I cringe and smile at the same time when I reread articles that posted during the first year here at the blog. The writing was crude – most of its rudimentary articles were dashed off in an hour or so just to introduce something I had found that wasn’t included in The Catalogue. The research tools were also crude: internet research tools were comparatively less developed than they are now, and I hadn’t yet written the patent and trademark books on which I rely so heavily.
But I smile at the exhuberance. Everything was new at the time, and The Catalogue had just unleashed an avalanche of interest in mechanical pencils. That first volume introduces many of the people who are now old friends, and whenever I thumb through Volume 1, I relive the excitement of learning things that are second nature now, and meeting people that have become old friends.
Towards the end of that first volume, I was just beginning to engage in deeper research dives to learn the history behind these pencils rather than just showing off the pencils themselves. “One Wild Goose Chase” (November 1, 2012: Volume 1, page 401) is a good example of the transition from an update service for The Catalogue into the ongoing research project it is today.
In that article, random observations about Selfeed repeating pencils led me to an eBay auction that had closed four years previously. At the time, eBay’s search tools still allowed random strangers to identify buyers and sellers in past auctions, and with the help of several new friends I learned that the seller was Michael Kidd, who had bought a group of Selfeed pencils from Rob Bader. I knew Rob, but Michael was a stranger with whom I forged a new friendship; he snapped this picture of what he had bought from Rob, which was included in the 2012 article:
A few weeks ago, Michael sent me an email to offer me a few pencils before he listed them in the online auctions. Although he has followed the blog all these years, it had been so long since we last conversed that I didn’t remember where I had seen some of them.
Michael mentioned that I had seen what was on that instruction sheet, but I thought he meant that I had seen a Selfeed instruction sheet – not this exact one.
I had forgotten that these were the very same pencils I had written about so long ago, and their addition to the museum is an ever-present reminder that none of us, myself included, really own these things. We are only privileged to be their caretakers for a time.
There were some other items in that care package Michael sent me that I will tell you about later, but one bears mention here: Michael said he was including a pencil that he had grown weary of trying to figure out. He didn’t send a picture of it, but when it arrived I was able to tell him exactly what it was:
The short ringtop is shown here alongside the “Rite Away” pencil I just wrote about here on September 30 in “A Long-Lost Cousin.” The two are identical – even the noses are interchangeable. I scoured the barrel with a loupe looking for any imprints, and there’s nothing there that I can see.
Perhaps this is another Rite Away, but without a barrel imprint. Perhaps, as I theorized in that last article, this is an unmarked Eagle Pencil Company product.
Perhaps, in another thirteen years or so, some random stranger will answer that question for me!
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