Now I Can Quit Looking For It

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Something has bothered me about the “Alexander the Great” pencils I introduced here during the first year of the blog (http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/08/sylish.html):

Some years ago, I remembered having one example of this pencil, with one difference: it didn’t have “Alexander” written on the clip.  Unfortunately, at the time I didn’t put it in a place separate from the plain ol’ examples, and after going through all the ones still on display I’ve concluded that at some point I must have inadvertently culled it out of my collection, along with the other Alexander duplicates.

What has bugged me was that I couldn’t remember what name was imprinted on them.  Thanks to Chris Egolf, I can finally get a good nights’ sleep now, since he had these three in an online auction recently:

The name that I couldn’t recall was Gerlach-Barklow, the advertising specialty and art calendar company located in Joliet, Illinois.  I did a rundown of the brand here awhile back at https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2014/12/gerlach-barklow.html.

And I noticed something about these I didn’t tell you earlier.  If you pull out the eraser, these have kind of a neat feature:

The metal retainers are adjustable, so as the erasers wears down you can push it up.

Alexanders . . . Not the Great, But Still Pretty Good.

The last time we encountered the Alexander was with this stocked store display that I got from Joe Nemecek a couple years ago (http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/08/sylish.html):

This display indicates that the "Alexander the Great" pencils were from the Alexander Products Corporation of Bloomington, Illinois, and the design of these was so unique that I don’t have any reason to doubt that Alexander Products made these. However, the "Model 100" pencils shown in that previous article were the only Alexanders I’m aware of which were intended solely as writing instruments rather than as advertising novelties.

There’s three possibilities for what happened . . .

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 3, 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.

Stylish

You won’t find the Alexander Products Corporation of Bloomington, Illinois anywhere in The Catalogue. I knew the brand was out there, but I just didn’t see fit to include it because all I had seen out there were cheap, giveaway advertising pencils.

So when Joe Nemecek called me before the DC show to ask if I’d be interested in buying a fully stocked card of Alexander pencils if he brought them to the show, I agreed but I was skeptical. I think Joe could hear it in my voice, and since he has had the same general experience with Alexanders, he reassured me. "You’ll like these," he said. "They’re stylish."

When I saw them, I had to agree with him . . .

NOTE:  This article is now included in the print version of The Leadhead's Pencil Blog, available anywhere you buy books, or also from The Legendary Lead Company.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company