That Last, Fascinating Reprise

Note: this third installment in a three-article series was published in the Spring 2025 issue of The PENnant, Journal of the Pen Collectors of America. The first installment is here.

When I attended the 2021 Chicago Show, I had in tow those three spectacular ‘Salrite pencils from the last installment of this series for ooooing and aaaaahing, and there were plenty of ooos and aaahs to be had. My antennae were up even more than usual for other examples of the ‘Salrite.

Rob Bader was also in attendance at the show, and as I pawed through the pile of things on his table Rob didn’t even know he had, he showed me a pencil he brought knowing I would jump all over it (Figure 1). I recognized it as a ‘Salrite, with James Salz’ patented mechanism and spare lead chamber (Figure 2), but the clip was an unmarked z-clip secured by a press-fitted trim band rather than the usual press-fit ‘Salrite clip – above which was a spectacular enameled emblem. The metal cap lacked the usual “Pencil Products Corporation” imprint, consistent with later examples of the ‘Salrite in my collection.

Figure 1. At top is a later ‘Salrite discussed in part one of this series, marked “Chase Pencil Corporation. Chase apparently took over production of the ‘Salrite between January and November 1924, and this was previously thought to be the final incarnation of the pencils. The example at bottom, acquired from Rob Bader at the 2021 Chicago Pen Show, clearly shares the same lines, but it is not marked ‘Salrite . . . and it adds one final chapter to the ‘Salrite story.

Figure 2. The new acquisition is clearly a ‘Salrite, complete with its patented mechanism and spare lead storage consisting of holes drilled around the barrel. The pencils are identical, other than the clip and the attractive enameled emblem above it.

Rob told me how much he wanted, and the deal was done as fast as I could whip the cash out of my pocket. I would have whipped that cash out even faster had I been examining it more closely with a loupe; back at my table, a closer examination of this new find revealed an imprint I had not yet seen: “Royal Pencil Corp. / Corona, N.Y.C.” (Figure 3).

Figure 3. ‘Salrite pencils are typically stamped “Pencil Products Corp.” and Lucifer Most’s patent date of December 23, 1919, and later models also include a reference to James Salz’ patent of May 2, 1922. This new example, however, is stamped only with the 1922 patent date followed by “Royal Pencil Corp. / Corona, N.Y.C.”

Recall from the first installment in this series of articles that the ‘Salrite’s demise began with an unfavorable decision by the Patent Office, which denied Salz registration of the name “Salzrite” in March, 1923 due to a likelihood of confusion with the Sandfelder Corporation’s “Shur-Rite” trademark.  The ‘Salrite was last offered for sale in January 1924, and by November a “Chase Pencil Corporation” had taken over production of the pencils.

I was fairly confident this Royal Pencil Corporation was not connected with the makers of those crappy, later third-tier pens and pencils marked “Royal,” and the reference to Corona, New York ruled out production across the pond (where “Royal Imperial” wood pencils were made for distribution in the United States). A “Royal Pencil Corporation” fit nowhere into my research, and this was the first time I couldn’t wait for a pen show to end, just so I could research Rob’s pencil as soon as I got home!

My research took only a few seconds, after a search for “Royal Pencil Corporation” turned up as its first result a 2007 blog post by New Zealander “Kiwi Dave” over at Dave’s Mechanical Pencils, who included low-resolution images of a Royal Pencil Corporation brochure in his article. Dave was kind enough to supply better quality images of the brochure, which includes Salz’ “Machine Gun of Commerce” catchphrase and also refers to the pencil as the ‘Salrite, even though the pencils are not so marked (Figure 4). There is an illustration of one pencil with a red hard rubber nose, begging the question of whether an all-red hard rubber pencil was made by or for Royal (Figure 5). 

Figure 4. It took only a few minutes for the author to find “Kiwi Dave’s” 2007 article about the Royal Pencil Corporation at his “Dave’s Mechanical Pencils” blog, which included a low-resolution image of this Royal Pencil brochure. Dave graciously supplied this higher resolution image of the brochure.

Figure 5. The back side of the brochure shows various models. Note the “Machine Gun of Commerce” catchphrase, which had been used by Salz to promote the ‘Salrite since 1921, and the text describes the pencils as the ‘SALRITE, even though the pencils themselves are not so marked. Note that the example at left has a red nose, presumably also made of hard rubber; as of this writing, no red ‘Salrite pencils have been found, and the possibility of finding an example like this or with a matching red barrel is tantalizing indeed!

Other details in the brochure fill in more of the story: note the Copyright date in the bottom corner is 1928 (Figure 6) – four years after the brief emergence of the Chase Pencil Corporation, and long after the Sandfelder Corporation’s “Shur-Rite” was out of production.

Figure 6. This brochure includes a copyright date of 1928, four years after the Chase Pencil Corporation had taken over production of the ‘Salrite. By that time, many manufacturers had discontinued the use of hard rubber in pencil barrels, making the Royal a last gasp for both the ‘Salrite and hard rubber pencils generally. 

There’s more. The front cover indicates the Royal Pencil was marketed – but not marked – as the “Lodge-I-Cal” pencil (it took me a minute to catch the play on the word “logical” – Figure 7). 

Figure 7. The “Lodge-I-Cal” trademark is shown in this portion of the brochure in Figure 5, with a pencil forming the letter I, is a play on “logical” and Royal’s business model of producing pencils with fraternal emblems. The “Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.” Legend sent the author back to read his own book, American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953, to see if a trademark was registered for the mark.

The “Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.” notation accompanying the mark signifies that the Royal Pencil Corporation at least claimed to have registered a United States trademark, and I happen to have written an excellent book on the subject: American Writing Instrument Trademarks 1870-1953. I flipped through my book, and there it was: William H. Watt, president of the Royal Pencil Corporation at 110-64 Corona Avenue, Corona, New York, applied for registration of the Lodge-I-Cal mark – complete with its stylized pencil in place of the letter I – on March 7, 1929.

Figure 8. In the author’s defense, the only documentation connecting the “Lodge-I-Cal” mark to the Royal Pencil Corporation was the image in Figure 4. William H. Watt, president of the Royal Pencil Corporation at 110-64 Corona Avenue, Corona, New York, applied for registration of the Lodge-I-Cal mark on March 7, 1929, claiming that the mark was first used in commerce on February 1, 1929. Registration was granted on December 10, 1929 as Trademark 264,864.

The Lodge-I-Cal mark was granted registration on December 10 1929 as Trademark 264,864 (Figure 8). The certificate states that Royal claimed first use of the mark in commerce on February 1, 1929; if that is true, Royal’s brochure was printed before the pencils themselves were produced. By 1929, most manufactures had discontinued the use of hard rubber in favor of brightly colored celluloid in the manufacture of writing instruments, making the Royal Lodge-I-Cal a last gasp for both the ‘Salrite and hard rubber pencils. 

Perhaps that is why it has taken me so long to find one – then again, without any identifying marks on the pencil other than “Royal Pencil Corp.,” perhaps I have been searching the online auctions in all the wrong places, since I haven’t actively searched for those lousy, third-tier “Royal” pencils.

But wait . . . there’s even more.

Note that every pencil in the brochure has an emblem affixed above the clip: “Lodge-I-Cal” referred to the Royal Pencil Company’s business model of producing pencils “furnished with emblem [sic] of all Secret, Civic, and Fraternal societies.” The pencils illustrated include fraternal emblems for the Knights of Columbus, the Elks, the Masons, and the Lions . . . plus a few others I don’t recognize. The emblem mounted on the example I acquired from Rob is incorporated into the border on the front page (Figures 9 and 10).

Figure 9. Detail of the enameled emblem on the Royal, with a mysterious “JrOUAM” designation. The compass and square strongly suggests a Masonic connection.

Figure 10. The JrOUAM emblem is incorporated into the border of the Royal brochure in Figure 4.

The compass and square incorporated into the emblem evoke a Masonic connection, although the meaning of the “JrOUAM” legend and arm-and-hammer in the middle eluded me. My friend John Hall is no longer with us to drive up in his miniature Tin Lizzy and tell me what this means, but fortunately he isn’t the only Mason I know: Bruce Mindrup, who was also in attendance at that Chicago show, took one look at Rob’s pencil and recognized the insignia . . . almost.

“I’ve seen this,” Bruce said several times, racking his brain for where and when. “I think I have a badge at home with this on it.” He puzzled for the remainder of the weekend until his puzzler was sore, and I felt guilty knowing that he wouldn’t rest until he remembered what it meant. I felt even more guilty when I received a letter from Bruce more than a month later: he still hadn’t found the badge, but he did find something that at least partly scratched the cranial itch I had given him. A Masonic meeting hall in Greenport, Long Island has a sign mounted on the outside, with this same logo indicating that “JrOUAM” stands for the “Junior Order United American Mechanics” fraternal organization (Figure 11). 

Figure 11. The author asked Bruce Mindrup, an active Mason who was in attendance at the show, what “JrOUAM” meant. Mindrup had seen it, but he couldn’t remember where. A month after the show, the author received this letter from him: a sign on the outside of a Masonic meeting hall in Greenport, Long Island indicates that “JrOUAM” stands for the Junior Order United American Mechanics.

The JrOUAM was founded in Germantown, Pennsylvania (near Philadelphia) on May 17, 1853, and unfortunately, the organization has an ugly past. Among its stated objectives, according to the History of the Junior Order United American Mechanics (1897), was nativist xenophobia: “to use such means, when able, as will prevent the current system of emigration of foreign paupers to our land” (page 19). Wikipedia suggests something even darker, that the organization was founded as an overtly anti-Catholic order. 

While there is no reference to “Catholic” in the 1897 history, the Wikipedia article notes that membership in the JrOUAM remains restricted to Protestants to this day. Its numbers have dwindled, but it continues to maintain a website at which only virtue, liberty, and patriotism are identified as the “principles of the order.” No publicly available source documents any formal relationship between the JrOUAM and the Masons, but the compass and square incorporated into its logo and its presence on the side of Masonic meeting hall suggests at least collaboration, if the JrOUAM has not been fully absorbed.

According to the Mason’s website, “Freemasonry is not concerned with theological distinctions or particular religious beliefs,” but the order requires its members to “believe in the existence of a Supreme Being.” 

The Catholic Church objects to the Masons’ noncommittal views as to what particular flavor of “Supreme Being” its members attorn, and beginning in 1738 Catholics were forbidden from joining the Masons under pain of excommunication. Pope John Paul II removed the penalty of excommunication in 1983, but reiterated the Church’s ban on joining the order.

Times change, and perspectives change with them. As for me . . . I simply prefer to enjoy a neat pencil with a great story to tell.

One Spectacular Fell Swoop

Note: this second installment in a three-article series was published in the Summer 2024 issue of The PENnant, Journal of the Pen Collectors of America. The first installment is here. 

In the first installment of this series, I presented the meteoric rise and fall of the Salz ’Salrite pencil, from its origins as the metal “Sta-Sharp” pencil manufactured by the Pencil Products Corporation beginning in 1919, into its commanding hard rubber incarnation beginning in late 1921, through the adverse ruling before the United States Patent Office in 1923 that made Salz the likely target of the Federal Trade Commission, and ending with the brief handoff of ’Salrite production to a mysterious “Chase Pencil Corporation” in 1924.

This history is fairly complete. However, two loose ends in this story continued to bug me.

The first was an offhand remark from a 1924 closeout advertisement that the ’Salrite was available in three sizes, and I only knew of two: a short “ring-top” (in quotes because sometimes Salz mounted the ring on the top, and sometimes it was affixed to the side, on a metal band), and the full-sized models with the Salz “Shur Hold” clip—the name for which was likely the strongest evidence that the company was deliberately trading on the “Shur-Rite” name (fig. 1). What was this third size? A thin model, perhaps a continuation of the metal pencil line? An extra-long baseball bat of a pencil? Or a pipsqueak? Hmmm...

Figure 1. The state of my knowledge before a chance online discovery: two sizes, a ring-top with the ring either on top or mounted on the side affixed to a band, and a full-sized model. What was that third size mentioned in closeout advertisements?

The second unanswered question arose from the patent commissioner’s remarks in his decision to deny registration of the “Salz Rite” name: “Advertisements of applicant of record in the case show that generally the ‘z’ of the mark is inconspicuous, sometimes appears as a double hyphen and at least in once instance is omitted entirely,” wrote Assistant Patent Commissioner Fenning. 

I had found variations of ’Salrite imprints with a tiny “z” snuck in the middle, and variations with no “z” or apostrophe (fig. 2). But a “double hyphen”? I had resigned myself to the belief that since the commissioner referred only to Salz advertisements, perhaps this comment was the result of artistic license in illustrations at the time.

Figure 2. The Patent Office mentioned that Salz either omitted the “z” in “Salz Rite,” shrank it down so that it was inconspicuous, or used a double hyphen in its place. Here are examples of no Z and little Z...does a double-hyphen imprint exist?

Tantalizing evidence suggested that (1) there were three sizes while I only knew of two, and (2) another variation of the ’Salrite imprint may or may not exist. To those who don’t suffer from CDO (that’s OCD with the letters in the right order), these might seem like trifles. Nevertheless, I never stopped searching for answers, and both of these questions were answered—resoundingly—all at once, in one online auction a couple years ago (fig. 3). 

Figure 3. These three examples of the ’Salrite surfaced in an online auction in 2021, resolving any lingering doubts I had regarding what three sizes were offered, and whether a “double-hyphen” imprint existed.

Question one answered: yes, there were three sizes of hard rubber ’Salrites...and that third size was a pipsqueak (fig. 4).

Figure 4. The elusive third “pipsqueak” size, shown beside an ordinary ring-top ’Salrite.

All three of these are ring-tops—even the side-clip example has a ring mounted at the top. Better still, all three of these also resoundingly answered my second question about the existence of “double hyphen” imprints (figs. 5 and 6).

Figure 5. The side-clip example in this trio clearly shows the double-hyphen ’Sal=Rite imprint.

Figure 6. The pipsqueak example has both a double hyphen imprint on the cap and an unusual decorative band.

These are the finest examples of the ’Salrite I have ever encountered. In fact, in my opinion they are among the finest examples of any American mechanical pencil ever made, manufactured sometime between the hard rubber ’Salrite’s introduction in late 1921 and the Patent Commissioner’s adverse ruling in early 1923.  The mottled example, in addition to the double hyphen imprint, is shop marked “225" filled in with gold (fig. 7). These are either part of a salesman’s sample kit or shop models, made to show off what the company was capable of producing. 

Figure 7. The mottled example shares the double-hyphen imprint on the cap, and it also bears a shop-marked “225” filled in with gold. The significance of this mark is unknown; maybe it designated a model number or a date (perhaps February 25, 1922 or 1923?). Less likely is that it designated the price—$2.25 seems low for this quality of construction.

The overlay on the side clip model appears to be gold filled, but the tooling expenses to produce it must have been exorbitant (figs. 8 and 9). Salz may not have done the metalwork itself, but may have bought the parts.

Figure 8. The side-clip model sports the same pressed-in clip found on earlier ’Salrite metal pencils. Attaching Salz’s wraparound “Shur Hold” clip to an overlay would have been unsightly, if not impossible.

Figure 9. The overlay on the side-clip model appears to be gold filled, and the tooling costs for what appears to be a one-off must have been exorbitant.

The crown jewel of this trio, however, is the mottled example. The overlay is hand-engraved, and it is exquisitely preserved with no trace of wear.  The overlay is unmarked as to metal content, but the top, as with the other two examples, is marked 1/10 – 18k, meaning gold filled (fig. 10).

Figure 10. The mottled hard rubber example has an overlay that may not be solid gold, but which is nevertheless exquisitely preserved and may be new old stock. It appears to be hand -engraved.

For weeks after these three examples surfaced, I kept an eye on the online seller’s listings in the hopes that they might be part of a larger set the seller was liquidating. I even searched completed auctions to see if I had missed anything else. Nothing ever surfaced, so these appear to be all that remains of a salesman’s kit from the zenith of the ’Salrite’s short but spectacular run.

In the previous installment of this series, I teased out the notion that the ’Salrite did briefly reemerge for “one last, fascinating reprise.” These three examples arrived on my doorstep in the nick of time for me to bring them to the September 2021 Chicago Pen Show, just for show and tell ... and by coincidence, it was at that very show that I learned all about that reprise. That story is coming up, in the last installment of this series.

The third installment in this series is here.

Reacquainted with Old Friends

Note: this article appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of The PENnant, Journal of the Pen Collectors of America.

Readers frequently ask me which brand of mechanical pencil is my “favorite” out of the thousands of pencils about which I have written. I don’t have one—the blog has featured each of my latest favorites in turn. When I started the project, my thought was that if there isn’t something about a pencil interesting enough for me to write about, it isn’t worth buying.

That went out the window a few thousand pencils ago. I have more new additions now than I can write about during my lifetime, or even my grandchildren’s’ lifetimes.

There are, however, a few brands that cause me to tread perilously close to the line separating hoarders from historians. I can’t resist snapping up early Ever Sharps (yes, that’s two words for the early models) because even if I have one or a few identical examples...I just like them. An Artpoint pencil is another brand on which I’ll splurge any day of the week because hope springs eternal that someday I’ll find an imprint under the cap that will contain some extra bit of information to add to the story.

Another hoard-worthy brand, and the topic of today’s article, is the Salz ’Salrite. Wayward ’Salrites always find refuge here because they have so many interesting little variations that I’m fairly certain whatever I bring home will be different from what I already have. Over the years I’ve bought every reasonably priced example I’ve run across...and only a couple of them have been exact duplicates.

I laid out the pieces of the ’Salrite story as I understood them at the time in a three-part series, “Before Salz Was Salz” (September 5 through 7, 2016: Volume 4, pages 152-159). Since then, a few fascinating new variants have surfaced which cause me to circle back to the subject, but before I introduce them in the next installments of this series, this article will present a summary of the ’Salrite story.

Salz Brothers, Inc., was founded by brothers James, Jacob, and the colorful Ignatz Salz, who began manufacturing fountain pens in New York around 1909, according to Richard Binder’s invaluable online resource, the “Glossopedia.” In January, 1920, Salz Brothers introduced a companion pencil called the “Sta-Sharp” to pair with the company’s pens (fig. 1). The Sta-Sharp was a thin, metal pencil that was unique for its spare lead storage compartment, accessed by unscrewing the nose. It was patented by Lucifer Most (fig. 2) on December 23, 1919, and was manufactured by the newly formed Pencil Products Corporation, incorporated on March 3, 1919.

Figure 1. Sta-Sharp pencils made by the Pencil Products Corporation, from page 132 of the author’s first book, The Catalogue of American Mechanical Pencils.

 

Figure 2. Lucifer J. Most’s patent for the Salz “Sta-Sharp” pencil, applied for on June 11, 1919, and issued December 23, 1919, as number 1,325,570. Spare leads were contained within a star-shaped insert within the barrel, accessed by unscrewing the nose.

In late 1920 or early 1921, Ignatz Salz coined a colorful new name for the Sta-Sharp: ’Salrite — a campy contraction for “It’s all right” — and the new name appears on the clips of a few rebranded Sta-Sharp metal pencils (fig. 3). Beginning in late 1921, Salz introduced a new hard rubber incarnation of the ’Salrite and dubbed it “the machine gun of commerce” (fig. 4). Hard rubber ’Salrite pencils differ from their predecessors only on the outside; the internal mechanism is the same, with the star-shaped metal insert for lead storage replaced with holes drilled into the nose end of the barrel (fig. 5).

Figure 3. Sta-Sharp metal pencils in their original boxes. The upper example has a clip marked “SB,” while the lower one bears Ignatz Salz’s flashy new name for the pencil, ’Salrite.

Figure 4. This advertisement, which ran in Modern Stationer on October 25, 1921, introduced the new hard rubber incarnation of the Salz ’Salrite.

Figure 5.  Hard rubber ’Salrite pencils are identical to their predecessors, with the metal star-shaped lead storage replaced with holes drilled into the end of the barrel.

Within a year, an advertisement by stationer James McCreery & Co. in the Evening World on April 24, 1922, announced that the Pencil Products Corporation had ceased manufacturing metal pencils. I interpret this notice to mean that Pencil Products was no longer making complete pencils but was still making metal components for the new hard rubber pencils. Examples with plain hard rubber tops bear imprints lacking any reference to Pencil Products, but later examples with metal caps through the end of the ’Salrite’s run bear the Pencil Products name, together with the December 23, 1919, and May 3, 1922, patent dates (figs. 6 and 7). The 1922 patent date refers to one issued to the other Salz brother, James Salz — number 1,414,752, for a “hard rubber pencil.” The 1922 patent was also assigned to Pencil Products Corporation (fig. 8).

Figure 6. ’Salrites with hard rubber tops lack any reference to the Pencil Products Corporation, but retain the company’s 1919 patent date.

Figure 7. Later ’Salrites with metal caps indicate Pencil Products continued to manufacture metal components for Salz. Note the May 2, 1922, patent date has been added.

Figure 8. James Salz applied for this patent for the hard rubber incarnation of the ’Salrite on November 27, 1920. It was granted on May 2, 1922.

From all appearances, judging from numerous large, flashy newspaper advertisements in 1921 and 1922, the hard rubber incarnation of the ’Salrite was wildly successful ... until, that is, Salz attempted to register a trademark for the name “Salz Rite.” The Sandfelder Corporation, owner of the “Shur-Rite” trademark for mechanical pencils, objected to trademark registration of “Salz Rite,” claiming that the public might be confused. While that argument might appear to be a stretch, there is some evidence that any similarity between the two names was intentional: Salz also coined the name “Shur-Hold” in reference to the clips used on the ’Salrite. 

Ultimately, in a decision rendered on March 30, 1923, the Patent Office denied registration of the “Salz Rite” name on grounds of likelihood of confusion (fig. 9). In doing so, the Commissioner noted that in use, imprints on ’Salrite pencils either had a very small Z or omitted the letter entirely. This “likelihood of confusion” finding was a death sentence for the name, because it was also an administrative precursor to an injunction by the newly formed Federal Trade Commission.

Figure 9. The Patent Office denied Salz’s attempted registration of “Salz Rite” on March 30, 1923, holding that the name was too similar to the “Shur-Rite” name previously registered by the Sandfelder Corporation.

The trademark scuffle appeared to cripple Salz, which had invested so heavily in national advertising. An announcement in the March 13, 1923, issue of the Winnipeg Tribune (in Canada, beyond the reach of American authorities) stated that 500 ’Salrite pencils were being offered at a discount “because the factory was changing ownership.” In my earlier articles, I indicated that the last reference I had found with respect to ’Salrite pencils being offered at closeout prices occurred in December, 1923. I have since rechecked my sources and I can extend that date, but not by much: G. Fox & Company offered ’Salrite pencils for 59 cents in the Hartford Courant on January 10, 1924.

When I last wrote about the ’Salrite, I noted that one closeout advertisement from late 1923 indicated that three sizes of the pencils were available, in “mottled” and black. At that time, I’d only seen ’Salrites in two sizes, and only in black hard rubber, so I was excited to introduce the first mottled example I had recently found. Since then, I’ve found a few others (fig. 10).

Figure 10. Hard rubber ’Salrite pencils in black and mottled hard rubber. Note the bottom example, which abandons the contentious wraparound “Shur-Hold” in favor of the pressed-in clip seen on earlier metal Salz Sta-Sharp and ’Salrite pencils. This was likely used because the “Shur-Hold” clip was impractical to install over an overlay; the nickel plating, however, also suggests leftover parts were used on closeout models made near the end of the run.

The top two examples in Figure 10 are unusual because they lack any ’Salrite markings. While it is tempting to think of these as early or “first year” ’Salrites, I don’t think that’s right: recall that these were marketed as the ’Salrite from the outset, even before the hard rubber pencils were introduced, and note also that the second one from top has the later floral-engraved cap, which includes the December 1922 patent date. I think it is more likely that these were made after trademark registration for the name was denied. 

The bottom example in Figure 10, with its flashy, wide, gold-filled bands complemented by cheap nickel- plated furniture (and a pressed-in clip instead of Salz’s contentious “Shur-Hold” clip), appears to be a closeout model made using leftover parts. In Volume 4 of the Blog, I showed off an identical example that turned up with a ’Salrite clip, but with “Chase Pencil Corporation” imprinted on the gold-filled trim band (fig. 11).

Figure 11. The imprint on the lowermost example in Figure 10 has a pressed clip marked ’Salrite, but the trim is imprinted “Chase Pencil Corporation,” which surfaced briefly in 1924. 

The only reference I have found for the “Chase Pencil Corporation” was a November 5, 1924, classified advertisement in the St. Louis Post Dispatch, in which Chase sought sales agents in the St. Louis area. Since the ad indicated that the company was “established three years,” this suggests Chase was a continuation of the Salz pencilmaking enterprise, operating under a different name to evade scrutiny by the FTC.

And then...Crickets. Perhaps Federal regulators, the Sandfelder Corporation, or both finally “chased” down Ignatz and company, stopping all this nonsense once and for all. The ’Salrite apparently disappeared shortly after Chase took over the business in 1924.

Gone...but not entirely. The ’Salrite would emerge briefly for one last, fascinating reprise — more on that in the third installment of this series, after I address a couple of lingering questions, which were answered in one fell swoop and in spectacular fashion, in the next installment of this series.

Our story continues here.

It's All Right . . . Mostly

I won’t say which of my pencil brethren was speaking ill of the Salz recently.  To each their own, and I’ll be the first one to admit that Salz made some really terrible stuff.  Then again, almost all of them did at one point or another (I’ve got more than a few Eversharps that only an Eversharp fanatic could love).

But Salz claims an important little corner in the pencil world, mostly from their spinoff company, “Pencil Products Corporation,” which turned out some nifty metal pencils which were offered as Diamond Point’s first pencils (marketed as the Autosharp – see “Auto-Confusing, More Like” on January 30, 2012 – http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/01/auto-confusing-more-like.html — and “Whew!” on March 2, 2013 at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/03/whew.html).  Others were marketed directly by Salz under the tradename “Sta-Sharp.”  Here’s a few examples that are worthy of note, taken from page 132 of The Catalogue:

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 2, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and everywhere else you buy books, or you can order a copy signed by yours truly through the Legendary Lead Company HERE.