The More Complex Question

In “Rehabilitating a Lovely Rulebreaker” (October 5, 2025), I compared an unmarked pencil to a Mabie Magazine pencil made by Mabie, Todd & Co. I concluded that the unmarked pencil was probably made by Mabie Todd, but “the more complex question, however, is whether this is an unmarked Mabie Magazine pencil, made by Mabie Todd for its own account, or whether Mabie Todd might have manufactured it for someone else.”

Here is one of the reasons the answer isn’t as clean as it first appears:

From top, here are that unmarked sterling pencil, a Mabie Magazine Pencil with that same unusual clip patented on April 19, 1910, and what looks like a ringtop version of the Mabie Magazine, other than the imprint: “Salz Bros. Mfr. N.Y. / Pat. May 31 and June 7, 1910.”

Including the word “manufacturer” in an imprint is by itself unusual, since companies rarely drew any distinction between which products they sourced from other makers and those that were actually made in-house. The assertion that Salz actually made this is suspect: Salz Brothers and its colorful front man Ignatz Salz were on the slipperier end of the spectrum when it came to business practices – perhaps Salz was claiming to be a manufacturer, just not necessarily the one that made this particular product. 

Or it might have something to do with that second patent date of May 31, 1910. In “The Hard Proof” (July 14, 2017: Volume 5, page 46) I explored the relationship between the May 31 and June 7 patent dates. The latter date, which is the only patent date found on Mabie Magazine pencils (that I have seen anyway), refers to patent number 960,588, which Egon L. Schmitz applied for on December 21, 1908, but it was assigned not to Mabie Todd, but to another New York firm, the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company:

Sharing patent technology rather than suing each other for infringement was common among New York manufacturers, after the “Victorian Mafia” (as I’ve called it) decided such scuffles were bad for business – see “Johnson’s Influence” (August 23, 2017: Volume 5, page 94). However, the different houses typically sourced rebadged products from each other, rather than spending the money to actually make identical products in-house. 

That second patent date on the Salz version, however, adds some spice to that equation. The May 31, 1910 date refers to patent number 959,531, applied for on June 1, 1909 – six months after the Schmitz patent – yet issued a week earlier. The inventor was John A. Hollenberger of Hagerstown, Maryland, and his patent was not assigned to anyone at the time it was issued.

Does the absence of this second patent date from the Mabie Magazine Pencil mean that these pencils include only those features patented by Schmitz, while the Salz version adds a little Hollenberger for added flavor? Maybe. It’s also entirely possible that Mabie Todd had a license to use both patents but didn’t feel it was necessary to stamp both of them on its barrels.

In that 2017 article, I included an image of a Hutcheon Magazine Pencil. Hutcheon Brothers was another New York firm, and the Hutcheon version also has both the May 31 and June 7 patent dates:

Even though the Salz imprint includes the word “Manufacturer” while the Hutcheon version does not, I doubt that Salz actually made them and I doubt even more than Salz supplied Hutcheon with theirs. Hutcheon, to my knowledge, was exclusively a manufacturing house, and I’m not aware of any products the company offered that were made by someone else . . . unless, of course, Mabie Todd made these for Hutcheon. Also, as mentioned earlier, Ignatz Salz was slippery – and he was also cheap. I just can’t picture Salz investing the money to make what looks exactly like what Mabie Todd was making in much greater numbers right across town.

From this point, the web becomes even more tangled. Consider these pencils, all branded for “Hallmark”:

That’s not “Hallmark” as in the greeting card company, which didn’t adopt that trade name until 1927. Hallmark was a name adopted by United Jewelers, Inc. in 1916 – see “The Hallmark Mystery – Solved” (July 15, 1917: Volume 5, page 47). United Jewelers cooked up the notion of banding together in an attempt to strongarm those greedy pen and pencil manufacturers; members agreed only to carry “Hallmark” branded products, and as a group the organization would negotiate discounted prices with manufacturers. According to the trademark registration certificate for the Hallmark name, it was first used in commerce on July 7, 1916.

As these examples illustrate, Mabie Todd was one of those strongarmed manufacturers. The clips have only the Hallmark name, but they are unmistakably Mabie Todd’s ubiquitous January 19, 1915 patent clips.

Those top two examples are based on the Mabie Todd “Fyne Poynt,” and the bottom one is more germane to today’s discussion:

I’ve found another “Hallmark Magazine” pencil recently, in clipless configuration. Both of these examples have the May 31 and June 7 patent dates:

Is Mabie Todd the likely manufacturer of the “Hallmark Magazine” pencil, with both patents duly noted? I think that is a reasonable conclusion. In 1922, Mabie Todd would be strongarmed a second time by the Guild Products Corporation in a similar scheme, supplying rebadged pens and pencils marked “Guild.” See “Back to the Drawing Board” (August 26, 2013: Volume 2, page 226).

I left this subject in my earlier article on a cliffhanger, promising to return after the mailman had delivered a second care package I was expecting from Gabriel Galicia Goldsmith. I showed the entire bunch yesterday, including that Parker Scorekeeper bridge pencil, but this is the one I was talking about for our purposes today:

This one is marked for the Carey Pen Company, also of New York.

Carey, without question, sourced this pencil from whoever was making these magazine pencils for everybody and their brother in New York City. The only other Carey-marked pencils that I know of were rebadged leadholders made by George W. Heath & Co., and both of the examples I have found turned up back in 2012. See “Easy to Miss” (August 22, 2012: Volume 1, page 313) and “The Second Carey” (November 7, 2012: Volume 1, page 409). Here’s one of the images from the latter of these two articles:

Out of all of these New York magazine pencils I’ve shown you today, we can rule out Carey and United Jewelers (of Hallmark fame) as manufacturers. I think it’s safe to say Salz Bros. didn’t make them either – “manufacturer” imprint be damned. That leaves Mabie Todd and Hutcheon as my two likeliest suspects, and with Mabie Todd being the larger of the two I lean in that direction.

I haven’t leaned all the way to the point of falling over, though. I can’t discount the possibility that Hutcheon Brothers supplied not only Salz, United Jewelers and Carey, but perhaps even Mabie Todd. Hutcheon’s footprints were bigger than the shoes it appeared to wear – tune in tomorrow for more about that.