As Good As It Gets

I promised yesterday that I’d be back with more information about Parker’s Vest Pocket (or “golf”) pencils. Back I am . . . with a mic drop moment from the Ohio Pen Show.

I move a little slower than I used to these days, conserving my energy rather than running around like a madman – even though I still have a bottle of Jameson on me. Were it not for the kindness of friends, I would have missed what Mike Conway brought in the door that Thursday morning in Columbus; fortunately, Nik Pang was right there when it arrived, and he made a point to acquire it and bring it down to offer it to me.

The story, according to Mike, is that Ruth Reuter was a Parker employee, and “Parker Desk Set” suggests there’s a desk pen and base inside. The “BDS,” however, indicates this is better than that – much, much better, especially for us pencil guys. I’m assuming the letters BDS stand for “Bridge Desk Set.” Inside the cardboard sleeve is a box containing four other boxes, each branded for one of the four card suits.

And inside each of those boxes were four perfectly preserved little desk pencil bases for the four suits, accompanied by a Parker Vest Pocket pencil.

Fortunately, I had learned my lesson at DC about not bringing enough cash, so all I needed to know from Nik was how much of it he wanted. For me, this concluded years of searching: in “The Silent Underbidder” (August 11, 2012: Volume 1, page 300), I told the story of how Joe Nemecek won a set like this at the Triangle Pen Show auction that year. Here is Joe’s set, photographed during that auction:

No, I wasn’t really the underbidder – we agreed that Joe would chase the set, because he’s a bigger Parker fan than I am. If he won, and I told him to be sure that he did, I said I would purchase his less complete set to help him defray the cost. Joe did win, and I did buy Joe’s. At the time I thought to myself, how hard can it be to complete the set?

Hard. Damn hard. In fact, I was only able to find a club suit in the box, and it took a few months to find another black and two red pencils, which presented its own unexpected challenges – there’s a few different variations of these pencils, and it drove me nuts trying to find all four that were exactly the same (see “Where the Sun Don’t Shine” on April 15, 2013: Volume 2, page 137).

Joe’s set was reputedly from a Parker salesman, which is why it was outfitted with pencils in Madarin yellow, jade, marine green and black; I suspect Ruth also wanted a little more variety in her set, replacing two pencils with the Moderne Black-and-Pearl and the burgundy pearl ones. Still, since I’m a preservationist first and I like to keep things as they came to me, and I knew this find would be the cover shot for this volume of the book. I played around with a couple rough concepts, and proudly I posted what I came up with:

Ooohs and aaahs were what I expected. What I got, however, was “get that pearl and black pencil out of there!” from more than one person. Whew, I thought . . . at least I hadn’t massaged that image enough to see that one of them was burgundy pearl rather than black.

One of the naysayers was Larry Liebman: I explained to him how this was how the set came to me, but he was unpersuaded. “Yeah, but it really should have two red and two black,” he replied.

I asked Larry if he had actual documentation of that, and he sent me pictures of two advertisements, one of which was in the Saturday Evening Post on July 26, 1930. I renewed my online subscription so I could get access to their archived issues; there it was, right inside the front cover:

Elsewhere in this advertisement, those stubby little pencils are called “Midget Vest Parkers,” but here the set is advertised as including “Midget Pencils in black and lacquer red.”

The set was advertised for a whopping $24, and the illustration explains something else. All of the complete sets I have seen are missing a lid for the outer box, but when David Isaacson shared pictures of his set in our online discussion, it had something I had never noticed: card suit stickers on the bottom of the box. I turned mine over, and whaddaya know . . . 

There they are . . . or were, anyway, except for the intact spade. This didn’t make any sense to me until I saw that Saturday Evening Post advertisement: what I thought was the box base was actually the lid. 

Anybody have a spare box bottom? It would be nice, but I’m not the least bit disappointed. To my knowledge, this is the only set known that still has the outer cardboard sleeve.

Larry shared another advertisement with me that answered another question I raised yesterday - my concern was that the more streamlined Moderne Black-and-Pearl pencil that came with my set may have been made later.

Here’s that other advertisement: it isn’t dated, nor does it say in what magazine it was published, but it also describes the bridge set as “new,” so it is reasonable to think it was also published in mid-1930:

The text doesn’t say that the pencils are red and black, and the black and white rudimentary drawing shows all four suits in black . . . but I agree that it’s reasonable to think the white pencils shown are the red ones (even though there’s a black one with the heart and a white one with the club – sigh . . . so it goes with advertising art). However, like the other ad, this appears to show the more squared off tops. 

But did you notice the interchangeable ringtop for the desk pencil at the top of the advertisement?

It looks like the streamlined and squared off caps were in production at the same time, depending on a customer’s choice. Although I can’t rule out that eventually Parker gravitated towards the more streamlined caps, this provides the proof that if our friend Ruth Reuter wanted a different pencil in her set when she pulled it from the assembly line, a shorter more streamlined Moderne Black-and-Pearl was right there for the swapping at the time.

Although I’m ultra-cautious when I’m making changes to things when they have been undisturbed for so long, I agree that it’s acceptable to swap out the two pencils in Ruth’s set with the black and red pencils from “When Good Luck Is a Bad Thing” on October 31:

But I still keep the pencils that came with this set right alongside them.

And I’m still looking for the bottom of that outer box.

Accessions and Deaccessions

My reputation as a Parker hater isn’t really accurate, even though I’ve poked the wounded bear a few times here by suggesting Parker made some regrettable lower-quality things for other companies. Maybe this article will redeem me – I have several items in the Parker wing of the museum that I haven’t written about, many of which are truly one of a kind.

A few years ago, Larry Liebman told me he would like to rehome some Parker prototype pencils, and he thought the museum might be a good place for them to enjoy their retirement.

At top is a “Reporter,” a weird Parker subbrand that I haven’t thought about much since the first volume here at the blog; I haven’t seen one for years, so there hasn’t been an occasion to circle back around to them.

These are rarely found in working order, since the material had a tendency to shrink and freeze the mechanism in place. This one works, and the overall shape and proportions are slightly different from what I’ve seen before. Usually these are marked “Reporter” on the clip, but that blue one at bottom is marked “Parco.”

In “Harder Than It Had To Be” (April 10, 2012: Volume 1, page 169), I had concluded that these were a Canadian product, thanks to George Kovalenko’s contribution of an advertisement by Eaton’s, a Canadian retailer. I no longer believe these were exclusively for the Canadian market, though – a current search of newspapers turns up more American advertisements than Canadian, beginning in fall, 1930. This one (abridged here) was in the Great Falls (Montana) Leader on September 12, 1930:

These may have worked as well when they were new as they do today – Reporter Pencils were being blown out at clearance prices by mid-1930, and the last advertisement I found was published in December, 1931.  

That second example, in coral, sports an ill-fitting washer clip sandwiched between the top and bottom sections. 

Years ago I saw another example just like this, including the ill-fitting clip – I believe Joe Nemecek had it. It seems like too much of a coincidence that the only two of these I’ve seen have that same poorly fitted clip, and besides: even if the clip isn’t right, the rest of the pencil is so weird that if it was supposed to have something else, I have no idea what that might be.

The two ringtop pencils are fairly straightforward, except for the banding.

These are typically one solid color, sometimes tipped at the ends with black. The black used on these, however, is not that same material – on closer examination, it has shrunk a bit.

Speaking of weird gold-capped Duofolds, Eric Magnuson brought this one by for a photo session a few years ago: 

This one looks almost like a reproduction: those green veins are something very atypical for Parker, and it isn’t hard to make these Duofold barrels out of modern materials since there’s nothing more to them than threading opposite ends of a straight tube. Eric’s example is the real deal, though, fully marked with a Duofold imprint.

Larry’s red vest pocket pencil (some call them “golf pencils,” but we’ll get to that tomorrow) is unusual because of that added black band. Also . . . now that I think of it, when I find these in red they have a longer, less streamlined top than these. More on that tomorrow, too . . .

The rest of Larry’s deaccessions in this batch were in Parker’s “Pearl and Ebony” (as described in Parker’s 1928 and 1929 catalogs), renamed “Moderne Black-and-Pearl” in Parker’s 1930 catalog; none of these, however, were in any of Parker’s catalogs.

That weird vest pocket-ish pencil isn’t anything found in regular production. As mentioned earlier, vest pocket pencils had long tapered or short streamlined tops, but nothing so rounded as to be perilously close to Walter Sheaffer’s design patent for the Balance line’s golf pencil.

On these, my working theory has always been that the example at top is earlier, and the more streamlined, shorter caps are later – but I don’t think that’s right. More on that tomorrow.

Next are a couple shop pieces, showing how Parker’s design department was playing around with different designs:

The one with a “tip” is a dummy – there’s nothing there to write with.

At bottom is a “pregnant” Duofold, to borrow the term from the collector’s nickname for earlier Parker fountain pens with bulbous barrels. It is unusual not only for its girth but also because there are no black ends; the 1928 and 1929 catalogs showing the Pearl and Ebony flattop Duofold pencils only show those with black ends.

And speaking of black . . .

These also came from Larry, but at some other time. They are along the lines of the pastel Duofolds shown in Parker’s 1929 and 1930 catalogs – I owed it to you to show you a spread of these to explain yesterday’s reference to George Parker and the Easter Bunny.

What makes these two unusual is the trim: the deluxe trim, with that wider center band, was first cataloged in the green pearl Duofolds in 1932. This is “reverse trim,” meaning it is the opposite color from what one would expect to see – these typically had gold filled trim. As for the other, that extra-wide gold filled band is to my knowledge uncataloged. I don’t have any evidence to tell me whether this is factory or a jeweler’s modification.

I mentioned my photo shoot with Eric Magnuson earlier, and Eric had a couple other things to share. First is this streamlined Duofold pencil:

It is close to, but not quite the same as, the color of my gray Parker Zaner Bloser pencil:

Like his yellow pencil with green veins, this one is also fully marked with a Duofold imprint:

Eric also brought his examples of those weird “Parco” pencils – not along the Reporter lines as shown earlier, but those with black plastic caps. We got our respective collections together for a group shot:

Finally, Eric brought his weird Challenger/Duofold hybrid in mandarin yellow, shown here alongside my larger (and a little messed up) example and at bottom, a “normal” Mandarin Duofold:

Those top two are ordinary nose drive pencils, while the bottom one has a typical rear-drive Duofold mechanism.

Both of these Challenger/Duofold hybrids have Duofold imprints:

While my larger example doesn’t have any markings on the cap, Eric has two of the smaller ones – both have advertising imprints, suggesting these mules were put together from leftover parts and sold however they could be sold.

My last news on the weird Parker front – for now – is this one, courtesy of Fred Copsey-Pearce:

Parker fans will immediately recognize this one as one of Parker’s special-order pencils for the Zaner-Bloser Company of Columbus, Ohio, with Zaner-Bloser’s typical contoured grip. As with other pencils made by Parker for Zaner-Bloser, it is imprinted on the cap; however, it lacks the “Made by Parker Pen Company” part you’ll usually see:

The last time I saw a Parker Zaner-Bloser pencil in lapis was when a pen and pencil set turned up in the Chicago Pen Show auction a few years ago. It sold for more than you’d pay for a used Volkswagon, more than I could afford – I approached the buyer after the auction to see if he’d sell the pencil, but he wanted to keep the set together. I can’t say I blame him.

Fred’s example is missing the top piece and the clip, and I’m still waiting for the right parts to make that happen; the diameter of the opening at the top is larger than any normal Duofold, and someone crudely wedged a now-fossilized eraser in its place after it went missing.

Fred says that he ran across this one in an online auction, and everybody missed it – myself included. But wait . . . there’s more. Fred says it was part of a lot that included some other odd things . . . 

These are dummy pens rather than functioning models, so I’m saying the following with caution: look at that cap . . .

If these were finished, production pens, I’d say that top is a dead giveaway that these were made by the Pick Pen Company in Cincinnati – that might make sense that another Ohio company wanted to make pens for a Columbus firm. It might also explain – if these were made by Pick – why the typical Parker Pen Co. mention is absent on the cap of the lapis pencil, and also why a normal Duofold end plug isn’t the right size.

But these are conceptual dummies, not finished products, so it’s just as likely that whoever made this just didn’t finish the lathe work on the cap. Besides, there are some similarities between these and Larry’s pencil barrels.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to know . . . when the artifacts themselves are the only available evidence, the information vacuum leaves a few holes in the story. 

Witness for the Prosecution

Step one: observe. Step two: compare those observations to what you know. Step three: draw reasonable conclusions. That process always serves me well.

Still, when one of those reasonable conclusions runs contrary to a bit of our collective lore, I often get some pushback. We grow fond of the stories that are passed down to us, even when they are ludicrous – often out of the love and respect we have for the people from whom we heard those stories. If you said George Parker came out with ringtop Duofolds in pastel moire colors because he was really the Easter Bunny, you could do so with a straight face by prefacing that statement with “Fultz once said .  . ..” 

No, Michael Fultz never said any such thing. That’s intended as a tribute to how much I respect the man and how much influence he still has today.

When it came to the conclusions I drew regarding Wahl-marked Skyline pens (“A Better, Simpler Explanation” on October 18, 2025), I was bucking the time-honored story that the newly-minted Eversharp, Inc. slapped the Wahl name on a few Skylines just to preserve the exclusive rights to the Wahl name. 

That never made much sense to me – from my own experience, when I purchased the assets of the failed Autopoint Company, I didn’t pursue Autopoint’s trademarked names – I renamed my existing Legendary Lead Company the Legendary Pencil Company. Many people have asked me why I didn’t want the Autopoint name, and I tell them all the same thing: Autopoint failed because it wasn’t paying anybody, including its landlord. My name was better than theirs. 

Wahl was in the same boat in 1939, facing threats from the Federal Trade Commission, angry shareholders and litigation. Putting the Wahl name on a new Eversharp Inc. product would only paint a target on the new company’s back.

To my surprise, “A Better, Simpler Explanation” was well received. Several collectors looked at their Wahl-marked Skylines pens and without exception, everyone saw the same thing I was seeing: Wahl markings on the back of the clip for no apparent reason as well as on the front. All reached the same conclusion I did, that the Skyline was introduced before the first advertisements for them appeared in 1940, and before Wahl reorganized into Eversharp, Inc.

A Wahl catalog or official Wahl announcement would provide the concrete proof, but none are known as of this writing. No matter how reasonable the conclusion is, even if beyond a reasonable doubt, it’s a circumstantial case.  If only there was some hard, primary evidence . . .

No, I didn’t do this on purpose, although the timing couldn’t have been better. Janet and I trekked over to Springfield last weekend to browse an antique mall we had not visited for some time, and one display case had this in it:

The slots are narrower, suggesting this case was intended for pencils rather than fountain pens, and the glass is acid-etched with words, including one that shouldn’t be there:

“Wahl Eversharp Skyline.” That is as clear a pronouncement as you could want that the Skyline was introduced in 1939 or very early 1940, before The Wahl Company ceased to exist. But wait . . . there’s more . . . the smaller text beneath the main title is extremely difficult to make out, but I was able to decipher it with a loupe:

“Super Flex    Full Flex    Medium Flex   Oxford   Demi”

The word “Oxford” is the one that stands out, because the name is one the Wahl Company used for its inexpensive lines during the 1930s; there is no evidence that Eversharp, Inc. ever used the name after the merger.

And wait . . . there’s even more . . . 

On the top edge of the case, the dealer who originally used this case put handwritten stickers on the top of the lid, so that a salesman could see the model numbers and prices without opening the case for the customer on the other side of the counter. Of course there is no direct evidence that these stickers were there in 1939, rather than stuck on there by some random person for some random reason at some random time over the last 75 years or so. However, I’ll tell you why I do believe they were put there in 1939 – and this is where things get really interesting. 

The stickers read:

#162 / $1.00

#8 / 108 / $7.36

#72 / 172 / $1.25

#72X / $1.25

#162 / $1.40

#165 / $1.50

#106 / (unreadable)

#166 / $1.40

These appear to be Skyline model numbers – almost. Skyline fountain pens had two-digit model numbers, and the pencil used the same numbers with the addition of a leading number 1.Therefore, for example, a standard length Modern Stripe Skyline pen was Model 75 and the matching pencil was model 175.

Chapter Fifteen in Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry, includes a comprehensive taxonomy of Skyline configurations and model designations compiled from period catalog materials and surviving examples with price stickers. The model numbers for nearly every surviving variant has been identified.

Not a single one of the model numbers on this display case matches what we know to exist. Each of these numbers, though, is tantalizingly close. Models 160 and 161 were demi and standard-size Presentation Skylines, respectively, with ribbed, gold-filled upper barrels. Models 162, 165, and 166, however, are unknown.

Models 170 and 171 were demi and standard-size “Presentation Vertical” Skylines, respectively, with their gold-filled upper barrels adorned with lines running lengthwise rather than around the barrel. Models 174 and 175 were the demi and standard-size “Modern Stripe” (nicknamed “moire” by collectors) – the 1940 price sheet on page 336 in Eversharp added a suffix of B, G, or S to denote the color (blue, green, or silver grey). 

Model 172 and Model 72 (presumably, the matching fountain pen) are unknown, and the possible existence of a Model 72X pen is really exciting. Other known Skyline models with a letter suffix denoted special barrel materials: Model 78P was the unicorn all-Platinum pen, Model 78SY was the Command Performance pen in solid 14k gold, Model 78Y denoted a gold-filled cap and barrel, and Model 78W had a stainless cap.

The sterling-capped Skyline, like the one from that earlier article, has not been documented with an official model number; perhaps X designated sterling, although I’d think if that were true it would be Model 78X, not Model 72X. Maybe it was something else; since it only cost $1.25, it likely wasn’t any other expensive material – maybe it was the brown Modern Stripe, since “B” was already occupied by the color blue. Who knows – maybe these stickers set doorbuster prices to clear out old Wahl models after the reorganization. 

Then there’s that crazy #8 / 108 designation, which appears to have been $7.36 for a pen and pencil set (if I’m reading the handwriting correctly). Models 100, 101, 102, and 103 were lower-tier press-clip models meant for utilitarian use, and press-clip pens were “especially for grade school use” (see page 348 in Eversharp for the advertisement which documents this).  There was no Model 108, according to my research, and there was no Model 106, either. I’ve never seen a sticker on a press-clip pen – not surprising, since they were made to be abused and nearly every example I’ve seen was ridden hard and put away wet. Whatever this was, it was more expensive than anything known in the 100 series of Skylines.

Here is my theory, based on comparing these observations to what we know. The consolidation into Eversharp, Inc. was in the works for a year before it was consummated in early 1940. The Skyline was already well into development, and it was likely test-marketed by Wahl to be sure it would be a tremendous success for the newly-formed company.

The main reason for the reorganization was for Wahl to escape all of the obligations that were dragging the company down – one substantial obligation was the company’s repair obligations pursuant to its double-check lifetime warranty. Perhaps the model designations for the Skylines were already planned before the reorganization, but for Wahl's test marketing purposes, Wahl used different model numbers to differentiate those pens and pencils which the new company would have no warranty obligation to repair.

Yes, I know that part is conjecture – a reasonable conclusion, based on comparing what we observe here to what we already know. Now, as all of my Eversharp fans in the peanut gallery digest this article and look more closely at the examples they have, our challenge is to determine if there are stickered examples that bear any of these mystery model numbers to see if this conjecture is ultimately proven correct.

A few notes of caution as we undertake this new challenge: first, the fountain pens had price bands on their barrels, and to my knowledge all of the caps are interchangeable. Other than “junk box provenance,” there is no way to know whether the cap on a banded barrel is original to the pen. Finding a barrel with a price band of “72X” would be exciting, but not conclusive. Pencils, on the other hand, had one-piece barrel, so a pencil marked “172X” would be the clincher to tell us what the matching fountain pen looked like.

There’s another caution on the pencils, though: my previous article discussed the name “Wahl” stamped on the back of the fountain pen clips, as well as on the front. I went through my stash of Model 174 and 175 modern stripe (or “moire”) Skyline pencils, which from what we know were introduced at the outset – they are either marked “Eversharp Skyline” or they have no markings at all.

Again, this is just a theory: perhaps the pre-reorganization Skyline pencils lacked this stamp to indicate they were not made by Eversharp, Inc.

I continue to hold out hope that documents will one day surface to answer all of these questions once and for all. Until then, please observe and report. I’m reminded of a great quote by Tommy Lee Jones in the 1997 film, Men in Black: “1,500 years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the earth was flat. And fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.”