My First Love

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In the spring of 1999 – gulp, 22 years ago – I was browsing around at the Don Scott Antique Show at the Fairgrounds in Columbus, Ohio.  It was a warm Saturday morning with clear skies, so there were vendors set up outside, in between the three or four buildings that housed the show at the time.

I remember browsing through the offerings of one of those outdoor vendors, displayed in cardboard boxes in varying stages of decay, filled to their brims with what appeared to be the contents of someone’s garage.  It was heaven pawing through all of that stuff.  As I did, a pencil caught my eye . . . my father had me keeping a sharp eye out for pencils that were marked “Autopoint” on the clip, so I pulled it out for a closer look.

“Majestic,” the clip read.  I’d thrown back lots of pencils like this when the clip didn’t say “Autopoint,” since Dad wouldn’t want them.   This time, something gave me pause . . . maybe it was the deep glow of those brown strips of celluloid, or those great geometric, deco shapes on the center band.  It just had a bit of class to it.  Maybe, I thought to myself, if it isn’t too expensive I’ll just buy this one for myself.

It was a buck.

There’s two types of people on this planet.   The normal ones would have spent a buck to take this one pencil home and be happy with a nice find they will use and enjoy for the rest of their life.  

Then there’s collectors, who wonder how many more of these things are out there.

With that Majestic in my pocket, I continued to wander around and I had a fateful meeting with Terry Mawhorter, of Ohio Pen Show fame, who used to set up at the Scott Antique Show when he lived up north in Zanesville.  I remember being enthralled to find someone whose entire display was dedicated to exactly what I was kinda sorta looking for.

I was excited to share my crappy, $1 Majestic pencil with Terry.  In his calm, measured voice, he said to me, “that’s nice . . . but let me show you something a little bit more special.”  And Terry showed me a full-sized Eversharp Doric pencil in Kashmir (green marble).

That was it . . . my first “real” pencil purchase.  I was hooked, and for my first couple of years attending pen shows (at first, just two . . . Columbus and Chicago), I was laser-focused on finding other Doric pencils.  It was, as the title of this article suggests, my first love.

I haven’t written about it much here at the blog, but that’s only because by the time I wrote The Catalogue in 2011, I already had already assembled nearly all of them in my collection and included them in the book.  I haven’t had much to add.

However, one whopper of an addition came my way in recent months, by way of my friend Michael Krut:

Black and pearl is an ubiquitous celluloid during the Golden Age – but in the Doric series, it is a unicorn which commands special attention.  When the Doric was introduced in 1931, it was documented in five colors: Jet (black), Morocco (red marble), Kashmir (green marble), Burma (grey marble), and Cathay (an electric, almost glow-in-the-dark green).  Black and pearl, common in earlier Wahl flattop and Equipoised pens as well as an industry-wide favorite, was never a catalogued color on the Doric.

Yet they turn up, very rarely.  Just often enough to whet collectors’ appetites, so they command substantial premiums.  And this set is just flawless . . . 

There’s collector’s lore about the black and pearl Dorics, but nothing documented . . . just stories that they were made for Wahl employees as gifts.  This is the only trim configuration in which they are found; in The Catalogue, I refer to it as “Doric I,” and it was the flagship trim level when the model was first introduced in 1931.  I’ve found them in four out of the six possible variations, and I don’t know if any exist in the fifth:

Which brings me to a long overdue taxonomy of the type I Doric, since it has the most interesting little variations within its ranks.  We’ll start with the obvious: there are in fact four variations represented here:  when the Doric was first introduced, artwork in advertisements confirms that the trim bands on the pencils were initially split between the upper and lower barrels.

Eversharp’s catalog from 1932 provides additional detail.  A very poor copy is included in the Pen Collectors of America’s library, and a black-and-white reprint is also still available.  At the 2019 DC Show, Rob Bader sold me a slew of old pen catalogs, and this was one of them.  Although it’s a bit worse for wear, it’s original and in full color:

The narrative at the right side of this page states there were four Doric models: full-size with side clip (DC), soldier clip models (DSC), clasp pencils (DK) and ringtops (DW).  Although the artwork appears to show an oversized pencil, larger than the DC, the model numbers provided are the same, so that suggests artistic license rather than a fifth, distinct model.

Note that both the full-sized DC pencils are clearly illustrated with split bands. I have found them in that configuration in the uncatalogued black and pearl, Cathay and Jet.  Note the oversized seals in the Cathay examples:

At some point, the entire trim ring was moved to the lower barrel to streamline production.  If the 1932 attribution is strictly accurate (and the artwork was completely updated), this happened sometime during 1932 or later; however, split bands added unnecessary complexity to the manufacturing process, so Wahl may have made the switch even before the 1932 catalog was published.

Note that while both of the Burma (gray) examples has a silver-colored center band, one has a gold-filled clip and matching gold filled seal, while the lower one has matching silver-colored trim on the cap, referred to in the catalog as “white Platinic gold.”  The cap might be a mismatch, but I’ve never seen a Burma with a gold-filled band and the catalog indicates it was offered only in the white Platinic gold.

Also note the cap on the Cathay example at the bottom, which lacks a gold seal and is fitted with a “second-generation” clip which is stapled into the barrel, unlike the earlier roller clips which were inserted into a slit in the barrel and secured inside by a screw.  This one appears to be a mismatch, although I don’t rule out the possibility that it was created from leftover parts in the same way the “X-Seal” pencils were. 

The Doric “soldier clip” model (DSC) was pictured on the preceding page of Wahl’s 1932 catalog:

Note that this illustration also shows a split band, so the DSC went through the same evolution as the DC model.  That is consistent with the examples I have found, some of which have split bands, while later examples have one-piece bands on the lower barrels:

One of the Cathay examples shown has a gold seal while the other does not, and neither of the Burma (gray) DSC pencils is what I would call normal.  The lower of the two was a split band model, but the cap lacks the upper part of the band (or any groove to accommodate it), and the gold clip is paired with a longer and later gold tip.  Since the tip is so much longer than what you’d normally see on a Type I Doric, I’d say this was likely part of the cobbling-together that happened at Wahl in the late 1930s to clear out leftover parts.  

The other Burma pencil, advertising “Sharp & Smith St. Louis,” doesn’t appear entirely cricket either, with that truncated, non-gold seal cap and plastic jewel mounted in the top.  The weirdness is also reflected in the price sticker on the back side:

According to the catalog, a soldier clip Burma Doric should be model number 40102DCS.  This one is denominated model 4005C.  

The “clasp” model Dorics are shown in the 1932 catalog with one-piece bands, and that is consistent with what I have found:

For the OCD types out there, that is a very satisfying picture, of each color (including black and pearl) in exactly the same configuration, matching the 1932 catalog.  But then the clasp family gets a little weird, too:

The top three lack gold seals . . . we’ll come back to that in a minute.  The bottom four also lack gold seals and are fitted with the longer roller clip seen on the full-sized DC models.  As for the one missing a nose?  It’s a one piece barrel, apparently put together with the intent of wedging a simple nose drive mechanism into the front end.  And those bottom two have that same “jewel” seen on the Burma DSC soldier clip pencil described earlier.  

Now to circle back to the Cathay example at the top in that last picture . . . the proportions are different than all the others, with a shorter cap.  The price sticker has the color coded correctly per the 1932 catalog: 40103 . . . and I can make out the D . . . but I can’t tell what comes next: 

I don’t think Eversharp knew what came next, either, because this oddball is in fact a gold seal pencil – the seal is just on the back side, over a cartouche for engraving:

Weird, yes, but I know exactly why it looks like that.  This brings us to the last and rarest model in the Doric series – the ringtop model DW:

The cap to my model 40103D...whatever started as a ringtop cap, with a slot cut in the opposite side so that a clip could be added.  

Twenty two years after meeting Terry, I’m still chasing down those last few variants.  Examples of the ringtop DW in Jet (black, perhaps obtainable) and black and pearl (which may or may not exist) would put me over the moon.  Finding a true oversized pencil pictured in the catalog and noticably larger than the DCs I have would add significantly to my knowledge on the subject.  The oldest wing in my collection - the Eversharp Doric wing - still isn’t finished.

And I probably need to tell you more about the Doric II, III and IV at some point!

Impulse Buys

This article has been included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 7, now available here.

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

The main reason I drove all the way to Chicago for the Fred Krinke auction was for the all-stainless Eversharp Skyline.   There was one other item in that auction I was really hoping to bring home, although it was in distant second place:

In another article, widely read mostly because of the harsh criticism it generated (Volume 3, page 29), I suggested that perhaps the lack of cutouts in these bands had something to do with the pens they were meant to accompany.  Eversharp-made Gold Bond pencils had cutouts in the band if they accompanied piston-filled Gold Bond pens and lacked them if they accompanied less advanced lever-fillers, so I suggested Eversharp may have done the same thing on its regular line.

The illuminati descended, with several people saying they had cutout-band caps on many a lever-filler.  I don’t recall anyone saying they had plain-band pens with piston fillers, but someone might have.

Never mind it’s easy to switch caps.  Never mind that in the late 30s, Eversharp wasn’t particularly consistent - maybe they intended that at some point then abandoned the idea.  And of course, never mind that there is no known documentation to say either way whether I was right or wrong.  Meh . . . you know what opinions are like, and I have one, too.  Some might say I am one.

My purpose in chasing this one, though, wasn’t to rehash old arguments . . . even though I know I just did (maybe I’m nudging the illuminati a bit to see if anything’s turned up in the years since to prove me right or wrong).  I wanted this one because I’ve never seen one in black before - all the other examples I have seen are green or burgundy:

And that, as Forrest Gump would say, is all I’m going to say about that.

But with travel expenses and a day out of the office, I planned to buy more than just these two items if they were going cheap, for resale to offset some of the cost of attending.  The auction included many lots of Eversharp pencils, and many did in fact go very cheap - most of my bids were for friends, and they did very well, but there were three lots I took home for myself. The first was this group:

There was only one pencil in this group that interested me at the time - I knew I didn’t have an Eversharp Four Square in that weird grayish/bluish marble with red pinstripes on the corners:

I have scads of these in different colors (see Volume 5, page 130 for the full story - the article also appeared in The Pennant), and I’m always keen to find another color.  This example is from the height of Eversharp’s gimmickry in the series, with the supposedly more ergonomic tip and the reversible eraser cap that neatly conceals the eraser when not in use.  It also sports the viewing window on the back side, with the red spot indicator to show how much lead is left inside:

As well as a curious imprint - perhaps a shop model number – 43438 B:

Something I neglected to mention in my last article on these was that Eversharp also had a thin model of this pencil, without the indicator window and with hexagonal barrels:

I’ve got a few of these, and the one I found with an orange cap tells me there may be other variations out there to explore:

These smaller versions also sport the patent number for Eversharp’s reversible eraser cap:

As I pawed through the other items that came with that lot, I noticed there were two variations of the brown pencil – one with ribbing only halfway up the barrel, and the other ribbed all the way to the top:

I ended up adding both to the collection:

I’d noted the fully-ribbed variant here before when that black one found its way to me (Volume 3, page 89), imprinted with the name of Edd Dawson, the legendary pioneer of pencil collecting.  Time will tell whether the red and blue ones also exist with fully ribbed barrels!

Another lot which was going cheap during the auction included these two Doric repeating pencils, which I bought for resale:

I knew - or thought I knew - that these were duplicates after checking the rudimentary pictures in my “World’s Largest Eversharp Collection” post (Volume 5, page 32).  Here’s a better shot of the Type IV band examples:

Eversharp must have had trouble with the brown celluloid - note that one has a brass replacement sleeve, likely added to replace deteriorated material, and the other one is starting to go, too . . . even though it’s as NOS as they get, complete with a price sticker.  Incidentally, Eversharp Doric repeaters also come with Type III bands:

Note the rudimentary brass button on the green example?  All the green ones I have found like this have been advertisers, and all have sported that button.   Maybe the green ones were reserved as lower-cost advertisers  . . . maybe I just haven’t had the luck to find a regular issue example with matching button.  

Even though the examples from the Krinke auction appeared to be duplicates, I always make it a habit to compare anything that comes my way to what is already in the collection.  Dang it, I guess these aren’t inventory after all . . . this is something I’ve noticed before, but I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it here at the blog.  There’s two types of imprints on these, and both of the ones from the Krinke auction have the other one from what is represented in my collection:

Some sport the simple Eversharp imprint found on all twist-model Dorics, but others feature a more elaborate imprint reading “Genuine Eversharp Patented / The Wahl Co. Made in USA.”  Judging from all of the Type III and Type IV repeaters in my collection, neither imprint is more rare than the other, and I don’t know which came first or whether both were offered at the same time.  

Perhaps it’s silly to keep these just because of that little difference, since all they will do is invite me to start chasing alternate imprints on all the other ones . . . but for now, given how little they cost me, here they stay for the time being.

One other lot I wasn’t planning to bid on was a sleeper:

These Skyline-based repeating pencils didn’t have a matching fountain pen to my knowledge, so they haven’t enjoyed the same attention as Dorics and other Eversharp lines that did.  On page 75 of The Catalogue, I lump them in with the “Press Clip II” family - that’s the group with a stapled-on clip and one narrow band mid-barrel.

Mechanically, these built every bit as well as all the other repeaters Eversharp made, and that pearl top – “mother of toilet seat” as it is derisively referred to in some circles – gives it a bit of extra interest.  However, Eversharp skimped a bit on the aesthetics: the trim on these is usually badly corroded, and the gold plating is so thin that it’s often tough to tell whether one of these has chrome or gold trim.  Many of these were advertisers, and while the screen printing is usually partly worn away, at least what’s left is easily removed to make them look nicer.  Grading these new ones on a bell curve, I’d rate their condition near the top of their class:

I haven’t delved into this series since The Catalogue was written, so I’m long overdue to post a current family photo:

The burgundy example from the Krinke auction is a new one for me, and note that there’s both chrome trim and gold wash (I can’t even bear to call it “plated”) trim examples.  I separated two examples from the rest of the herd to address separately:

Some of these have a much darker, yellow top.  I think the color is too even to be age discoloration . . . perhaps it’s just a different dye lot, and perhaps some late 40's/early 50's catalog will establish that customers could choose either white or yellow pearl.

Three lots bought on a whim, anticipating 12 pencils for resale . . . and I’m keeping 7 of the 12.  This investing thing is going in the wrong direction!

Biggest

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 6, now on sale at The Legendary Lead Company.  I have just a few hard copies left of the first printing, available here, and an ebook version in pdf format is available for download here.

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

This one turned up in a recent online auction:

It’s an Eversharp Doric, a series which was introduced in 1931 and went out with a whimper around 1940, after the introduction of the Skyline.  There’s two generations of these, differentiated by the center bands and the clips.  The different variations are shown on page 65 of The Catalogue:

The three on the left in this picture are first generation, and the other two are second generation. From the left, the first band is a first year example from 1931, with part of the band on the lower barrel and the rest on the upper barrel - that unique different appears in advertisements from the first year of production.  Soon after the Doric was launched, Eversharp simplified the band by putting the entire thing on the upper barrel, as shown second from left, which remained unchanged until the Doric was redesigned in 1935.  The example in the middle was from Eversharp’s “popular priced” Doric line, also from 1931-1935.

Beginning in 1935, the clips were redesigned; instead of a clip which was inserted through a slot in the barrel and secured inside with a screw, the new clips were simply stapled on from the outside.  The bands were also redesigned; the lesser model pens had clips like the fourth one, and the pencils were designed to match – I also find this band on Doric advertising pencils, which were introduced late in the run.  Eversharp’s flagship Dorics from 1935-1940 had the bands shown on the right, with triangular cutouts.

So why does this pencil have no cutouts?  An example like this appears on page 68 of The Catalogue, along with a mention that there was some collector’s lore floating around that these were intended as special presentation pieces and the trim was rumored to be 14k – although the example I had at the time, pictured in the book, had wear on the corners that established it was only gold filled rather than 14k.

I presented a more plausible explanation here in 2014 (the full article isn’t online anymore, but you can find it in The Leadhead’s Pencil Blog Volume 3, page 29).   David Isaacson had published an article in The Fountain Pen Journal about Wahl-made Gold Bond fountain pens, which included an advertisement showing piston-filler fountain pens with square cutouts in the bands, and cheaper lever-filled pens with solid bands.  It makes sense to me that if Wahl was doing that sort of designation on pens it made for others, that it might also have made that distinction on its own lines.

That alternate view has not been universally accepted, and better documentary evidence has yet to surface which would explain what’s going on with these.  Suffice to say it’s never made sense to me that a special presentation model would have simpler trim of base metal.

But I’m not here to rehash old arguments on a lazy Sunday – just providing the background to show you why I’m circling back around to these.  I’ve turned up four examples to date:

And this new example establishes these came in three sizes:

The OCD collector in me breathes a sigh of relief that all three of these are in the same color, because it would drive me nuts to have three sizes but in two colors.  I can handle the fact that the other sizes in green will probably turn up at some point. . . for now.  As for other colors — I haven’t seen any.

The Answer that Raises the Question

About a year ago ( http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-few-good-pencils.html ), I showed off a couple new pencils I’d picked up, including the larger red one shown in this picture:

These were made by Eversharp, as you can tell by their close similarity in appearance to Eversharp’s Doric line of pens and pencils. Close, that is, but not exact: the bands are a little thinner than what you'll find on a Doric, and the cutouts aren't the same, either. If you really know your Dorics, you wouldn’t need to turn over the pencil to see what’s imprinted where you’d expect to see the word "Eversharp" on the back side:

These pencils were made by Eversharp for Montgomery Ward and were imprinted with Montgomery Ward’s "Gold Bond" brand name. This red example has a curious feature, which I had casually noted in my previously article here: it lacks the diamond-shaped cutouts:

I didn’t say what I was thinking at the time. That’s because, with all the conflicting information I had about this feature rattling around in my head, I wasn’t really sure what I thought. All doubt was resolved in my mind with the publication of an article written by David Isaacson in the Fall 2013 issue of The Pennant, journal of the Pen Collectors of America ("Fountain Pens from the Monkey Ward," starting on page 27). This Gold Bond advertisement appears on page 32, dated 1935 by the author.

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.

A Few Good Pencils

I’ve picked up a couple tidbits of information concerning Eversharp-made Gold Bonds.  Gold Bond was a Montgomery Ward store brand, and over the years they were made by National Pen Products, then by Wahl-Eversharp , then by Parker.  When I last visited the topic, the family portrait looked like this:

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.

Another Dorky Pencil

My daughters have been coming to the Ohio Show with me as long as they can remember, usually just for a couple of hours (not much there to entertain them, since I’m pretty preoccupied throughout the show).

Several years ago, early in my collecting, my primary interest was in finding Eversharp Doric pencils. Many of the examples pictured in The Catalogue came from those early years. When my older daughter was maybe all of nine years old, she came to the Ohio Show and we spent some time roaming around and looking at all the pencils in the room. At one point, she saw an attractive pencil she thought I’d like and excitedly she pointed it out to me. "Daddy, there’s a really nice pencil!" she said.

So we looked at it together. I pointed out all the things I liked about it, and after we’d admired it for a little while, I put it back on the table.

"Aren’t you going to buy it?" she asked me.

"Sweetie, it’s a really nice one," I said, "but it’s not a Doric."

"But Daddy," she said without missing a beat, "I thought all your pencils were dorky."

There wasn’t a person within earshot that didn’t break out laughing at that one – myself included.

Anymore, I don’t buy Doric pencils very often. They are featured on pages 65 to 68 of The Catalogue, and any more I find it difficult to find one that adds much to my display. However, when this one came along, I had to bite . . .

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