Diamond Medal was the top-of-the-line store brand name used by Sears, Roebuck & Co., which also acquired the Webster brand name from the Rex Manufacturing Company, and Gold Medal. Sears didn’t actually make any of the pens and pencils it offered for sale under any of these names, but rather sourced them from several different manufacturers.
At least as far as mechanical pencils went, Sears is known to have sourced fountain pens in the mid-1920s from C.E. Barrett & Co. in Chicago, which in turn sourced mechanical pencils from the Rex Manufacturing Company – or at least, Barrett sourced the mechanisms from Rex. Outfitting a Rex to match a Barrett-supplied fountain pen involved nothing more than threading two ends of a celluloid tube, which might have been done by Barrett in-house. The extent to which Barrett actually made anything, including fountain pens, is unknown.
I don’t know of any Diamond Medal-branded pencils that were clearly attributable to Rex, although Rex-made Gold Medal and Webster pencils are easy to find. These two examples were likely sourced from C.E. Barrett:
The jade example at bottom is the closest you’ll find to a Rex-made product branded for Diamond Medal, but I can’t connect the dots conclusively back to Rex; if I could, that would be groundbreaking, since identical pencils were supplied to many other manufacturers.
That black and pearl example is almost identical to another Diamond Medal in my collection . . . and I dwell in the celebration of all things “almost.”
The flattop version was Diamond Medal’s “Standard Pencil,” and with a pointy end they became the “Diplomat,” the uberest of ubermodels at Sears. These next two examples might be a little earlier, with their stodgier bell tops:
I know that cream-colored one came from the late Tom Heath by way of his daughter Jennifer, who has been to a number of shows liquidating Tom’s collection. Tom used these half-circle tags to identify where and when he bought things; unfortunately, to my knowledge he didn’t leave behind a key to his system.
I didn’t want to highlight the imprint, but both are the same: Diamond Medal / Diplomat Pencil. These tie in well with what I last posted about the Diamond Medal, in “The Middle Children” (August 10, 2016: Volume 4, page 121). In that article, I shared this image of a trio of pencils: from top, these are the full-sized Diamond Medal Diplomat in that same cream-colored celluloid, a pencil marked Sheaffer on the clip, and a burgundy and black faceted example with Parker works inside (the material is also likely from Parker).
I’ll circle back to Parker in a minute. Bear with me.
In “The Middle Children,” I presented the evidence that the W.A. Sheaffer Pen Company supplied C.E. Barrett, or Sears directly, with writing instruments for a short time. Here is another image from that article, comparing that Sheaffer-marked example to a Gold Medal in that same, distinctive plastic:
Now lets think about that large Diplomat with its bullet-shaped top. I haven’t been able to wrestle it apart, but I bet I know what is inside:
These are Sheaffer flattop pencils, and this image was included in “Most’s Influence on Sheaffer” (September 9, 2016: Volume 4, page 161). Lucifer Most, inventor of the Salz ‘Salrite, developed this mechanism for Sheaffer, and it was used from the flattop era of the 1920s through the earliest Sheaffer Balance pencils, through 1932 or so. Note that the thinner bell-top pencil at top bears a striking resemblance to those ringtop Diplomat pencils . . .
But wait: there’s more. Some of the most attractive Art Deco pencils ever made were this series of Diamond Medals, and I bet I know what’s going on inside these, too . . .
All of these Sheaffer-derived Diamond Medal pencils appeared around the time the Rex Manufacturing Company fades away at the end of the 1920s, likely as a result of Parker’s patent infringement case against Rex over the washer clip. Sears was apparently shopping around for other suppliers, and The Wahl Company also got a foot in the door. The Diplomat made a fleeting appearance in Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry. On page 164 in Eversharp, I shared images of an Eversharp Dollar Pencil from around 1930. The clip, however, is marked “Diplomat” in the same script found on the Diamond Medal above, rather than Eversharp:
This is the only example I have found of a Wahl-made product supplied to Sears; it isn’t surprising, since Wahl supplied Montgomery Ward with rebadged Doric pens and pencils. In the end, though, it was the Parker Pen Company that won the Sears writing instrument contracts, including Diamond Medal branded pens and pencils, such as these:
That top one came from Dmitry Grinberg at the Ohio Show a few years back – most of you know him on eBay as “Rare Pen” with the California license plate in his listings. It is a rebadged Parker Challenger, perhaps made at the same time Parker offered these around 1934 or so, or maybe a bit later using obsolete parts.
This one is as pristine as they come, complete with intact gold infill to accentuate the imprint:
The clip is the same, other than the substitution of that neat Diamond Medal logo substituted for the Parker name:
As for that second one down, with its faceted barrel and typical Parker Duofold burgundy and black, is a match for one I shared in “A Nice Blend” (July 31, 2017: Volume 5, page 64).
As for those other three, those striped plastics were not typically used on Parker products. Not typically, anyway . . .
The top example shown here has all of the typical Diamond Medal badging, from the clip to the barrel imprint.
The other one came to me via Eric Magnuson, who prevailed on me to take it off his hands during a visit to the museum a few years ago. It lacks a barrel imprint and is currently equipped with an ill-fitting, split-arrow Parker Vacumatic clip.
The clip isn’t correct – I checked in with David Isaacson, who said that yes, there are precious few pens and pencils made in plastics generally reserved for rebadges such as Diamond Medal, but with Parker trim. This one should have a blade-style Parker clip, like the one on that burgundy and black Parker Royal Challenger shown at bottom in the image with Dmitry’s example above. I haven’t replaced it yet - as I recall, that clip doesn’t quite fit on this one.
Speaking of unusual Diamond Medal plastics with Parker-marked counterparts . . .
The upper example came from Gabriel Galecia Goldsmith in that bunch of stuff I acquired a few months ago. The bottom example is the Parker version, another find that came from Eric Magnuson which appeared in “Sooooo Close” (May 30, 2020: Volume 6, page 140). When that original article ran, I did not know this plastic was intended primarily for use on Diamond Medal pens and pencils; David Isaacson immediately recognized it as such, so at the end of Volume 6 I included a brief update concerning these Parker “De-Re-Badged” or “un-rebadged” pens and pencils, as David calls them (Volume 6, pages 242-243).
David shared with me several images for use in the book of his fountain pens, including an advertisement for Diamond Medal pens in these plastics, which were offered in brown as shown, as well as grey and green.
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