What's Right and What Isn't

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I don’t remember exactly where or how this one came my way, just that it was stuck in the “gotta shoot this” pile for long enough to forget:

This is . . . mostly . . . an Eversharp Dollar Pencil:

That cap, however, is just ridiculous.  Given that there’s a good bit of the price sticker left, it's surprising that the cap isn't original . . . unfortunately, there's not enough left of the sticker to see what the model number was:

I ran down the chronology of the different variations of these Dollar Pencils in Volume 4, page 3.  It was an oversimplified chronology, but it was the best I could do at the time:

The caption for this image in Volume 4 was: “From the top, 1929, 1930, 1930-ish, 1931-ish, 1932, 1933-34. . ish.”  Those last three, though, don’t reflect all of the variations within these dark years lacking in meaningful factory documentation.  The ribs found on the barrel ends of today’s subject are not a one-off: this is an established variant:

The red example at center, I believe, represents what the cap should be.  The green one has an advertising logo on it and is likely specially made for one customer, and that black cap is . . . yeah, “ridiculous” is the best word for it:

I count six distinct variations of Eversharp Dollar Pencils with plastic caps, shown from top in chronological order of production:

I think I have this right, subject to better documentation surfacing in the future.  From top, the first one has a vestigial button to conceal the vestigial bolt hole from the earlier flattop series (I’m assuming as leftover barrels were exhausted).  Second from top would be the next logical step.

Everything else is conjecture as to what came first.  I’d assume ribs were a design feature that was added earlier, then dropped to cut costs as the Depression deepened.  The fourth and fifth ones down appear to be the variation illustrated in Eversharp’s 1932 catalog:

Cataloged colors in gold fill trim included jade and “silver ebony,” while chrome trim models included “plain green,” “plain red” and “jet black.”