The Philadelphia Acquisitions

This year’s Philadelphia Show in January yielded a few more updates to A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils:

That top pencil probably belonged in yesterday’s installment of updates about Sheaffer’s metal pencils, but the condition of the paint is the best I’ve seen and its worth showing alongside my better examples.

The second one down was an unmarked pencil I found in a junk box, and I bought it primarily as a curiosity. Sheaffer Balance golf pencils are typically marked with the Sheaffer name, but on occasion they do turn up without any markings. Could this be a more gargantuan unmarked Sheaffer golf pencil?

I’m on the fence with this one - if the black and pearl color carried all the way to the top of the pencil, I’d be more convinced . . . but then again, if you subtract that the length of the part that is all black, the black and pearl part is about the right length. What the heck – it’s fun to display alongside my other Sheaffer golf pencils.

The two cherry red flattops both came from David Isaacson. The Titan is really special, but it takes a second to recognize why: in addition to the color, this is a Titan equipped for .076" checking leads, which is more clear when it sits alongside its “normal” brother:

My only other example of a Titan checking pencil appears on page 35 of the Field Guide, and it’s worth showing you them together for another reason:

You’ll notice that the gold cap is a bit shorter on the cherry red example. As explained on page 34 of the book, the way these pencils were built was changed at some point between 1925 and 1928. Those shorter caps indicate that the cap has a post with the eraser mounted on the end, a feature carried over from the earliest Sharp Point pencils since 1917. Longer caps indicate that the eraser is attached to the pencil itself. For me, that is more than a purely acedemic distinction: it means that Titan Checking Pencils were made, even if in very limited numbers, over several years. 

David’s other cherry red example neatly filled out a gap in my flattop collection. 

The two coral examples shown here were pictured on page 36 of the Field Guide, and note that there are three different clips represented here: the top one is the “Little S” clip in use when the Radite (celluloid) flattop pencils were introduced in 1925, carried over from the earlier metal pencil line. At center, the “Big S” clips (note the larger letters at either end of the word “Sheaffer’S” are illustrated in Sheaffer’s 1928 catalog. At bottom, David’s pencil has the flat ball clip introduced on the Sheaffer Balance between 1933 and 1934; this one was likely a leftover barrel put to good use after flattops were no longer in production.

This last one from the Philly Show is my favorite in this batch, because it’s one of those that you really need to understand what you are looking at before you can see what is different:

Steve Wiederlight had this one, and I passed it a few times before I could figure out why I had to have it. The Craig was a Sheaffer subbrand, named after Walter Sheaffer’s son. Flattop Craig pencils are not a particularly rare sight, and Sheaffer pens and pencils in jade are downright common. What is unusual here is the combination of those two things: I have never seen a Craig flattop in jade green. That makes for an interesting family picture:

There’s all of the known colors, with the exception of cherry red; the image of flattop Craig pencils on page 94 of the Field Guide shows one, but that example was on loan from my friend Jonathan Pollack. Another cherry red example surfaced in an online auction recently . . . I bid the stupid money, and someone else bid money that was even stupider. 

You can’t win them all and besides . . . there’s always Philadelphia next year.