When Wrong Looks So Right

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This one was not my target in an online auction including several other items.  I assumed I already had one:

The top pulls out to reveal the lead magazine and eraser.  It’s a rear drive pencil, just like Sheaffer’s early flattop pencils, but with a squared-off matching celluloid cap instead of the usual gold-filled crown:

And . . . it’s marked Univer on the clip.  When I compared it to my other Univers, all of the other ones I have seen are different.

Earlier examples, like the ones I thought were duplicates for this one, have a much longer nose and a gold filled cap that fits over a bushing at the top end.  These are nose drive pencils, so the lead advances by twisting the nose rather than the cap.   

Later examples, like those shown at the bottom in dyed celluloid (that’s actually black and pearl celluloid dyed red, green and blue, something Sheaffer did during the Depression to cut costs), have a rounded cap.  These have a similar lead magazine attached to the cap, but the cap is not functional – these are also nose drive pencils.

Univer pencils like these came in a wide range of colors Sheaffer normally didn’t use:

Roger Wooten just published an article in the Spring 2021 issue of The Pennant, in which he outlines the history of the Universal Pen Company, organized by Sheaffer as a Delaware Corporation on July 23, 1928.  According to Roger, Universal Pen Company operated under that name until November 29, 1933, when the company formally changed its name to the “Vacuuum-Fil” pen company.  

That explains these pencils, which notwithstanding their inability to suck up lead out of a box, proudly bore the “Vacuum-Fil” name on their clips:

Roger states that the company’s name was changed one last time to The WASP Pen Company on May 29, 1936, so in rough terms, my Univer pencils date between 1928 and 1933, and my Vacuum-fil pencils date between 1934 and mid-1936 – assuming, of course, that the names were switched close to the times the name was changed and also assuming the company used only its current name on the products it sold.

As far as the weird Univer pencil that started this article, it’s actually nicer than a Sheaffer Titan, more polished in appearance with the same function.  It had to be one of the Universal Pen Company’s earliest efforts