After my flurry of purchases from Michael Krut at the Detroit Pen Show, Michael got to thinking. “I’ve got more pencils at home if you want me to bring them tomorrow,” he said.
It’s like he doesn’t even know me. Of course, I said.
He brought two small tubs back to the show Saturday morning, and I spent what little time I had between customers diving in to see what all was in there. I had cherrypicked a handful of goodies from the bunch when Michael wandered by and asked what I thought. I said I thought I would have much more fun buying all of them and going through them in greater detail when things slowed down.
After I pinky-swore that I was not going to turn around and sell them for thousands of dollars, we agreed on a fair parts price. By Sunday morning things had quieted down enough that I could really pick through things. One of the boxes contained random fare, and the other was all Eversharp – there were a few complete pencils in there, but mostly it was just parts, including these:
There’s plenty of stuff here that I’ll use eventually, even though all the roller clips they once had have likely been transplanted into higher-dollar fountain pens. Before I wrote Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry, I would have written that top example off as a non-Wahl interloper. Now that I have, though, I recognize it as a Wahl product – and a really hard one to find, at that.
Chapter Thirteen in Eversharp covers subbrands and rebadges; the former of these are Wahl products sold under different names, and the latter are Wahl-made products branded for other retailers who would sell them as their own. This, I believe, is a Wahl rebadge. On page 285 in Eversharp, there’s a discussion of “Hycrest” and “Palmer Method” pens, and they have that same distinctive band treatment, with two wider bands flanking a center one:
Palmer Method pens and pencils were specially made for students of the Palmer Handwriting Method. “Hycrest,” however, is a little more difficult to pin down – the only solid lead researchers have been able to turn up is that it might have been a store brand for Marshall, Field & Co. At least, the Hycrest name was used by Marshall Field in connection with leather goods.
Since the clip is broken off and the barrel is unmarked, there’s no way to know which of these possibilities is more the more likely, or if there’s another contender out there. If I had to guess, I’d put my money on Marshall Field, since the Palmer Method line was more utilitarian than flashy. Here is our mystery pencil alongside a Wahl-made pencil with a Palmer Method clip, in the form of an Equipoise but in rosewood hard rubber without trim. I found it on Steve Weiderlight’s table when we saw each other in May at the Chicago Show.
This Palmer Method pencil is identical to Joe Nemecek’s example, which was pictured on page 285.
I’ll replace the clip if I ever find either a Hycrest or Palmer Method clip – and it will be a tall order finding a Hycrest clip – but before I do, I’ll need to figure out how to remove the inner liner. Sounds simple enough, but it isn’t . . . I don’t know which way to turn.
Here’s a run of “Signature-Style” Eversharp pencils as shown in Chapter Eight of Eversharp; “Signature-Style,” as I went to great lengths to explain in the book, is a more accurate way to describe these than “Tempoint pencils,” as I labeled them in The Catalogue. At bottom is the Equipoise-based Palmer Method, and there is something important to notice: the tips.
Those examples shown here with steel tips have the Improved Eversharp mechanism inside, which had been in use since 1924, and those tips are threaded as you would expect. The Equipoise-based Palmer Method pencil at bottom has a gold-filled tip . . . and Equipoise tips are reverse threaded.
This new Hycrest/Palmer Method pencil has a gold filled tip like an Equipoise, but it is otherwise configured more like a 1924 Improved Eversharp, with the joint at the top rather than in the center of the barrel. That tip is stuck pretty well, and I’m reluctant to crank down on it too much; those gold filled tips are softer brass under the plating, and if I’m cranking the wrong way I might snap the threading off of the end of the mechanism.
There was another black flattop Signature-Style pencil in that little box. I meant to take a picture of it before I found a replacement roller clip on Myk Daigle’s table:
Note the gold tip and center barrel joint: yes, this is one of the later Signature-style pencils fitted with the same mechanism used on the later Equipoise line. I have one like this, and it was included in Figure 8-45 on page 188 in Eversharp. However, the one in my collection didn’t have this on top:
What better place to pick up an Eversharp with a Cadillac emblem than at a pen show in the Motor City? Besides, it goes nicely with this one – I think I found it at the Baltimore show in March:
Speaking of Eversharps with emblems, I did take a shot at this one in an online auction a couple years ago, but I didn’t stand a chance:
The proud attorney in me thought this might be nice to have, even though I’d rather have “pencil collector” than “lawyer" on my tombstone.
Back at the Detroit Show, Gary Weimer was in attendance, and he had this one on his table:
I resisted buying it until he told me how little he wanted for it.
I’ve seen Shriner emblems with black back grounds, sometimes with red, but never with baby blue – somewhere, I think I’ve got a black background emblem like this on an Eversharp, and I didn’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole of buying Eversharps with cool emblems.
Unless, of course, that ship has already sailed.
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