Showing posts with label Eversharp bumblebee. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Eversharp bumblebee. Show all posts

Saturday, January 2, 2016

Putting the Bumble in the Bee

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.

A while back I posted about Eversharp’s dollar pencils in plastics approximating the “bumblebee” pattern used by the company in the late 1920s (the first was back in 2012, at 
http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/04/big-bumblebees.html, with a follow up article in late November, at http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2015/11/vestigial-eversharps.html):


However, you might have noticed something: the “bumblebee” collectors’ nickname comes from the bright yellow and black coloring of the most commonly encountered of the three:


Sue Hershey recently posted pictures of an Eversharp dollar pencil in a much brighter yellow . . . she was pretty excited about it, and since I didn’t notice the brighter coloring, the reason for her excitement unfortunately sailed right over my head.  Joe Nemecek commented on that later – too late for me to add productively to the conversation at the time.

At the Ohio Show, I ran into Don Lavin, who had one of these available.  I bought it so that I could compare it to the less bumblish examples I have, and I’ve noted a pattern:


I don’t think this is fading, because like the greyish “half Coronet” (or, as Vance Koven wryly suggested, “Coronot”) pencil about which I posted a few days ago, the color on all of these is even all around.  It’s almost as if Eversharp was gradually running out of yellow dye as the years passed.

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

So Right

In the late 1920s, Eversharp introduced pencils in "bumblebee" plastics (that’s a collector’s nickname, not official Eversharpese, from what I understand). Here’s the teal "bumblebee" I posted here a couple years ago (http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/01/no-price-sticker-but-something-even.html):


Since then, I have found an example in yellow, the color from which the nickname more properly originates. In fact, I found a pen and pencil set . . .

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.


Thursday, May 17, 2012

The Yang to My Ying

During the Friday trading at the Chicago show, I decided to wander around a bit while Michael Little was going through Frank Hoban's boxes behind the scenes, and I naturally tended to gravitate around to the front of Frank's table.  There I found a little box with a few pencils in it, and the more I looked, the more excited I got.  By the time I was finished, I'd taken about two thirds of the box.

What struck me the most was the Eversharp "Square 4" pencils that were in there.  I've got quite a few of them, as pictured on page 71 of The Catalogue, but from what I could tell, all the ones Frank had were ones I didn't have -- and all of them were in great condition.   So I had to bring the ying and yang together!

First, there was one in the same red "bumblebee" pattern as the dollar pencil I recently wrote about . . .
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




Saturday, April 28, 2012

The Big Bumblebees

A few weeks ago, when Joe Nemecek was weighing in on wafers (March 4), he had sent me this picture, throwing in to the shot the two bumblebee pattern dollar pencils at the top of the picture.

At the Baltimore show, Joe asked me at one point why I'd turned down that red bumblebee dollar pencil like the one he had.  The answer was simple:  I missed it.  Thanks to Joe, I swung back around and picked it up.  While it was a little rough when I bought it, after a little love and attention it's looking pretty good now . . .

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




Friday, January 27, 2012

No Price Sticker, But Something Even Better

There's two very distinct types of joy antique dealers experience when they make a sale at a show:  the joy of making a buck, and the joy of helping another collector find something that makes them happy.   Other than a few people who set up at a show just to dispose of a dead relative's collection, everyone you find sitting behind a table at a show is doing what we do for both kinds of joy, getting a little ying in with the yang, so to speak.

Rick Fernandez is a pen (and pencil) dealer who never loses sight of this -- he loves the charge he gets out of helping you find the things you like.  At the 2010 Ohio show, he and Mike Bloom split up a set and sold me the Eclipse red hard rubber pencil which appears second from left on the cover of my book.  At the DC show a few months later, he sold me the Dunn multicolor pencil which is also on the cover of my book, right next to the Eclipse.

At the Ohio Show this year, he had something special to show me.  He waited until the very end of the show to finally part with it.  I'm not sure if he wanted that last rush at the end of the show or wanted to be sure he had gas money!

By the end of the show, I had the pencil and Rick had a fair amount of my money and the knowledge that he had simply made my day.  I told him about my plans to launch this blog, and he told me he was really looking forward to reading about his pencil. 

A couple weeks ago I was talking to him, and he mentioned he hadn't seen a blog entry on his pencil yet.  Sheepishly, I told him that hadn't gotten to it, and he sounded . . . disappointed.  So, without further ado, with all due credit to Rick for the find and with due apologies for the delay, here's today's subject . . .

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