Witness for the Prosecution

Step one: observe. Step two: compare those observations to what you know. Step three: draw reasonable conclusions. That process always serves me well.

Still, when one of those reasonable conclusions runs contrary to a bit of our collective lore, I often get some pushback. We grow fond of the stories that are passed down to us, even when they are ludicrous – often out of the love and respect we have for the people from whom we heard those stories. If you said George Parker came out with ringtop Duofolds in pastel moire colors because he was really the Easter Bunny, you could do so with a straight face by prefacing that statement with “Fultz once said .  . ..” 

No, Michael Fultz never said any such thing. That’s intended as a tribute to how much I respect the man and how much influence he still has today.

When it came to the conclusions I drew regarding Wahl-marked Skyline pens (“A Better, Simpler Explanation” on October 18, 2025), I was bucking the time-honored story that the newly-minted Eversharp, Inc. slapped the Wahl name on a few Skylines just to preserve the exclusive rights to the Wahl name. 

That never made much sense to me – from my own experience, when I purchased the assets of the failed Autopoint Company, I didn’t pursue Autopoint’s trademarked names – I renamed my existing Legendary Lead Company the Legendary Pencil Company. Many people have asked me why I didn’t want the Autopoint name, and I tell them all the same thing: Autopoint failed because it wasn’t paying anybody, including its landlord. My name was better than theirs. 

Wahl was in the same boat in 1939, facing threats from the Federal Trade Commission, angry shareholders and litigation. Putting the Wahl name on a new Eversharp Inc. product would only paint a target on the new company’s back.

To my surprise, “A Better, Simpler Explanation” was well received. Several collectors looked at their Wahl-marked Skylines pens and without exception, everyone saw the same thing I was seeing: Wahl markings on the back of the clip for no apparent reason as well as on the front. All reached the same conclusion I did, that the Skyline was introduced before the first advertisements for them appeared in 1940, and before Wahl reorganized into Eversharp, Inc.

A Wahl catalog or official Wahl announcement would provide the concrete proof, but none are known as of this writing. No matter how reasonable the conclusion is, even if beyond a reasonable doubt, it’s a circumstantial case.  If only there was some hard, primary evidence . . .

No, I didn’t do this on purpose, although the timing couldn’t have been better. Janet and I trekked over to Springfield last weekend to browse an antique mall we had not visited for some time, and one display case had this in it:

The slots are narrower, suggesting this case was intended for pencils rather than fountain pens, and the glass is acid-etched with words, including one that shouldn’t be there:

“Wahl Eversharp Skyline.” That is as clear a pronouncement as you could want that the Skyline was introduced in 1939 or very early 1940, before The Wahl Company ceased to exist. But wait . . . there’s more . . . the smaller text beneath the main title is extremely difficult to make out, but I was able to decipher it with a loupe:

“Super Flex    Full Flex    Medium Flex   Oxford   Demi”

The word “Oxford” is the one that stands out, because the name is one the Wahl Company used for its inexpensive lines during the 1930s; there is no evidence that Eversharp, Inc. ever used the name after the merger.

And wait . . . there’s even more . . . 

On the top edge of the case, the dealer who originally used this case put handwritten stickers on the top of the lid, so that a salesman could see the model numbers and prices without opening the case for the customer on the other side of the counter. Of course there is no direct evidence that these stickers were there in 1939, rather than stuck on there by some random person for some random reason at some random time over the last 75 years or so. However, I’ll tell you why I do believe they were put there in 1939 – and this is where things get really interesting. 

The stickers read:

#162 / $1.00

#8 / 108 / $7.36

#72 / 172 / $1.25

#72X / $1.25

#162 / $1.40

#165 / $1.50

#106 / (unreadable)

#166 / $1.40

These appear to be Skyline model numbers – almost. Skyline fountain pens had two-digit model numbers, and the pencil used the same numbers with the addition of a leading number 1.Therefore, for example, a standard length Modern Stripe Skyline pen was Model 75 and the matching pencil was model 175.

Chapter Fifteen in Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry, includes a comprehensive taxonomy of Skyline configurations and model designations compiled from period catalog materials and surviving examples with price stickers. The model numbers for nearly every surviving variant has been identified.

Not a single one of the model numbers on this display case matches what we know to exist. Each of these numbers, though, is tantalizingly close. Models 160 and 161 were demi and standard-size Presentation Skylines, respectively, with ribbed, gold-filled upper barrels. Models 162, 165, and 166, however, are unknown.

Models 170 and 171 were demi and standard-size “Presentation Vertical” Skylines, respectively, with their gold-filled upper barrels adorned with lines running lengthwise rather than around the barrel. Models 174 and 175 were the demi and standard-size “Modern Stripe” (nicknamed “moire” by collectors) – the 1940 price sheet on page 336 in Eversharp added a suffix of B, G, or S to denote the color (blue, green, or silver grey). 

Model 172 and Model 72 (presumably, the matching fountain pen) are unknown, and the possible existence of a Model 72X pen is really exciting. Other known Skyline models with a letter suffix denoted special barrel materials: Model 78P was the unicorn all-Platinum pen, Model 78SY was the Command Performance pen in solid 14k gold, Model 78Y denoted a gold-filled cap and barrel, and Model 78W had a stainless cap.

The sterling-capped Skyline, like the one from that earlier article, has not been documented with an official model number; perhaps X designated sterling, although I’d think if that were true it would be Model 78X, not Model 72X. Maybe it was something else; since it only cost $1.25, it likely wasn’t any other expensive material – maybe it was the brown Modern Stripe, since “B” was already occupied by the color blue. Who knows – maybe these stickers set doorbuster prices to clear out old Wahl models after the reorganization. 

Then there’s that crazy #8 / 108 designation, which appears to have been $7.36 for a pen and pencil set (if I’m reading the handwriting correctly). Models 100, 101, 102, and 103 were lower-tier press-clip models meant for utilitarian use, and press-clip pens were “especially for grade school use” (see page 348 in Eversharp for the advertisement which documents this).  There was no Model 108, according to my research, and there was no Model 106, either. I’ve never seen a sticker on a press-clip pen – not surprising, since they were made to be abused and nearly every example I’ve seen was ridden hard and put away wet. Whatever this was, it was more expensive than anything known in the 100 series of Skylines.

Here is my theory, based on comparing these observations to what we know. The consolidation into Eversharp, Inc. was in the works for a year before it was consummated in early 1940. The Skyline was already well into development, and it was likely test-marketed by Wahl to be sure it would be a tremendous success for the newly-formed company.

The main reason for the reorganization was for Wahl to escape all of the obligations that were dragging the company down – one substantial obligation was the company’s repair obligations pursuant to its double-check lifetime warranty. Perhaps the model designations for the Skylines were already planned before the reorganization, but for Wahl's test marketing purposes, Wahl used different model numbers to differentiate those pens and pencils which the new company would have no warranty obligation to repair.

Yes, I know that part is conjecture – a reasonable conclusion, based on comparing what we observe here to what we already know. Now, as all of my Eversharp fans in the peanut gallery digest this article and look more closely at the examples they have, our challenge is to determine if there are stickered examples that bear any of these mystery model numbers to see if this conjecture is ultimately proven correct.

A few notes of caution as we undertake this new challenge: first, the fountain pens had price bands on their barrels, and to my knowledge all of the caps are interchangeable. Other than “junk box provenance,” there is no way to know whether the cap on a banded barrel is original to the pen. Finding a barrel with a price band of “72X” would be exciting, but not conclusive. Pencils, on the other hand, had one-piece barrel, so a pencil marked “172X” would be the clincher to tell us what the matching fountain pen looked like.

There’s another caution on the pencils, though: my previous article discussed the name “Wahl” stamped on the back of the fountain pen clips, as well as on the front. I went through my stash of Model 174 and 175 modern stripe (or “moire”) Skyline pencils, which from what we know were introduced at the outset – they are either marked “Eversharp Skyline” or they have no markings at all.

Again, this is just a theory: perhaps the pre-reorganization Skyline pencils lacked this stamp to indicate they were not made by Eversharp, Inc.

I continue to hold out hope that documents will one day surface to answer all of these questions once and for all. Until then, please observe and report. I’m reminded of a great quote by Tommy Lee Jones in the 1997 film, Men in Black: “1,500 years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the earth was flat. And fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.” 

Three Steps Forward, Four Steps Back

I discussed this weird series of Eversharp pencils on page 152 in Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry:

These share elements of the crown top models which came a little before them, and the “Signature-style” series that came after.

But . . . note that the Signature-style pencil at bottom in the previous image has a steel tip, which means it has the 1924 improved Eversharp mechanism. The pencils in this series have gold filled tips, which signify that inside is what we commonly refer to as the “Equipoised” mechanism, developed around 1929 and first used on the Signature-style series, then carried forward on the Equipoised line in 1929 and on the Doric in 1931.

That’s what makes this series really weird: the timing doesn’t make sense. Wahl ditched the stodgy old gold-filled crown top models in favor of the Signature-style line in 1927, then took another leap forward with a new mechanism in 1929 . . . and then turned around and briefly reintroduced another crown top model. The experiment was an expensive one: since none of the parts on these, other than the tips, are interchangeable with anything else Wahl made at the time, we know the company created special tooling for them. Given how few of these have survived, Wahl likely never recouped the investment. 

Wahl fascinates me because it thrived in spite of itself, and it also fascinates me how difficult this series is proving to complete. I’ve found examples in smooth black celluloid, Grecian Border chased black, Rosewood hard rubber, and Jade. There are three sizes: a short ringtop, a short military-clip version, and a full length version. There should be one of everything. Unless, of course,  there wasn’t. 

I did an indiscreet happy dance when I found a ringtop version in jade, bringing me one step closer to that “aaaaaahhh” moment. No worries that it was missing the tip, I thought . . . I have spare tips.

Of course it wasn’t as simple as that. There’s something to know about Equipoised-mechanism Eversharp pencils before you assume a tip is just being stubborn and it needs more muscle to remove it: these tips are reverse-threaded. Someone had really put their back into this one, snapping the threaded part off inside the end of the barrel. To make matters worse, since the tip is what holds the mechanism inside the barrel, there was no way to remove it.

And then, things got even worse. I thought I had redeemed myself when I found another example hiding in the weeds in an online auction – but no:

Great. Now I have two of these . . . one with a perfect mechanism I can’t remove, and one with a mechanism that is toast. Dagnabbit.

That reverse threading had been the source of my frustration, but it also proved to be my salvation. An 1/8" drill bit perfectly fit inside the barrel, and the teeth were able to sink into the soft brass just enough . . . lefty tighty, righty loosey and all.

Whew, I thought as I prepared to reshoot my series one step closer to completion. All I need to do is find a black or rosewood military clip example, and I can swap out the parts to have all three configurations in jade.

I need to quit thinking. Yes, I found a military clip example, but no . . . there is no way in God’s green earth that I am going to start swapping parts. Dagnabbit again, but in a good way:

My friend Robert Lott at Five Star Pens included both of these in an online auction of Eversharp pencils - I haven’t seen Rob for years, since he lives in one of the Dakotas and it just got too expensive for him to attend shows, but I did get to spend some time with his brother Rich at the Ohio Pen Show last weekend. 

I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that one of these would pop up in Wahl’s coral, since most of the weird things Wahl did seem to happen in that color - in particular, Wahl apparently used up leftover coral parts in 1939, cobbling things together and offloading them in preparation for the company’s reorganization into Eversharp, Inc. in 1940. See “The Weirdness of Coral” (April 23, 2021: Volume 7, page 57).

I’ve added two members to this disfunctional family, but for those two steps forward, I took two steps back – now I’m looking for military clip and full length examples in coral.

Speaking of coral, there’s two things to notice about that other coral Eversharp that came from Rob Lott’s auction. First, that color is just more . . . wild than what I’m used to seeing.

Then there is the top end treatment. The end of the cap has been tapered slightly, to void the recess into which the trim ring is usually fitted on the Signature-style series.

I’ve seen that treatment before on Eversharps along these lines but again, not in coral.

Here’s the new addition in the company of my other tapered, short cap, Equipoised-mechanism pencils, all of which I believe were assembled in 1939 in preparation for the reorganization. Second from top is one of those mysterious “X-seal” Eversharps – see page 312 in Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry. At bottom are two marked “Oxford” on the clip – one is a duplicate (with a less clear imprint on the clip), but as rare as they are I’ll keep both for now.

Good Lord . . . three new Eversharp variants added, suggesting that there are four others out there somewhere. It never ends.

Mighty Mites

Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry covers the Eversharp Bantam line of pencils on pages 294 to 296; it shows most of them, but it didn’t include everything.  I’ve got a few updates to report.

The first bit of news is that yes, there were Bantam desk pens and sets – the pens are danged near impossible to find, and the bases . . . unobtainium. I did manage to scrounge up a desk pen, as well as a stickered Bantam Doric, with that same faceted barrel.

In fact, the Bantam Doric is doubly stickered . . . one just adds a bit of NOS goodness, while the other contributes an official model number, and it was quite the designation for such a small pencil: Model Q29108DK:

On page 296 in Eversharp, I commented that examples of the Bantam in later plastics had either two bands or three bands, at least as far as the pencils go. I showed green Bantam pencils in two and three band configurations, a brown with three bands, and a grey one with two bands. Then this came along in an online auction:

The box may or may not be official Eversharp, since I haven’t seen this variation before and it has a jeweler’s sticker on the lid. Inside, however, was a set that I bought because I wanted to read the paperwork that came with it.

Bantam-specific paperwork for “The Big Little Pen” is tough to find, but other than the campy artwork and language, it doesn’t provide any information we didn’t already know.

The back side is devoted to an advertisement for Eversharp’s square leads; the patent numbers in the bottom corner are for Robert Back’s square leads patent and a pencil patent by John Straka - not the removable nose pencil for which Straka is best remembered, but another patent. I’ll have to explore why that apparently unrelated patent is doing here some time.

The paperwork was a bit of a let down, but the set itself was not. Yes, Virginia, the brown later Bantam pencils also have either two or three bands.

No, Virginia, I could not find this next image, and it was quicker to just reshoot it. Yes Virginia, the gray Bantam pencils also have either two or three bands.

I haven’t seen any Bantam fountain pens with three bands on the cap, and I haven’t found a pen or a pencil with three bands in black.

A Stainless Unicorn and Schröedinger's Platinum

The Wahl Company got into the writing instrument industry backwards. While Parker, Sheaffer, and Waterman were fountain pen companies which later added pencils to match their pens, Wahl started out making pencils first in 1915, when it was known as the Wahl Adding Machine Company and started making pencils as a contractor for Charles Keeran’s Eversharp Pencil Company. Later, after Wahl acquired a controlling interest in Keeran’s company, Wahl went into the pen business with the purchase of the Boston Fountain Pen Company in 1917.

Wahl’s origins in the industry as a pencil manufacturer would influence the company in the decades to come, and that is what makes its products particularly fascinating to pencil collectors: there are many Eversharp pencils that do not have a matching fountain pen.

Except, of course, when it comes to those pesky Eversharp Skylines with sterling caps and other Skylines with clips marked “Wahl,” as shown in yesterday’s article. Those are a rare frustration for pencil collectors, because matching Skyline pencils are not known to exist. 

It is reasonable to conclude, given Wahl’s history, that no Skyline pencils were made with Wahl-marked clips: beginning in 1917, it was “The Wahl Pen and Eversharp Pencil,” and it wouldn’t be until much later that Wahl would mark a fountain pen model as an “Eversharp.” For that reason, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that there probably never was a Skyline pencil marked “Wahl” on the clip. Prove me wrong, as they say.

Hope springs eternal, though, that one day a Skyline pencil with a sterling silver overlay will be found: it is one of those things that “should” exist, because there is no reason it should not exist and everything we know about Wahl suggests that it would exist.

When Pat Mohan went home from the Raleigh Pen Show to check the cap imprints on his Wahl-marked Skyline fountain pens for me, I’ll admit that I held out faint hope that Pat would return to the show with that knowing smile on his face I’ve seen so many times and a conversation starting with “I’ll bet you haven’t seen one of these” as he handed me a Wahl-marked Skyliine pencil.

Pat did return to the show with that exact expression on his face, and our conversation began exactly that way. No, he didn’t have a sterling Skyline pencil on him, but he had this:

There’s lots to unpack with this pencil, starting with the derby and clip assembly. This has what Eversharp called a “Streamliner” top end - instead of a buttressed clip, Streamliners lack the upper mounting.

The Eversharp Streamliner was a lower-priced version of the Skyline, designated Model 198 in the demi size and Model 199 as a full-length pencil, all as discussed on page 341 in Eversharp. Until Pat’s example surfaced, every Streamliner I have seen has sported a plain barrel, with no overlay or trim bands.

Now let’s pile on that stainless overlay. The Eversharp Skyline in stainless is the third most rare variation in the series – behind sterling silver and that mythical platinum version. I’d rate the solid gold Skylines as fourth most rare, at least when they were made, but their numbers continue to dwindle with the skyrocketing price of gold. The temptation to scrap 14k examples poses an unprecedented threat to their survival, particularly when it comes to badly dented or worn examples.

Within that subset of third-place stainless Skylines, Pat’s Streamliner has other unique characteristics. Note that the overlay is significantly shorter than “usual”:

The two examples in the center are the most commonly encountered Skyline Stainless variants, featuring either gold filled or the slightly less common stainless clip assembly. The example at bottom came from the late Fred Krinke’s auction – see “I’m Gonna Drive (500 Miles)” (April 3, 2021: Volume 7, page 4).

Whenever something comes along that isn’t supposed to exist, I always have to take into account the possibility that someone may have “made” it by combining parts that aren’t supposed to go together. I’ve considered and rejected that possibility.

First, transplanting derby and clip assemblies from one Skyline pencil to another is a huge pain in the neck. Repair instructions at the time directed repairmen to crush the entire derby assembly with a pair of pliers, pull it out, and press fit an entire new derby and clip assembly. The decades have not been kind to Skyline plastics, which have become so brittle that this procedure – labor intensive and risky even when these were new – is nearly (but not entirely) impossible now. I successfully performed the operation in “Radical Surgery on a Skyline” (February 21, 2013: Volume 2, page 58), but it took quite a bit of time. The experiment was only worthwhile because I was grafting a 14k solid gold overlay and derby onto a barrel from an ordinary Presentation example.

Also, the upper portion of the barrels of these overlay Skylines are milled down a bit so that the overlay is flush with the diameter of the lower barrel. If Pat’s weird Streamliner Stainless began life with a plain barrel, someone would have had to turning the top portion of the barrel on a lathe so that the stainless sleeve slides over it. Did I mention how brittle these Skyline plastics have become over the last eight decades?

Let’s assume that a hobbyist with above-average machining skills was willing to spend the time to precisely mill down the upper portion of an ordinary Skyline barrel, remove the derby, slip a shorter tube of stainless steel of the exact diameter into position, and install a Streamliner derby and clip assembly. 

That didn’t happen.

No Skyline I have ever seen has a “Made in USA” stamp on the barrel, and Pat’s example has that stamp just below the end of the overlay. Without question, Pat’s variation is factory.

Now I need to circle back around to that full length metal barrel from Fred Krinke’s auction. I took this picture of it before the auction started in case I didn’t win it:

This shot didn’t come out the way I hoped it would  – “Skyline Noir,” I called it when the image ran in Volume 7. It didn’t convey all the detail that I had hoped, but it did convey the mysterious and dramatic nature of the beast.

I have assumed that Fred’s Skyline was a prototype with a full length, stainless steel barrel. That’s how I reported it here at the blog and also in Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry. On page 317 in Eversharp, I noted “[t]he 1940 price sheet lists the Presentation Stainless as Model 178W, but a full-length stainless model is unlisted. It might have been Model 178S.”

Or . . . 

Recall from yesterday’s article that this same 1940 price sheet does list a Skyline with a platinum cap and barrel – the ultimate unicorn in the Skyline series, with no surviving fountain pens (Model 78P) “and – gulp – a platinum pencil (Model 178P).”  

Can platinum be mistaken for stainless steel? Yes it can, and it often is . . . but I’m not about to subject Fred’s pencil to scratch testing or other intrusive means that will damage it in any way, so I researched how else to distinguish the two metals. One way is the color of the metal: platinum is a deeper gray than stainless, which is brighter and has more of a modern feel. Have another look at this closeup of the tips:

I’d already noted the absence of the typical band around the nose found on other Skylines, and that almost matte, darker finish.

Platinum is also heavier than stainless steel: I had thought that Fred’s pencil was heavier just because the metal overlay is full length, but now that I’m wondering whether it might be platinum, I can feel more heft than I would expect. Of course, that’s not a reliable indicator, without a full length stainless barrel to weigh for comparison. 

As I explored non-invasive ways to test for platinum, the primary lesson I learned was that there are a lot of seriously weird and stupid people on the Internet. “Read the hallmark and see if it says platinum,” said one intellectual giant. There was one suggestion I thought was helpful, although I don’t know whether it is true: one source claims that hydrogen pyroxide will fizz dramatically when a few drops are applied to platinum, but not to stainless steel.

Janet looked at me a bit sideways when I came into the master bath, raided the first aid supplies, and put a few drops on the barrel of Fred’s pencil. Some context likely would have been helpful before I did that.

No fizz, for whatever that is worth, but that same source that had me doing weird things with a pencil in my bathroom also said it isn’t a particularly reliable test, depending on the purity of the platinum.

I’m torn between which is better: being able to introduce to you the first documented example of a Skyline Model 78P in platinum (and having to correct something I wrote in Eversharp), or having a wholly undocumented full stainless example.

I suppose until I have a more definitive diagnosis, I have both.

A Better, Simpler Explanation

Even though I’m best known for my work with mechanical pencils, I do buy fountain pens when the occasion calls for it. The occasion called for it when I stopped by Myk Daigle’s table at the Raleigh Show.

This is an Eversharp Skyline fountain pen, but with a cap overlay made of  sterling silver. Sterling caps on Skylines are the second most rare of all . . . even more so than solid gold. 

The only Skylines that are more rare than these are Skylines with platinum caps and barrels, which have long been rumored to exist, but to my knowledge if platinum Skylines were actually made, none are known to have survived. Skylines with sterling silver caps were not cataloged, but the platinum cap and barrel version was – on page 336 of Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry, I included a price sheet dated to 1940 which includes a reference to the platinum pen (Model 78P) and – gulp – a platinum pencil (Model 178P) model. The low-resolution image in the book was the best available and was contributed by Jim Mamoulides, who says he found it somewhere back in 2003.

No sterling cap Skyline pencils are known to exist, but I’m happy to settle for an example of the pen – not only for its extreme rarity, but also because the opportunity it provided to examine one in person gave me a little extra information that allows me to address a longstanding mystery about the Skyline. Note that the clip is marked “Wahl” rather than the usual Eversharp marking:

That matches the nib, which is also marked Wahl:

Collectors have debated these Wahl-marked Skylines for decades. On page 349, I included an image of Wahl-clip Skylines in “Modern Stripe” (also referred to by collectors as “Moire”) in Pat Mohan’s collection.

“There is no definitive proof concerning how or why these were made,” I wrote. “The leading theory is that Eversharp, Inc. stamped the Wahl name on a few pens to preserve exclusive rights to use the Wahl name – or to prevent anyone else from using it.”

That statement is correct – I mean, that is the leading theory. I have always thought that leading theory was pure hogwash.

Chapter Fourteen in Eversharp, “End of the Wahl Company,” details the events beginning in 1939 which ultimately ended in the reorganization of The Wahl Company into Eversharp, Inc. under the new leadership of Martin L. Straus. Several unfortunate events befell Wahl in 1939, including the Federal Trade Commission’s ruling that Wahl’s Safety Ink Shut-Off did not work as advertised and renewed litigation initiated by Charles Keeran (inventor of the original Eversharp), and several of Wahl’s directors resigned in December 1939. A new corporation, Eversharp, Inc., was formed in March of 1940, and on May 7, 1940, Wahl’s shareholders voted overwhelmingly to merge the Wahl Company into Eversharp, Inc. 

Now consider the history of the Skyline, outlined here in “The Post that Launched 454 Pages” (August 15, 2025). Martin Straus had retained Industrial Designer Henry Dreyfuss to create the look of these new pens and pencils, and Dreyfuss’ conceptual drawings were dated January, 1940. Dreyfuss’ drawings show unmarked clips, but otherwise they show the Skyline in what would be its finished form.

Dreyfuss also designed the rectangular cartouche containing double-check marks that would be incorporated into the Skyline’s clip. His preliminary design was dated June 6, 1940, and the final drawings were dated July 17, 1940. The Skyline debuted in newspaper advertisements in October, 1940.

The Skyline was essentially ready to move into production while the Wahl Company was on its last legs, while a reorganization into Eversharp, Inc. was in the works but had not yet been voted on by shareholders. My theory, as I wrote the book, was that Wahl-marked Skylines were test marketed during that uncertain time, perhaps as an additional means to influence the votes of uncertain shareholders in favor of a merger.

It’s a good theory, but that isn’t enough by itself to prove the point. “Although Martin Straus and Henry Dreyfuss began work on the Skyline prior to the Wahl reorganization in April 1940, there is no evidence that Wahl introduced the model before the merger,” I admitted on page 349.

Now, with Myk’s example of this sterling-cap Skyline in hand, I believe the clip assembly on this Wahl-marked example provides a little more evidence. Myk’s example has a damaged clip assembly, so he gave me the original assembly in a little baggie – he had fitted it with a typical, Eversharp-marked clip and derby for daily use. Those assemblies have an imprint that reads “Eversharp Skyline”:

The Wahl-marked clip that Myk’s pen originally was fitted with, though, reads only “Wahl.” Note that the tabs securing the clip to the band have broken.

If the leading theory is correct – that Eversharp, Inc. stamped the Wahl name on a few pens just to preserve the new company’s rights to the Wahl name – there would be no need to stamp the Wahl name here. In fact, it would make a lot more sense to stamp the Eversharp name there to make clear who was using the name.

I believe the Wahl name was stamped all over these examples with Wahl-marked clips because they were made before the merger was approved in May, 1940, during test marketing of the new pens done to provide nervous shareholders with some comfort that great things were on the horizon if they voted in favor of the merger.

I put my theory to the test: Pat Mohan was also in attendance at the Raleigh Show, and he lives close enough to the show that he was able to look more closely at all of his Wahl-marked Skylines. Without exception, Pat reported the next day, every example he owns has this same Wahl imprint on the back side.

When Pat returned to Raleigh with his report, he had something else with him . . . 

Tales from the Junk Box

After my flurry of purchases from Michael Krut at the Detroit Pen Show, Michael got to thinking. “I’ve got more pencils at home if you want me to bring them tomorrow,” he said.

It’s like he doesn’t even know me. Of course, I said.

He brought two small tubs back to the show Saturday morning, and I spent what little time I had between customers diving in to see what all was in there. I had cherrypicked a handful of goodies from the bunch when Michael wandered by and asked what I thought. I said I thought I would have much more fun buying all of them and going through them in greater detail when things slowed down. 

After I pinky-swore that I was not going to turn around and sell them for thousands of dollars, we agreed on a fair parts price. By Sunday morning things had quieted down enough that I could really pick through things. One of the boxes contained random fare, and the other was all Eversharp – there were a few complete pencils in there, but mostly it was just parts, including these:

There’s plenty of stuff here that I’ll use eventually, even though all the roller clips they once had have likely been transplanted into higher-dollar fountain pens. Before I wrote Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry, I would have written that top example off as a non-Wahl interloper. Now that I have, though, I recognize it as a Wahl product – and a really hard one to find, at that.

Chapter Thirteen in Eversharp covers subbrands and rebadges; the former of these are Wahl products sold under different names, and the latter are Wahl-made products branded for other retailers who would sell them as their own. This, I believe, is a Wahl rebadge. On page 285 in Eversharp, there’s a discussion of  “Hycrest” and “Palmer Method” pens, and they have that same distinctive band treatment, with two wider bands flanking a center one:

Palmer Method pens and pencils were specially made for students of the Palmer Handwriting Method. “Hycrest,” however, is a little more difficult to pin down – the only solid lead researchers have been able to turn up is that it might have been a store brand for Marshall, Field & Co. At least, the Hycrest name was used by Marshall Field in connection with leather goods. 

Since the clip is broken off and the barrel is unmarked, there’s no way to know which of these possibilities is more likely, or if there’s another contender out there. If I had to guess, I’d put my money on Marshall Field, since the Palmer Method line was more utilitarian than flashy. Here is our mystery pencil alongside a Wahl-made pencil with a Palmer Method clip, in the form of an Equipoise but in rosewood hard rubber without trim. I found it on Steve Weiderlight’s table when we saw each other in May at the Chicago Show.

This Palmer Method pencil is identical to Joe Nemecek’s example, which was pictured on page 285.

I’ll replace the clip if I ever find either a Hycrest or Palmer Method clip – and it will be a tall order finding a Hycrest clip – but before I do, I’ll need to figure out how to remove the inner liner. Sounds simple enough, but it isn’t . . . I don’t know which way to turn.

Here’s a run of “Signature-Style” Eversharp pencils as shown in Chapter Eight of Eversharp; “Signature-Style,” as I went to great lengths to explain in the book, is a more accurate way to describe these than “Tempoint pencils,” as I labeled them in The Catalogue. At bottom is the Equipoise-based Palmer Method, and there is something important to notice: the tips.

Those examples shown here with steel tips have the Improved Eversharp mechanism inside, which had been in use since 1924, and those tips are threaded as you would expect. The Equipoise-based Palmer Method pencil at bottom has a gold-filled tip . . . and Equipoise tips are reverse threaded.

This new Hycrest/Palmer Method pencil has a gold filled tip like an Equipoise, but it is otherwise configured more like a 1924 Improved Eversharp, with the joint at the top rather than in the center of the barrel. That tip is stuck pretty well, and I’m reluctant to crank down on it too much; those gold filled tips are softer brass under the plating, and if I’m cranking the wrong way I might snap the threading off of the end of the mechanism. 

There was another black flattop Signature-Style pencil in that little box. I meant to take a picture of it before I found a replacement roller clip on Myk Daigle’s table:

Note the gold tip and center barrel joint: yes, this is one of the later Signature-style pencils fitted with the same mechanism used on the later Equipoise line. I have one like this, and it was included in Figure 8-45 on page 188 in Eversharp. However, the one in my collection didn’t have this on top:

What better place to pick up an Eversharp with a Cadillac emblem than at a pen show in the Motor City? Besides, it goes nicely with this one – I think I found it at the Baltimore show in March:

Speaking of Eversharps with emblems, I did take a shot at this one in an online auction a couple years ago, but I didn’t stand a chance:

The proud attorney in me thought this might be nice to have, even though I’d rather have “pencil collector” than “lawyer" on my tombstone.

Back at the Detroit Show, Gary Weimer was in attendance, and he had this one on his table:

I resisted buying it until he told me how little he wanted for it.

I’ve seen Shriner emblems with black back grounds, sometimes with red, but never with baby blue – somewhere, I think I’ve got a black background emblem like this on an Eversharp, and I didn’t want to go too far down the rabbit hole of buying Eversharps with cool emblems.

Unless, of course, that ship has already sailed.