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.