color, with a round upper ferrule and imprinted “BAKELITE” on the barrel, and I commented that while the color was uncataloged, “other examples have turned up with regular customer imprints.”  These two were the “other examples” I was referring to, so yeah . . . forgive, forget, and spend a bit of cash.

There was another reason I wanted to have them - there was a point I failed to make in the book.  When Autopoints had round ferrules at the top end, the company name was imprinted on that ferrule and the clips were unmarked.  After the unmarked faceted ferrules were added to match the new “diamond cut” caps, Autopoint struggled with where to mark its products. For a short time, Autopoint added an imprint next to the clip, and both of these have that feature:

The light translucent red example is a very interesting variation, but only if you really know your stuff.

On page 141 of A Century of Autopoint, there’s pictures of the Model 54, first cataloged in 1948 and sporting the later “Petau clips,” named after inventor Erik Petau:

This is no Model 54 - it’s at least 10 years earlier, in my estimation.  In addition to the bolted-on clip, long abandoned by 1948 (the Petau clips was introduced in 1941), note that trim ring where the nose meets the barrel.  That ring is found only very rarely – and without exception, on pencils made around 1938-1939.

Translucent red Autopoints in the 1930s were much darker than what you see here, and those higher end colors were associated with gold filled trim rather than what Autopoint called “silvonite.”  The Model 54 introduced in 1948 was based on a much earlier experiment with lighter red plastic paired with silvonite trim – this experiment, in fact.

Finally, for now, is this later, injection molded Model 48:

Injection molding allowed for a wider range of colors than the Bakelite Autopoint used earlier in Model 48 production.  Some of the wilder ones tend to command a premium, even though they are much later and were in production as late as 1970.  Here’s the picture from page 140 of A Century of Autopoint:

At first blush, this one looks to be just another dull, gray example from the twilight of Autopoint’s successes.  I saw just a little bit more in it, though:

Commemorative dates are always helpful in better defining the evolution of these pencils, and we have a date of 1954 as the “Silver Anniversary” of the Pennsylvania Transformer Company.  That isn’t the latest example of the script Autopoint clip, but it’s closed.  The latest I’ve found, before the introduction of the “Big A” clips, was from 1955.

And . . . that isn’t gray, as the imprint suggests.  Look closely and you’ll see subtle marbling . . . silver marbling, perhaps . . .