What's Wrong (Besides the Obvious)

After the Conklin Pen Company’s failure in 1938, operations were moved from Toledo, Ohio to Chicago by a shadowy syndicate of investors. The identity of those investors remains an open question (see “The Chicago Syndicate That Rubbed Out Conklin” - December 17, 2015: Volume 4, page 42), and the quality of Conklin’s offerings declined significantly after the move to Chicago.

That decline is one most collectors decline to pursue. It’s sad what became of the once-proud company, and many collectors would rather dwell in the earlier, higher quality Conklins made in happier times.

I have never had reservations about chasing down Chicago-made Conklins. The story is fantastic, with all of Joseph Starr’s shenanigans. The story started in Ohio, and any proud burgee-wielding Buckeye feels that sense of obligation to be a completist about an Ohio company, even after they left.

Heck, I even collected modern Conklin Fountain Pens . . . until, of course, their new foreign owners couldn’t even spell the word “Ohio” right in the imprints on their pens. Someone really needs to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, since they still stamp “USA” on their imported nibs.

I digress. Suffice to say I don’t turn up my nose at Chicago Conklins, like this one:

The other reason I like Chicago-made Conklins is that pen companies did things that were far more interesting when they were struggling than when they were cruising along and basking in their success. They did whatever they needed to do to survive when they had little or nothing to lose. 

One of the more interesting things that I believe Conklin did during its twilight years involved the Parker Pen Company, that sacred cow of Pendom which has caused many a heretic to be burned at the stake for impugning its reputation. I have so impugned Parker three times now when it comes to Conklin, and while I have heard much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I haven’t heard I’m wrong.

The first time was when I suggested a pencil marked “The Glider Pen” was actually a Parker-made Parkette rebadged for Conklin in Chicago. See “Finally Enough Proof . . . and a New, Heretical Question” (February 27, 2018: Volume 5, page 166):

In that same article, I also noted that the “Glider Pen” pencils (Glider was a Conklin brand name - we’ll get to that in just a minute) were also constructed the same way as the cringeworthy “Minuteman” line of pencils Conklin offered . . . right down to Parker’s patented spare lead cartridge, painted an inconspicuous red rather than in Parker’s usual black and gold:

That was an intriguing, undocumented and wildly unpopular theory . . . so of course, I had to do it again. A month later, I posted “Poking the Wounded Bear” (March 14, 2018: Volume 5, page 188), in which I challenged anyone to tell me why I shouldn’t believe these crappy, washer-clip Chicago Conklin fountain pens were made by Parker, when anyone on the street would swear those pens were a match for Parker’s budget line of “Zephyr” pencils.

I apparently didn’t get enough abuse that time either, so I returned to the subject in 2021 with “Halcyon Once Again” (April 18, 2021: Volume 7, page 47), in which I compared a pencil marked “Parker” on its clip to the Penman – the Penman, of course, was part of Joseph Starr’s web of companies that also included Conklin.

“If we continue to deny Parker had anything to do with stuff like this, we are denying an increasing pile of evidence to the contrary,” I wrote. “Now we have the same plastics, a rudimentary version of Parker’s patented lead cartridge, and now a Parker-marked pencil constructed the same way as nearly every low-budget production made during the 1940s. 

“I think this is an extremely rare glimpse behind Parker’s gilded curtain. Like any other business, Parker had to find ways to survive.”

If you weren’t convinced before, you might be now. When I saw this Chicago Conklin in an online auction, I couldn’t figure out exactly what wasn’t quite right about it.

It looks like a Glider - not those “Glider Pen” Parkette-style affairs I wrote about earlier, but the real Conklin Glider, as advertised by Conklin after the move to Chicago. It is generally regarded as the last passable excuse for pens and pencils that Conklin offered. Here’s an advertisement for Conklin’s Glider “Cushion Point” pens, as published in The Saturday Evening Post on January 19, 1946:

This one, though, isn’t quite a Conklin Glider pencil. Here it is, posed between a Glider at top, and beneath by an uncataloged but established variety from around the same era:

That is not the same celluloid by any stretch of the imagination, even accounting for variations between lots of rod stock. The pattern is too tight, and doesn’t have the grey of a Glider.

But we have seen it before.

These are Parker Shadow Wave pencils made, according to their stamped date codes, between 1938 and 1941. Note the tighter striations and note the dimpling around the nose cone. The browns have a little more orange in them, though – “halloween” colors, one might suggest. If that causes you to pause, try on these Shadow Waves:

We may never find written documentation that Parker supplied Conklin with lower-quality writing instruments while Conklin struggled to survive, and that may be because Parker was as careful about curating its reputation then as its fans are today. Nothing I’ve presented says that Parker was an evil empire . . . just that it was the same as every other company and if anything, it was trying to survive, and it was a helping hand supplying competitors with what they needed to survive as well, too.

It might be a different way to look at Parker, but it is no better nor worse than any other way.

Two Kings

As I started writing this, that 90's Spin Doctors song “Two Princes” kept scrolling through my head. You’re welcome for today’s earworm.

I was very proud of myself at this year’s Philadelphia Pen Show, because I had accomplished every single objective when in all prior years I had accomplished all but one. Seeing friends for the first show of the year? Check. Buy some cool stuff? Check. Laugh, drink, and survive another cannonball run down the Pennsylvania Turnpike? Check. Check. Check.

Where I have always failed has been on the financial end of things. Try as I might, I never seem to bring in more dollars than the cost of the hotel and parking – hell, I’d do better to bring the truck up to my room than pay as much as it costs to board a large dog to park it in a garage.

Add to that the unpredictable weather . . . who doesn’t remember the 2016 Snow Bowl, during which a few feet of snow closed the streets, the businesses, even the train lines. I GROSSED $3 that entire weekend by selling a single tube of leads. 

Yet here I am, year after year. I must really like you people.

This year’s show, however, was a banner year. I had the new Eversharp books on hand, some neat new vintage stuff, and I’d decided it was time to have a clearance sale for my Legendary Pencil models that just haven’t sold very well for whatever reason (mostly, it turns out, because I forgot to put them up on the website). 

I bought a lot of things I wanted, but I didn’t spend nearly as much as I took in. When the dealin’ was done and there was time enough to count ‘em, for the first time ever I had brought in more money than what I spent on food, lodging, and parking.

But then I got a message.

Charles Potters reached out to tell me that he had a very special pencil he was willing to sell - one that he said I had called the “King” or something at some point. I instantly knew he was talking about those figural magic pencils shaped like New York’s Metropolitan Life Insurance Building, which were made by or for Tiffany & Co. near the turn of the last century. In the closing article of Volume 7, I discussed the factors that make a pencil desirable and valuable, and I wrote that taking all of those elements into account, these pencils are in my opinion “The King.” See “The King” (August 9, 2021: Volume 7, page 325). 

I was excited but skeptical. Yes, Charles was paying attention to my blog, he knew what he had, and he shared with me his credentials. He told me the pencil was in perfect working condition, and it even came with the box:

I asked if by any chance he was near Philadelphia, since we had not yet left the city for our loooooong drive home. He was only ninety minutes away, he said . . . but it was in the wrong direction. Janet and I decided that adding another three hours to an already excruciating drive was just too much, so Charles and I talked price, got on the same page, and we agreed to do things by mail.

A week or so later, there were two Kings holding court at the museum. The new addition is at top, with the example I showed in Volume 7 below it:

I feel almost guilty saying that the one I have owned has been bugging me a little. I am mindful that beggars can’t be choosers and I was lucky to have acquired one at all in any condition, but it has bothered me nonetheless that my Met Life pencil – as American as American can be – is wrapped in an English Tiffany box. This second example is in a box marked with Tiffany’s New York office location . . . that is perfection in my book.

And what’s this? “To find leads unscrew base”? I was never going to go twisting and yanking willy nilly on my most valued pencil before, but with directions in hand I dared to tread where I had not yet tread before:

Whaddaya know. The base unscrews, and there’s spare leads inside the chamber. 

As for the pencils themselves, they are identical in every respect – that was no big surprise to me, but it would have been worth reporting if there was any evidence that different molds had been used.

The darkened patina on Charles’ pencil is something I’ll leave undisturbed. Yes, I could give it a nice shine, but (1) untarnishing is easy but retarnishing is not, and (2) I always want to remember which is which, for reasons I myself don’t fully understand now that I’m writing these words down.

As you may have noticed from that earlier picture, the new example has both an outer Tiffany box as well as an inner blue cardboard box. I’m suspecting that the blue box is a replacement, and it was once housed in something akin to my London example, sized to fit the outer box more snugly. I’ve seen a few in online auctions, and if I see one with the exact outer dimensions to fit thi box, I might have to spring for that extra bit of new old stock goodness. Since I leave no stone unturned when I examine these things, there’s something I need to show you written on the end of the outer box:

It looks like “Carborund,” and there’s a bit of a second line. Is it a continuation of the word, or a second word that reads “run?” Come on, Internet . . . bless me with some intelligence that isn’t artificial . . . 

Carborundum, not “carborundrum,” is another name for silicon carbide. It is the second hardest substance after diamonds, according to some sources, and is used primarily as a synthetic abrasive or in the manufacture of ceramics and electronics. 

I tunneled a little deeper to understand why such a word would be written on the side of a Tiffany & Co. jewelry box, and I learned that since it is nearly as hard as diamonds, carborundum is sometimes used as a diamond substitute - sort of like cubic zirconia, but harder to come by naturally and usually lab “grown.” When fashioned into a gemstone, it is also referred to as moissanite.

Well heck . . . maybe the outer box isn’t original to the pencil, strictly speaking, but whatever bit of Carborundum goodness it may have contained, it must also have been a pencil, since the top of the box talks about spare leads. At least it’s a freaking New York Tiffany box containing a New York Tiffany pencil! Besides, I’ve also run across a couple other Tiffany pencils in the last year or so, and without question they are contained within boxes that are fully correct according to Hoyle. 

The first one showed up in an online auction, and I didn’t have many hopes I would be able to win it. Tiffany collectibles and Ohio State Buckeyes memorabilia have something in common: you can paint those words on the side of dog turds and sell them like hotcakes for twenty bucks all day long. All the Breakfast at Tiffany’s fans must have been asleep at the switch on the day the auction closed, and I was pleased to bring it home:

This one is a “dropper” – hold the nose end pointed down and press the button, and the pencil part drops down and locks into writing position. She was cranky at first, but a good dose of lighter fluid freed things up nicely:

The pencil is marked on the button at the top end, and while the etched scribbling above the Tiffany name is not legible, I am confident that this was made by W.S. Hicks, which routinely hand-etched stock numbers on items Hicks made for high-end retailers - usually on the solid gold ones, but also on sterling products.

I’ve had this next one a little bit longer, since I snapped pictures of it back in 2022. 

This one is a conventional “magic” pencil, which advances the pencil in one direction when the top is pulled in the other.

The top end is a little unusual for these, with a little longer, more graceful point. I also suspect that W.S. Hicks manufactured this one, although it doesn’t have stock mark etching:

Yeah, I’m just as guilty as the next guy, buying these Tiffany things just because of the name that’s on them. They sure aren’t dog turds, but even if they were I’d have a museum full of them.

A Few New Pals

I can’t help the fact that I like the Hoge Manufacturing Company’s cheap line of “Pal” pencils. They are just . . . fun. 

In an era dominated by the Eversharp, Hoge’s handy little workaday models were offered in just a few configurations and in just a couple patterns. I still chuckle at Hoge’s weird attempt at creating a fraternal Elk Lodge pencil, as pictured in “And the Award for Worst Representation of an Elk Goes To . . .” (December 18, 2016: Volume 4, page 291).

David Nishimura’s article about the Pal, published in January 2016, remains the most valuable resource detailing the history of these pencils (it remains live here). I last visited the Hoge Manufacturing Company in 2021, after I found and acquired an early 1920s company catalog that answered a few questions and of course, raised a few others. See “One of Us Needed to Do It” (April 12, 2021: Volume 7, page 25). Since then, I have found a couple of examples in their original packaging:

That top example did cost me more than three dollars, in case you were wondering. I’ve left the one wrapped in tissue paper alone, but I did unfurl the instructions included with the other example, just to document them before carefully refolding them and tucking them back underneath the pencil:

The pencil was the usual fare, so much so that I forgot to take a picture of it while it was out of the box. No matter . . . that usual fare is not what I’m excited to share with you today. That early 1920s catalog included all of Hoge’s usual suspects, including these, but one page showed some unusual suspects:

Pal pencils are almost always found in either a silver or gold finish, but this page shows the No. 55 Pal, a utility model with an exposed eraser and offered in several enameled colors.

If these were produced, it must not have been in very large numbers. In fact, I would have doubted they were ever made at all, were it not for something I found at a Don Scott Antique Show – in the first aisle of vendors, and for just a dollar or two:

That long, graceful nose is soooo irresistible to a guy who loves 1920s pencils. And this one adds even more cache to the mix:

The barrel is embossed with lettering reading “Pal Jr.” My 1920s catalog makes no reference to any Pal Jr., but yes Virginia . . . there are Pal pencils out there like the No. 55 with enameled barrels. There’s one other clue worth mentioning in connection with this one: the cap reads “Pat. Applied For.”

I have not yet been able to determine what patent this refers to, if one was ever issued - that might provide further insights as to when it was made and any possible connections with other inventors or manufacturers. Since I haven’t been able to disassemble it (and I don’t want to break the only example I have found), I’ll have to wait for another day to find more answers . . . 

. . . maybe after I find a fully stocked store display of No. 55 enameled Pal pencils. After all, never say never.

A First Round of Sheaffer Balance Updates

I’ve often joked that A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils is a book about the Sheaffer Balance, flanked on either side by the little bit that came before it and the little bit that came after. I’m only exaggerating a little bit: Chapter Three, concerning the Balance, is a quarter of the entire book.

Of course I’ve got several updates to offer about the Balance, and by no means will they fit comfortably in just one post. We’ll get a good start today.

This first one came my way just as I was closing out the book, and there wasn’t time or space to include it:

The Sheaffer Balance is a series that requires thought on several levels at the same time whenever you find one. At first, nothing looks out of the ordinary about this one, because all of its elements are so familiar. What is unusual here, though, is how they come together on this example. The pencil is a Tuckaway and is probably from around 1942, after the earlier metal Tuckaways were redesigned to match Sheaffer’s new Triumph line. Similar pencils are shown on page 88 in the book . . . almost . . . 

At top is one of the 1942 Tuckaways shown on page 88. When production returned to normal after the War, the Tuckaway’s lower section was made longer, the bands were narrower and a stubby clip was added (the one shown is a Valiant Tuckaway from 1945 or 1946, as shown on page 152).

What’s wrong in that picture is the over-the-top military clip. You might think there’s a simple explanation for that: obviously, you might think, someone replaced a clipless Tuckaway cap with one from a full-length Balance model of the same era.

You thought wrong.

Full length Balance pencils with those military-style clips had narrow bands - occasionally you’ll find one with an uncataloged “jeweler’s band,” but those measure at widest a quarter inch or so - I haven’t seen an over-the-top jewelers’ band pencil in carmine red, and I’ve never seen that clip on a pen or pencil with the extra-wide, wartime Triumph band. Triumph models had regular “radius” clips. Even if this cap was swapped over from something else, I have no idea what that something else would have been.

Speaking of Tuckaways, a minor note to add with respect to page 152, Figure 6-26 in the Field Guide. I only showed four colors, but I am pleased to report that the 1947 Valiant Tuckaway, as with the other Tuckaway models, are found in all five colors. 

In this next image, these striated celluloid models include subtle details not shown in the book, because I didn’t know they existed:

At top, this striated Balance ringtop surfaced in an ordinary online auction and it is so easy to miss that I was pleased that it slipped under the radar and cost me so little. Ringtop Balance pencils in marbled plastics are more “normal,” although the double banded ones are quite a bit tougher to find.

This was the first time I had seen a striated celluloid Balance in ringtop configuration. In marbled plastics, it might be dismissed as a marriage of parts, since it is easy on the earlier marbled ones to replace a separate end piece with a ringtop. Once the striated celluloid era began, however, the caps were made from a single, uninterrupted piece.

The pen and pencil set at bottom in that earlier image took a long, winding journey to my doorstep that was more interesting than a few clicks on my cell phone to place an online bid.

 I had first seen this set at the Don Scott Antique Show – the frenzied first show of the season –  in November, 2022, just as I was finalizing what I was going to include in the book. There’s this one dealer whose tables are covered with shallow box lids full of random little stuff, and I’m always finding a handful or two of odds and ends. I pondered whether I should get it to include in the book.

Alas, as Rob Bader says, the dealer wanted a fair price, and I was looking for an unfair price. Besides, I thought, I’ve been spending a lot of money buying things to photograph for the book, and the only thing that is odd about it is there’s no Sheaffer’s imprints on the clips . . . that isn’t so unusual, right?

Wrong. After Janet and I left the show, I went through the images I had included in Chapter Three - this image, now memorialized on page 71 in the Field Guide, illustrates that when a Sheaffer Balance is found with an unmarked flat ball clip, it was accompanied with a special, wider ribbed “jeweler’s” band, not a simple thin gold filled band. 

Dang it . . . that’s nearly all the time, not all the time. David Isaacson recognizes these as a scarce but recognized variant, something that he refers to as a “fusion pen,” since the fountain pen combines the plain trim band and unremarkable Sheaffer number three nib (features usually reserve for Sheaffer’s lower tier offerings) but also has a white dot on the pen cap and an unmarked flat ball clip (features generally reserved for Sheaffer’s higher quality pens). 

Dang it again . . . I wish I had at least mentioned that in the book. No worries, I thought, I’ll pick it up at next month’s show. I returned to the Don Scott show in December and tracked down that same dealer, turning his display upside down looking for this set, but it wasn’t there. I asked the guy about it – no matter how many consecutive months I drop money on him, he never remembers who I am – and he casually waved me off. “Oh yeah, I already sold those,” he said.

Double dang it, with a side of grrr. He had answered me too quick; there was no way he had any idea what he had on his own tables, I thought. He just wants me to go away, and go away I did.

Of course that didn’t prevent me from stopping by and browsing his stuff month after month, usually buying a few things each time. At the March 2024 show nearly a year and a half later, I made my usual stop by his booth and . . . there it was. I didn’t even tell the dealer how happy I was to see it . . . I just stood there like a human ATM and robotically handed him the fair price noted on the tag. It was a long-awaited day, memorable mostly for how anticlimactic it was, leading up to a picture that should have been in the Field Guide.

The new set is at top, followed by a “normal” Balance pencil with the narrow band and Sheaffer’s clip as expected, and a normal-ish example with plain clip and jeweler’s band.

Sigh. The dumb things we remember . . . like the fact that this next set was in an online auction that closed as I sat in the lobby at the tire store, waiting for them to charge me a lot of money to reshoe my horse while I was looking for ways to spend even more money on my phone over a tiny styrofoam cup filled with black liquid. I think they called it “coffee,” but I don’t think that word means what they think it means.

Suffice to say I paid dearly on both fronts, and David Isaacson has dibs on the pen in the event I ever choose to split up the set. The wallet this set came in is marked Sheaffer’s on the inside and the outside - it was made by Farrington, a well known maker of wallets, money clips, and other stuff along these lines.

Apparently the wallet is collectible in its own right; I started down a rabbit hole of research into that subject, then quickly came to my senses. This is about a spectacular pen and pencil set, not the container I said as I slapped myself silly. These off-catalog, special cap bands are a special niche for Balance collectors, and the vast majority of the time they occur in the earlier marbled celluloids. It is only in vary rare instances that they are found in striated celluloid, as shown on page 78 of the Field Guide.

The short example in Sheaffer’s “Rose Glow” shown in this image from the book is mine, and the other two pictured were on loan from Gabriel Galecia Goldsmith – I mention that only because Gabriel has expressed such pride in the fact that two of his pencils made the book that it’s worth acknowledging him for his help again. 

There’s also a niche within a niche here. Within the world of these special bands, and without any apparent rhyme or reason, sometimes the spaces between these split bands are painted over with black paint, and other times they aren’t. This set combines both.

Yes, the trim is worn . . . but as I like to say, if you don’t like that, go out and try to find a better one.

I have one more addition to report to you now - with more updates later, after I get them photographed. This one also came from an auction, but not of the usual online sort: my friend Pearce Jarvis has started a writing instrument auction house in Canada called North American Pen Auctions, and he’s been attracting really interesting lots, including this nifty little set:

These are the smallest pens and pencils in the Balance series (excluding the golf pencils), referred to as the “Petite Balance” in Sheaffer’s 1930 catalog, its one and only appearance. They are shown in the Field Guide with narrow gold filled bands on page 59, and in bandless configuration on page 61. Here is the image from Figure 3-65, showing the bandless ones:

Actually, this was the fourth version of that image I shot for the Field Guide. The original included only five of these, but as I bought up variations that I didn’t have to photograph I kept adding to the group. Any more examples, and I figured I might need a fold-out centerfold so readers could really take all of it in. After the book went to press I found something else that might have tipped the scales in favor of such a dumb idea . . . 

While I figured something like a bandless Petite Balance in jade might be out there – after all, there was no reason to think it wouldn’t be – I had no idea that there might be an “Autograph” version of the Petite Balance with all 14k trim. It seems like overkill for what was marketed as a budget product, more novelty than practical . . . but here we are. 

That makes four configurations of the Petite Balance: a bandless ringtop, bandless with clip, narrow band with clip, and Autograph with 14k trim . . .

Wait a tick . . . I think I found a bandless marine green with clip, maybe at that last Chicago show, in my pile of things waiting to be photographed . . . I’ll have to dig a little and reshoot that last image.\

Again.

And so it goes with the Balance - if you think you own or have even seen every obscure variant that might be out there, you are fooling yourself.