Quality, Variety, Rarity, and Obsolescence

Someone walked into the Ohio Pen Show a couple weeks ago with a bag full of stuff to show me. He was disappointed that I didn’t start peeling hundred dollar bills off for 1960s salesmen’s folders filled with sample-marked ballpoints and pencils.

“This is the kind of stuff I buy just to preserve for the day when somebody might care,” I told him. Eventually we did come to terms – I don’t think I was the first person to tell him that – and now that I’m home they still reside in a tote I haven’t opened since the show closed.

No, I’m not going to write about them today.

My point in telling you about that encounter is that some things that are run-of-the-mill and common today may be sought after years from now. While we don’t know what might interest collectors fifty years from now, we do have know what makes collectors chase the vintage things we see at shows today – and those factors have remained relatively static through time. Collectors have always and will always flock to quality, variety, rarity and obsolescence.

The Kreisler is one of those brands that isn’t very collectible today – it didn’t surprise me to find a pristine boxed example in Michael Krut’s junk box, and they rarely cost more than a dollar or two when you find one today. As I look at them, though, I think the Kreisler has all the earmarks of something collectors will be hunting down in the future.

Those were the same thoughts that were rattling around in my head when this turned up at the Don Scott Antique Show a few years ago. I think it was only five dollars or so, and even at that price I hesitated . . . then the preservationist voice within me started in on that familiar mantra: document, document, document.

This Kreisler “Crown II” ballpoint and pencil set is better than any modern advertisers being pumped out by advertising specialty companies like 4imprint today. Both the pen and pencil are marked, as with yesterday’s example, in the center.

These have enameled medallions affixed to their tops advertising Dr. Pepper:

The outer box identifies this as the Crown II “Men’s Set,” Model 18901.

On the bottom of the box are date stamps from 1984, with handwritten numbers that may someday prove instructive for historians and collectors. As of today, I have no idea what they signify.

The ballpoint strongly resembles those made by Cross, but the top end of the refill is different, so they are not compatible.

The original refill inside is identified as the Kreisler “Kreiloy Point.”

What finally tipped the scales in favor of spending a measly five bucks on this set was the paperwork that came with it. The Kreisler Manufacturing Company was located at 9015 Bergentine Avenue in North Bergen, New Jersey – a city best known as the location where David Kahn, Inc. made the Wearever and other brands.

This one find adequately documents the Kreisler Men’s sets, but it begs the question . . . what might the Ladie’s sets have looked like? I can answer that, but I have no idea where this one came from or when:

The touch of hand engraving and color add some charm to this shorter example, and it too has soda pop cache.

If you are rolling your eyes that this blog would feature the lowly Kreisler, step back for a moment and consider the factors that make much older and equally obscure brands such crowd-pleasers among collectors today. The Kreisler is as well built as a Cross and better than nearly anything else made in the 1980s. Two different soda pop varieties, together with the invitation on the order sheet to customize the tops however a customer desired, suggests a deep well of varieties to chase. For every hundred Cross advertisers you might find, you’ll maybe see a single Kreisler. While some might consider their appearance a passé, bell-bottomed abomination, they capture a moment in writing instrument history that has passed us by.

Quality, variety, rarity, and obsolescence. Mark my words – the day will eventually come when today’s lowly Kreisler will become a grail find at pen shows in the future. You heard it here first.

But not yet. When I went to put my new Kreisler find from Michael Krut alongside its siblings, I couldn’t find them. Somewhere in some forgotten corner of the museum, my three Kreislers are being preserved – as I told my hapless seller at the Ohio Show, awaiting the day when someone cares.