The Second Carey

The Carey pencil I scrounged up at the DC show and blogged about here on August 22 ranks right up there as one of the most significant things I’ve found this year. So imagine my surprise when I received an email from Tom Heath shortly after the article ran: he had another one!

With a last name like Heath and my discussion of the Heath clip and the pencil’s manufacture by the George W. Heath Co., I took his email as adding additional information to my knowledge of the pencil. But still, I remembered one of the rules of life one of my friends used to live by: "It never hurts to ask." That rule served me well this time, and a second example of the Carey made its one-way trip to Ohio. Here they are shown together, the smaller example from DC and Tom Heath’s full sized one with floral engraving . . .

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

Easy to Miss

Early metal pencils are hard to collect, because at first glance they all look alike. Unlike brightly colored plastic or hard rubber pencils, they are all either gold or silver, and most share the same basic shape.

But as I was trolling around the DC show early on during Friday’s preshow, I stopped to spend a little quality time with one dealer’s display of metal pencils. They may all look alike at first, but this one practically jumped out of the box and into my hands, where it has remained ever since . . .

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