As Good As It Gets

I promised yesterday that I’d be back with more information about Parker’s Vest Pocket (or “golf”) pencils. Back I am . . . with a mic drop moment from the Ohio Pen Show.

I move a little slower than I used to these days, conserving my energy rather than running around like a madman – even though I still have a bottle of Jameson on me. Were it not for the kindness of friends, I would have missed what Mike Conway brought in the door that Thursday morning in Columbus; fortunately, Nik Pang was right there when it arrived, and he made a point to acquire it and bring it down to offer it to me.

The story, according to Mike, is that Ruth Reuter was a Parker employee, and “Parker Desk Set” suggests there’s a desk pen and base inside. The “BDS,” however, indicates this is better than that – much, much better, especially for us pencil guys. I’m assuming the letters BDS stand for “Bridge Desk Set.” Inside the cardboard sleeve is a box containing four other boxes, each branded for one of the four card suits.

And inside each of those boxes were four perfectly preserved little desk pencil bases for the four suits, accompanied by a Parker Vest Pocket pencil.

Fortunately, I had learned my lesson at DC about not bringing enough cash, so all I needed to know from Nik was how much of it he wanted. For me, this concluded years of searching: in “The Silent Underbidder” (August 11, 2012: Volume 1, page 300), I told the story of how Joe Nemecek won a set like this at the Triangle Pen Show auction that year. Here is Joe’s set, photographed during that auction:

No, I wasn’t really the underbidder – we agreed that Joe would chase the set, because he’s a bigger Parker fan than I am. If he won, and I told him to be sure that he did, I said I would purchase his less complete set to help him defray the cost. Joe did win, and I did buy Joe’s. At the time I thought to myself, how hard can it be to complete the set?

Hard. Damn hard. In fact, I was only able to find a club suit in the box, and it took a few months to find another black and two red pencils, which presented its own unexpected challenges – there’s a few different variations of these pencils, and it drove me nuts trying to find all four that were exactly the same (see “Where the Sun Don’t Shine” on April 15, 2013: Volume 2, page 137).

Joe’s set was reputedly from a Parker salesman, which is why it was outfitted with pencils in Madarin yellow, jade, marine green and black; I suspect Ruth also wanted a little more variety in her set, replacing two pencils with the Moderne Black-and-Pearl and the burgundy pearl ones. Still, since I’m a preservationist first and I like to keep things as they came to me, and I knew this find would be the cover shot for this volume of the book. I played around with a couple rough concepts, and proudly I posted what I came up with:

Ooohs and aaahs were what I expected. What I got, however, was “get that pearl and black pencil out of there!” from more than one person. Whew, I thought . . . at least I hadn’t massaged that image enough to see that one of them was burgundy pearl rather than black.

One of the naysayers was Larry Liebman: I explained to him how this was how the set came to me, but he was unpersuaded. “Yeah, but it really should have two red and two black,” he replied.

I asked Larry if he had actual documentation of that, and he sent me pictures of two advertisements, one of which was in the Saturday Evening Post on July 26, 1930. I renewed my online subscription so I could get access to their archived issues; there it was, right inside the front cover:

Elsewhere in this advertisement, those stubby little pencils are called “Midget Vest Parkers,” but here the set is advertised as including “Midget Pencils in black and lacquer red.”

The set was advertised for a whopping $24, and the illustration explains something else. All of the complete sets I have seen are missing a lid for the outer box, but when David Isaacson shared pictures of his set in our online discussion, it had something I had never noticed: card suit stickers on the bottom of the box. I turned mine over, and whaddaya know . . . 

There they are . . . or were, anyway, except for the intact spade. This didn’t make any sense to me until I saw that Saturday Evening Post advertisement: what I thought was the box base was actually the lid. 

Anybody have a spare box bottom? It would be nice, but I’m not the least bit disappointed. To my knowledge, this is the only set known that still has the outer cardboard sleeve.

Larry shared another advertisement with me that answered another question I raised yesterday - my concern was that the more streamlined Moderne Black-and-Pearl pencil that came with my set may have been made later.

Here’s that other advertisement: it isn’t dated, nor does it say in what magazine it was published, but it also describes the bridge set as “new,” so it is reasonable to think it was also published in mid-1930:

The text doesn’t say that the pencils are red and black, and the black and white rudimentary drawing shows all four suits in black . . . but I agree that it’s reasonable to think the white pencils shown are the red ones (even though there’s a black one with the heart and a white one with the club – sigh . . . so it goes with advertising art). However, like the other ad, this appears to show the more squared off tops. 

But did you notice the interchangeable ringtop for the desk pencil at the top of the advertisement?

It looks like the streamlined and squared off caps were in production at the same time, depending on a customer’s choice. Although I can’t rule out that eventually Parker gravitated towards the more streamlined caps, this provides the proof that if our friend Ruth Reuter wanted a different pencil in her set when she pulled it from the assembly line, a shorter more streamlined Moderne Black-and-Pearl was right there for the swapping at the time.

Although I’m ultra-cautious when I’m making changes to things when they have been undisturbed for so long, I agree that it’s acceptable to swap out the two pencils in Ruth’s set with the black and red pencils from “When Good Luck Is a Bad Thing” on October 31:

But I still keep the pencils that came with this set right alongside them.

And I’m still looking for the bottom of that outer box.

Accessions and Deaccessions

My reputation as a Parker hater isn’t really accurate, even though I’ve poked the wounded bear a few times here by suggesting Parker made some regrettable lower-quality things for other companies. Maybe this article will redeem me – I have several items in the Parker wing of the museum that I haven’t written about, many of which are truly one of a kind.

A few years ago, Larry Liebman told me he would like to rehome some Parker prototype pencils, and he thought the museum might be a good place for them to enjoy their retirement.

At top is a “Reporter,” a weird Parker subbrand that I haven’t thought about much since the first volume here at the blog; I haven’t seen one for years, so there hasn’t been an occasion to circle back around to them.

These are rarely found in working order, since the material had a tendency to shrink and freeze the mechanism in place. This one works, and the overall shape and proportions are slightly different from what I’ve seen before. Usually these are marked “Reporter” on the clip, but that blue one at bottom is marked “Parco.”

In “Harder Than It Had To Be” (April 10, 2012: Volume 1, page 169), I had concluded that these were a Canadian product, thanks to George Kovalenko’s contribution of an advertisement by Eaton’s, a Canadian retailer. I no longer believe these were exclusively for the Canadian market, though – a current search of newspapers turns up more American advertisements than Canadian, beginning in fall, 1930. This one (abridged here) was in the Great Falls (Montana) Leader on September 12, 1930:

These may have worked as well when they were new as they do today – Reporter Pencils were being blown out at clearance prices by mid-1930, and the last advertisement I found was published in December, 1931.  

That second example, in coral, sports an ill-fitting washer clip sandwiched between the top and bottom sections. 

Years ago I saw another example just like this, including the ill-fitting clip – I believe Joe Nemecek had it. It seems like too much of a coincidence that the only two of these I’ve seen have that same poorly fitted clip, and besides: even if the clip isn’t right, the rest of the pencil is so weird that if it was supposed to have something else, I have no idea what that might be.

The two ringtop pencils are fairly straightforward, except for the banding.

These are typically one solid color, sometimes tipped at the ends with black. The black used on these, however, is not that same material – on closer examination, it has shrunk a bit.

Speaking of weird gold-capped Duofolds, Eric Magnuson brought this one by for a photo session a few years ago: 

This one looks almost like a reproduction: those green veins are something very atypical for Parker, and it isn’t hard to make these Duofold barrels out of modern materials since there’s nothing more to them than threading opposite ends of a straight tube. Eric’s example is the real deal, though, fully marked with a Duofold imprint.

Larry’s red vest pocket pencil (some call them “golf pencils,” but we’ll get to that tomorrow) is unusual because of that added black band. Also . . . now that I think of it, when I find these in red they have a longer, less streamlined top than these. More on that tomorrow, too . . .

The rest of Larry’s deaccessions in this batch were in Parker’s “Pearl and Ebony” (as described in Parker’s 1928 and 1929 catalogs), renamed “Moderne Black-and-Pearl” in Parker’s 1930 catalog; none of these, however, were in any of Parker’s catalogs.

That weird vest pocket-ish pencil isn’t anything found in regular production. As mentioned earlier, vest pocket pencils had long tapered or short streamlined tops, but nothing so rounded as to be perilously close to Walter Sheaffer’s design patent for the Balance line’s golf pencil.

On these, my working theory has always been that the example at top is earlier, and the more streamlined, shorter caps are later – but I don’t think that’s right. More on that tomorrow.

Next are a couple shop pieces, showing how Parker’s design department was playing around with different designs:

The one with a “tip” is a dummy – there’s nothing there to write with.

At bottom is a “pregnant” Duofold, to borrow the term from the collector’s nickname for earlier Parker fountain pens with bulbous barrels. It is unusual not only for its girth but also because there are no black ends; the 1928 and 1929 catalogs showing the Pearl and Ebony flattop Duofold pencils only show those with black ends.

And speaking of black . . .

These also came from Larry, but at some other time. They are along the lines of the pastel Duofolds shown in Parker’s 1929 and 1930 catalogs – I owed it to you to show you a spread of these to explain yesterday’s reference to George Parker and the Easter Bunny.

What makes these two unusual is the trim: the deluxe trim, with that wider center band, was first cataloged in the green pearl Duofolds in 1932. This is “reverse trim,” meaning it is the opposite color from what one would expect to see – these typically had gold filled trim. As for the other, that extra-wide gold filled band is to my knowledge uncataloged. I don’t have any evidence to tell me whether this is factory or a jeweler’s modification.

I mentioned my photo shoot with Eric Magnuson earlier, and Eric had a couple other things to share. First is this streamlined Duofold pencil:

It is close to, but not quite the same as, the color of my gray Parker Zaner Bloser pencil:

Like his yellow pencil with green veins, this one is also fully marked with a Duofold imprint:

Eric also brought his examples of those weird “Parco” pencils – not along the Reporter lines as shown earlier, but those with black plastic caps. We got our respective collections together for a group shot:

Finally, Eric brought his weird Challenger/Duofold hybrid in mandarin yellow, shown here alongside my larger (and a little messed up) example and at bottom, a “normal” Mandarin Duofold:

Those top two are ordinary nose drive pencils, while the bottom one has a typical rear-drive Duofold mechanism.

Both of these Challenger/Duofold hybrids have Duofold imprints:

While my larger example doesn’t have any markings on the cap, Eric has two of the smaller ones – both have advertising imprints, suggesting these mules were put together from leftover parts and sold however they could be sold.

My last news on the weird Parker front – for now – is this one, courtesy of Fred Copsey-Pearce:

Parker fans will immediately recognize this one as one of Parker’s special-order pencils for the Zaner-Bloser Company of Columbus, Ohio, with Zaner-Bloser’s typical contoured grip. As with other pencils made by Parker for Zaner-Bloser, it is imprinted on the cap; however, it lacks the “Made by Parker Pen Company” part you’ll usually see:

The last time I saw a Parker Zaner-Bloser pencil in lapis was when a pen and pencil set turned up in the Chicago Pen Show auction a few years ago. It sold for more than you’d pay for a used Volkswagon, more than I could afford – I approached the buyer after the auction to see if he’d sell the pencil, but he wanted to keep the set together. I can’t say I blame him.

Fred’s example is missing the top piece and the clip, and I’m still waiting for the right parts to make that happen; the diameter of the opening at the top is larger than any normal Duofold, and someone crudely wedged a now-fossilized eraser in its place after it went missing.

Fred says that he ran across this one in an online auction, and everybody missed it – myself included. But wait . . . there’s more. Fred says it was part of a lot that included some other odd things . . . 

These are dummy pens rather than functioning models, so I’m saying the following with caution: look at that cap . . .

If these were finished, production pens, I’d say that top is a dead giveaway that these were made by the Pick Pen Company in Cincinnati – that might make sense that another Ohio company wanted to make pens for a Columbus firm. It might also explain – if these were made by Pick – why the typical Parker Pen Co. mention is absent on the cap of the lapis pencil, and also why a normal Duofold end plug isn’t the right size.

But these are conceptual dummies, not finished products, so it’s just as likely that whoever made this just didn’t finish the lathe work on the cap. Besides, there are some similarities between these and Larry’s pencil barrels.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to know . . . when the artifacts themselves are the only available evidence, the information vacuum leaves a few holes in the story. 

The Dumb Things I Almost Said

After I organized all of my Wartime or Striped Duofolds and wrote about them here a few weeks ago, I had a fair understanding of the variations that were out there and what I was missing. Back I went to the online auctions to fill those last few holes, when I found this:

The black ones don’t show their stripes very well, so it is a challenge spotting Duofolds when you don’t have the patterns on the plastics . . . and fuzzy pictures from online sellers can make it an even bigger challenge. The band on this one looked like the later version of the Senior band (after it was simplified from a 3-part band to the ///\\\/// band) – but wait, I learned in the coure of writing that last article . . . only the lesser models were offered in black. The Senior or Ingenue pencils were only offered in the three “Laidtone” colors of green, maroon, and blue.

That would be news indeed if I found one, I thought to myself as I pulled the trigger.

When it arrived, though, there was something amiss. The nose wasn’t right, and the barrel was a little fatter. 

My first thought was that Parker did weird things, particularly in 1939 – but for a later Duofold, that doesn’t make sense; the later Senior bands came after the Striped Duofold’s introduction in 1940, not before. Yet there it is, a clear Duofold imprint and 9 date code, for 1939 . . . and with the pencil in hand I could see the band was plain, lacking the ///\\\/// decoration.

In that last article, I had noted two types of clips I had found on the smaller sized striped Duofolds - this one has the less common of the two.

Now I thought I’d really found something interesting that didn’t fit into conventional wisdom: a larger sized Duofold, introduced not in 1940 but in 1939 with different, “proto-Duofold” trim? Oh, I couldn’t wait to break the news! Before I did, though, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, and I scoured newspapers looking for evidence that the Duofold name was revived in 1939, not 1940. 

The clues were tantalizing: yes, I was finding stationer’s advertisements for Duofolds - most were for clearing out flattop or streamlined versions. However, there were a few stock holiday ads published at the end of 1939 showing what looks like the striped Duofold’s profile, but none were clear enough for a definitive diagnosis.

Back I went to Parker’s 1939 catalog, looking for any indication that Striped Duofold might have been launched a year earlier than we thought.

It wasn’t. The Duofold name was, though. Of course it was, I said as I smacked myself upon my well-worn forehead . . . I just never associated these with the Duofold name.

Collectors like to call these the “geometric” or “toothbrush” Parker. Officially, though, the 1939 catalog calls it a “distinctive Mosaic-like pattern.” Pens were button fillers, like the Duofolds that had been retired, and they included “Visometer Ink Windows” in their sections. The pencils, just like the example I turned up, were a little fatter, had the same big nose as the Parkette and Challenger lines, and a plain trim band. They even have the same clips. Now that I’ve reunited my new find with its easier-to-spot siblings, here are all four cataloged colors.

And now that I was looking in the right drawer in the museum, I also noticed that I already had one in black.

What’s up with the longer clip? It’s probably a transplant from something else – maybe from the matching toothbrush pen, maybe from a later large-size striped Duofold pencil. Or maybe, I thought to myself as I looked more closely at that last image . . . “Marca Registrada.” Maybe the ones made for export had different clips? 

No, I'm not going to suggest it. I've already almost said enough dumb things today.