The Other Eagle

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Sometimes I get bored trolling online auctions searching for "pencils."  There are usually some 20,000 auctions at any given time, and 90 percent are modern pencils that . . . ok I'll admit it.  They bore me.

On days when I'm weary of looking at "vintage" Pentels that are younger than I am (in fact, younger than most of my socks), I'll switch things up and search for one of my favorite brands.  Searching "Gordon" might bring up one of my treasured "fanged clip" pencils, but most of what that will yield are NASCAR pencils.  I may be from Ohio, but there's no shrine to Jeff Gordon or any other driver here at the museum.   

Searching for Autopoints used to be fun, in the days when hard-to-find examples were overlooked.  Now that I've written a book about them, I've screwed the pooch when it comes to bringing home something I don't have -- at least my portfolio value is healthy.

Another of my go-to searches is for pencils (and pens, actually) made by the Eagle Pencil Company.  Sure, it turns up bunches of Eagle-motif pencils that scream "God Bless 'Merica" with a can of Busch Light in one hand, but at least it will reveal a higher proportion of pencils that might interest me than most of my other searches.  A recent search for Eagles turned up this:

The preview picture told me this was something that wasn't likely made by the Eagle Pencil Company, since it doesn't fit the shape of any Eagle product I've seen.  It does, however, fit something else perfectly.  Here it is, alongside a Hutcheon Brothers "Finepointer":

The pencil has an inconvenient dent, but since I'd never seen an imprint like this before, I bid heavy and brought it home for closer examination.  "ERCo / Eagle Regalia Co. / Sterling Made in USA" it reads:

I had never heard of the "Eagle Regalia Company," but it was one of those things that was easy to pin down, once I knew to look for it.  The company is still in business today - according to the company's website, www.eagleregalia.com, it was founded in 1910 and continues to offer flags, banners, buttons and pins.

A copy of the company's catalog is preserved at archive.org.  It is not explicitly dated, but the catalog introduction indicates it was published in the 20th year of the company's existence -- 1930, for those deficient in math skills.  The very last page of the catalog revealed all . . . or mostly all . . .

Eagle Regalia offered a full line of "ERCO Double Action Pencils" in both side clip and ringtop pencils.  While I was nearly certain the ringtop was manufactured by Hutcheon, the side clip model resolves any lingering doubt.

Since this is the first example I've seen in more than twenty years of doing this, I'm inclined to believe these are really rare.  The reason is obvious:  the Eagle Pencil Company would have no reason to challenge Eagle Regalia's production of flags, banners and buttons . . . but stamping a writing instrument with the word "Eagle," especially when both companies were located in New York?  I am sure to a moral certainty there were rapid and forceful objections to any coattail-riding on Eagle Pencil's trademarks. 

While the Eagle Regalia catalog seems to wrap this story up neatly, there were two lingering questions the catalog didn't sufficiently answer.  The first is the date -- 1930 seems late for a line of metal pencils, which were unfashionable in favor of pencils made in brightly colored celluloids.  Was Hutcheon really turning out stodgy metal pencils in 1930? 

The answer is yes.  While I was waiting for my Eagle Regalia pencil to arrive, this metal pencil surfaced in another online auction, marked with Hutcheon's distinctive diamond-shaped trademark (abbreviated to "Hutch" by that time):

I never poo-poo pencils with commemorative engraving, particularly when the message adds to the history of the pencil.  In this case, an imprint celebrating Neptune Township, New Jersey's centennial in 1929 establishes that yes, Virginia, Hutcheon was still making metal pencils as late as 1930:

The second lingering question is more difficult to answer, and it comes from the tiny lettering beneath the ERCO logo in the catalog:  "Pat. Appl'd For."

If it is unusual to see an old-style metal pencil still being made in 1930, it is even stranger to see that a patent had been applied for but not yet issued by that date.  The catalog text doesn't refer to any outstanding patent applications for the pencils themselves, and no Hutcheon-made pencils along these lines are so marked, either.

Perhaps the reference, tucked under the unique logo, is a sloppy reference to a trademark application being filed for the distinctive mark-- if so, Eagle Pencil might well have successfully objected to its registration, as well.