Who Else?

This article has been included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 7, now available here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy the article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

When this unmarked ringtop showed up in an online auction, I was probably buying it for all the wrong reasons, but I wanted to test a theory:

The pencil bears more than a passing resemblance to a Sheaffer golf pencil, and the thought rumbling around in my head was whether this unmarked pencil might have been made by Sheaffer:

It’s very close, but not exact:

Even the rings on top are nearly identical:

I was hoping the cap and barrel of this new one might be interchangeable.  There’s two types of threading on Sheaffer golf pencils, one much narrower than the other.  My gray one has threading that looked close, and again . . . close but not exact:

The parts are a perfect match for another unmarked golf pencil I’ve had laying around.  I was so confident I’d written an article suggesting a Sheaffer connection with this one, I spent time scrolling through close to 100 articles on the brand.  I still keep it alongside my Sheaffer golf pencils:

It isn’t in any known color for a Sheaffer golf pencil, but that shape . . . why does that shape alone have me pondering whether there might be a Sheaffer connection?

When Sheaffer introduced the Balance line of streamlined pens and pencils, the company applied for design patents for the new, tapered ends.  Design patents were awarded first for pencils, then fountain pens and combination pens/pencils, but almost as an afterthought, on August 30, 1929 William Cuthbert and Earl Sodeberg also applied for a design patent for the teardrop-shaped golf pencils.  It was awarded as Design Patent 80,362, and Sheaffer was extremely aggressive in protecting its patent rights as the streamlined shape became all the rage (recall that The Pick Pen Company was one of those which ran afoul of these patents, and Sheaffer’s patents were upheld and held infringed).  If anyone other than Sheaffer made this pencil, that manufacturer did so at his peril.

But what of that band, you say? 

Doesn’t look very Sheafferish, you say?  But wait - there is some precedent for that band in the Sheaffer universe:

These “off catalog” pencils have special bands - double and triple ones - and on close examination, they are very similar to what we find on my unmarked golf pencil:

Yet again . . . very close, but not exact.