The Long-Awaited Excuse

When I saw Hirsch Davis at the DC Supershow earlier this month, there was no trite “hello, how are ya” or other idle chit-chat. “Was that you?” was all that he said.

I knew exactly what he meant. “Was that you that cost me a couple hundred dollars?” I replied.

Both of us had been hoping that our respective answers were yes, and both of us were looking forward to the moment when we could shake hands and laugh about it. It is, after all, a small world . . . but before I tell you the full story, I’ll back up and tell you about the couple of years that led up to this article. 

The COVID Pandemic completely destroyed our perception of time, as month after month every day was exactly the same as the one that preceded it, with no end in sight and little hope that things would ever return to normal. To this day, I don’t believe I’m alone in saying when something happened more than a year or so ago, the best I can do is narrow when it happened to either before or after the Pandemic. We all had our own ways of coping, and mine was to resuscitate this blog - it kept me occupied, I hope it kept you entertained, and it gave me a feeling of being connected.

In June 2020, I posted “Three Missing Years” (June 15, 2020: Volume 6, page 187), a deep dive in which I pieced together the fascinating history of the Crocker Pen Company. The thumbnail sketch of that history is that Crocker, headed by Seth Sears Crocker, flourished in the teens until its treasurer embezzled a significant amount of money from the company in 1921, causing the company to fold in 1922. In 1923, Crocker was revived by a colorful huckster named George Kalil Zain, who ran advertising contests - Zain first offered Crocker pens as prizes for contestants, but by 1924 Zain was president of the Crocker Pen Company, and Crocker pens were advertised as “Zain-Crocker” pens fitted with an unusual clip marketed as the “Kant-Luz-It” clip. The clip was offered both as a built-in clip and a slip-on accommodation version.

In that 2020 article, I included a picture of Joe Nemecek’s Crocker pencil with a Kant-Luz-It clip, which remains one of the stars in his collection:

In 1926, as Zain was planning to move Crocker into the Kant-Luz-It factory in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, a massive fire destroyed the Kant-Luz-It factory. Zain went back to running advertising contests, Seth Sears Crocker died in 1927, and his son Seth Chilton Crocker set up the Chilton Pen Company in 1926.

Of course, it’s more complicated than that. Suffice to say that by the time I finished the article, my interest in the brand had increased, and my friends knew it. That is why Pearce Jarvis approached me at the 2021 Supershow with a Crocker pen he thought I’d like:

Even though it isn’t a pencil, Pearce knew I would probably want this Crocker lever filler for the clip – and he was right. It is the accommodation clip version of the Kant-Luz-It clip complete with its April 12, 1921 patent date.

It was a lot of money to pay for something that has only a tangential connection to the subject of this blog, so I dutifully photographed it and filed it away alongside my Crocker ringtop pencil. And I waited for an opportunity to include it in an article at my pencil blog.

Another year, another pen show . . . it was another DC Show, the 2024 edition, at which I was browsing Nikola Pang’s wares. I was hunting down a few last items to photograph for Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry, and Nik had a great Coronet pen and pencil set I wanted to include in the book. As I agonized over spending the very reasonable price, I noticed something else on Nik’s table:

I ended up buying both the Coronet set and this Crocker Ink Tite pen – the Coronet set is pictured at the bottom of page 245 in the Eversharp book. As for the Crocker, again I dutifully shot some pictures of it for the day when I would have some plausible reason to include it at the blog:

Including its well-preserved instruction sheet:

Another year, yet another DC Show: this time in 2023, and – go figure – at Hirsch Davis’ table, where Hirsch offered this one to me:

At least half of this one is a pencil . . . the Zain imprint on the clip dates this combination fountain pen and pencil to between 1924 and 1926:

And on the barrel, an imprint reading “Crocker Pen-Pencil / Boston, Mass.”

After three DC Shows I had accumulated three Crocker finds, all waiting for the day . . . and I knew that day came when this pencil showed up in an online auction in June:

The pencil is nondescript, supplied by jobbers to many pen companies marked with their names – Keene, for example. It is very clean, but what attracted me to it was the imprint:

Zain-Crocker. This one I had to have – both for what it was, and for the opportunity it provided to show you all of the other things in this article. I was afraid to put it in my watchlist, because I feared I might forget to bid. I was afraid to bid too little, because I feared I would be outbid when I was otherwise occupied and lose.

That left only one option: go big or going home. I placed a stupid money bid, doing complicated math in my head to determine the exact amount. If someone bid a dollar less, I would be only slightly happier bringing it home than I would regret spending so much money. If someone bid a dollar more, I would be only slightly happier I didn’t spend that much money than I would regret not bringing it home. 

No, I’m not going to tell you what that number was.

The evening this auction closed, Janet and I were having dinner out at Ted’s Montana Grille. I knew the auction was closing that night, and my distraction was palpable, so I confessed what was happening. At the time, with only minutes remaining, my minimum bid was the only one.

“Looks like you might get it cheap,” Janet said. 

I wasn’t that confident, and sure enough – in the last few seconds another bidder bid heavily, but it wasn’t enough. “I’m sure I know who bid against me,” I told her.

I did. And should I ever part with it, I know where it will go.

For a dollar more than what I paid.