The Philadelphia Acquisitions

This year’s Philadelphia Show in January yielded a few more updates to A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils:

That top pencil probably belonged in yesterday’s installment of updates about Sheaffer’s metal pencils, but the condition of the paint is the best I’ve seen and its worth showing alongside my better examples.

The second one down was an unmarked pencil I found in a junk box, and I bought it primarily as a curiosity. Sheaffer Balance golf pencils are typically marked with the Sheaffer name, but on occasion they do turn up without any markings. Could this be a more gargantuan unmarked Sheaffer golf pencil?

I’m on the fence with this one - if the black and pearl color carried all the way to the top of the pencil, I’d be more convinced . . . but then again, if you subtract that the length of the part that is all black, the black and pearl part is about the right length. What the heck – it’s fun to display alongside my other Sheaffer golf pencils.

The two cherry red flattops both came from David Isaacson. The Titan is really special, but it takes a second to recognize why: in addition to the color, this is a Titan equipped for .076" checking leads, which is more clear when it sits alongside its “normal” brother:

My only other example of a Titan checking pencil appears on page 35 of the Field Guide, and it’s worth showing you them together for another reason:

You’ll notice that the gold cap is a bit shorter on the cherry red example. As explained on page 34 of the book, the way these pencils were built was changed at some point between 1925 and 1928. Those shorter caps indicate that the cap has a post with the eraser mounted on the end, a feature carried over from the earliest Sharp Point pencils since 1917. Longer caps indicate that the eraser is attached to the pencil itself. For me, that is more than a purely acedemic distinction: it means that Titan Checking Pencils were made, even if in very limited numbers, over several years. 

David’s other cherry red example neatly filled out a gap in my flattop collection. 

The two coral examples shown here were pictured on page 36 of the Field Guide, and note that there are three different clips represented here: the top one is the “Little S” clip in use when the Radite (celluloid) flattop pencils were introduced in 1925, carried over from the earlier metal pencil line. At center, the “Big S” clips (note the larger letters at either end of the word “Sheaffer’S” are illustrated in Sheaffer’s 1928 catalog. At bottom, David’s pencil has the flat ball clip introduced on the Sheaffer Balance between 1933 and 1934; this one was likely a leftover barrel put to good use after flattops were no longer in production.

This last one from the Philly Show is my favorite in this batch, because it’s one of those that you really need to understand what you are looking at before you can see what is different:

Steve Wiederlight had this one, and I passed it a few times before I could figure out why I had to have it. The Craig was a Sheaffer subbrand, named after Walter Sheaffer’s son. Flattop Craig pencils are not a particularly rare sight, and Sheaffer pens and pencils in jade are downright common. What is unusual here is the combination of those two things: I have never seen a Craig flattop in jade green. That makes for an interesting family picture:

There’s all of the known colors, with the exception of cherry red; the image of flattop Craig pencils on page 94 of the Field Guide shows one, but that example was on loan from my friend Jonathan Pollack. Another cherry red example surfaced in an online auction recently . . . I bid the stupid money, and someone else bid money that was even stupider. 

You can’t win them all and besides . . . there’s always Philadelphia next year.

Who Knew (Two)?

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 4; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy this article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

Here’s another example of a ringtop pencil which, if rarity is any guide, must be worth at least as much and probably more than the full-sized, side clip version:

This one is marked “Craig” at the top, a Sheaffer subbrand named for founder Walter’s son, Craig:

Here it is, shown alongside the more familiar and less difficult to find version:

As far as the “Patent applied for” stamped on the barrel, I’m not sure to which patent this refers, although I’m not finding anything ultimately assigned to Sheaffer which fits the bill.  These pencils bear more than a passing resemblance to aluminum barreled pencils marked “Swanberg” and “Tubit” (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2011/12/two-bit-mystery-finally-solved.html).   I’m wondering if there might have been a fleeting Swanberg-Sheaffer partnership.

A Bit of Red and Green . . . and Blue

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 4; copies are available print on demand through Amazon here, and I offer an ebook version in pdf format at the Legendary Lead Company here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy this article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

Back on January 17, 2013, I posted an article about a Sheaffer Balance pencil in a red pearl and black:

The article, “This One Is To Dye For,” (http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/01/this-one-is-to-dye-for.html), explained how Sheaffer, in an attempt to offer new colors during the Depression while minimizing product costs, actually dyed existing black and pearl celluloid stock - as an example, I compared it to a green and black Univer set.

It was a shame I didn’t have a red and black Univer for a more apples-to-apples comparison at the time.  I had heard that in addition, these were offered in blue . . . and here they are.

While we are on the subject of weird colors and Sheaffer subbrands – and add a little more red and green for the day – here’s a Craig, which Dan Reppert had at the Michigan show this year:

At first, it looks like something’s gone wrong with the plastic, but on closer examination this is clearly an “end of day” sort of celluloid, with a little bit of green mixed in with the red:

Jade green Craigs I’ve seen.  Red ones, never.  A bit ‘o both in one pencil?  Wow.

The Middle Part is the Best

While I was at the Philadelphia Show last January, this one was cooking in an online auction:

It doesn’t look like much, although the looks of it are pretty cool and I love those colored bands. Even so, this one would have slipped right under my radar and probably under everyone else’s too had the seller not correctly read and included the imprint . . .

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.

WIth A Little Help From My Friends

A while ago (June 22) I told the story of my fruitless efforts to restore a black and pearl Craig pencil, which was missing the entire top assembly. Just a couple days later, I received a priority mail box from Dan Reppert – odd, since I hadn’t bought anything from Dan recently. Odder still was that there didn’t appear to be anything in the package other than wadded-up newspaper, but since I was convinced there must have been some reason Dan sent me a box, I sifted through all the paper and found a perfectly preserved top for a Craig.

But alas, there wasn’t any way to attach the top to what was left of my poor black and pearl. Turns out that in addition to the top piece, there was a bushing that was pressed into the barrel at one time which was also missing, and without which there wasn’t anything to hold the top onto the barrel. A few weeks and several expletives later, I found myself at the DC show looking for yet another part to finish the pencil that I was now determined was going to get finished somehow.

Which brings me to Tim Pierson, one of the really interesting guys who frequents all the same pen shows I do. Tim, perennially dressed in a Hawaiian shirt regardless of the season, arguably has more pens and pencils in his display than any other dealer. In fact, I usually tell Tim during the show that I’ll come back to see him at the end of the show, since he’s about the last one to leave and there’s just so much stuff to go through.

Good stuff, too. And since Janet and I had decided to stay the night Sunday in DC, for the first time I actually had as much time as I wanted to go through every single tray and drawer he had. I wasn’t looking for a beater Craig particularly, but this time as luck would have it, he had one that was pretty dented up and bleak looking – and an exact duplicate for the short one I wrote about in that last article. And the bushing at the top end of the barrel was intact and in great condition!

The price was right, since I was picking up a few other things from Tim as well, and so my first order of business when I got back from DC – after taking a deep breath and figuring out what to photograph first – was to attack that Craig. The bushing, as I mentioned, was press fit into the barrel, which usually involves destroying the barrel in order to remove it, but I just didn’t want to do that except as a last resort. So I took a paper clip – my most trusty tool in my tool kit – and with a pair of pliers wrapped it tightly around the bushing in the small gap between the bushing and the top end of the barrel. After 20 minutes of wiggling with a pair of pliers (the longest I’ve been able to sit and watch Project Runway with Janet, I’ll add), at last it came free.

I was assuming, since the bushing had somehow come out of mine, that I was going to have to glue this one into my black and pearl. But no, it was a very tight fit, and it was going to be every bit as difficult getting the bushing into this one as it was to get out of the other one. How in the name Craig Sheaffer, I was thinking to myself, did this #@%( thing get out of there in the first place???

Which brings me to a part of the story that you might find useful – a part I knew only because of what I did before I started collecting pencils. Back in the early 1990s, "two wives ago," as I like to say, I used to turn pens on a lathe and assemble them from pen kits you can get from woodworker’s supply houses. I’d gotten pretty good at it and bought most of the tools you need for the job, most of which were in a dusty box in the garage I haven’t opened since I moved a few years ago. One is a tool which is an absolute must in exactly these situations – the pen press . . .

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

To Revitalize a Craig

Not long ago, I bid on a bunch of pencils in an online auction hoping that this would be what I thought it was.

And it was . . . mostly.  Yes, it is a Craig, one of Sheaffer's subbrands and scarce as hen's teeth to come by, but when I cut off the large, gawky eraser that someone had stuck on the top of it I found . . . nothing . . .

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