Back of the Virtual Milk Carton

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.

After the Hershey Metal Products piece ran, it was driving me crazy trying to remember what the other pencil was in that picture  – the long one with the clip:

I remembered that the only connection between the two was that they both came to me in the same box of junk, and that neither of them were the reason I bought that box of junk.  The pictures I shot were end-of-day shots, when I had finished shooting what I thought was the important stuff and I was just making sure I had these two documented.  I didn’t even care enough to shoot them separately.

But then I poked around and learned the story behind the little ringtop in that picture, which was marked “Hershey / Derby Conn.”  Maybe it’s the OCD in me, maybe it was a hunch that the other shoe might drop with that other pencil . . . I spent way too much time combing through hundreds of images in the dead letter office to find the shots of that other pencil.

Believe me, that was easier than going down and browsing through the museum looking for it.  I would have stowed it away alphabetically, and probably in a drawer since it isn’t really the sort of thing you’ll see on the wall o’ pencils (since the wall is the stuff I love looking at whenever I flip on the lights).

At last, it turned up.  Fortunately, I had made a duplicate of that full-length shot and named it with the other brand name, followed by a shot of the barrel imprint:

“No. 36 Kenrite St. Louis,” the imprint reads.   I did do a little bit of checking at the time I took these pictures, and I retraced my steps again in preparation for writing this, but I’m finding nothing about a Kenrite company (except the leather company in Australia, which I think I’m safe in ruling out) or any mention of a company turning out a pencil called the “Kenrite.”

So I’m left with comparing the Kenrite to other things in the museum.  That combination of design features had me first thinking David Kahn, Inc., makers of the Wearever and other third-tier lines.  Here’s why I thought so:

Slim model Wearevers aren’t as common as their full-sized counterparts; the clips are the same size as the bigger ones, so they share that similar, gawky appearance as the Kenrite.  Yet both of these Wearevers are nose-drive pencils, while the Kenrite is rear-drive.  So maybe, maybe not.

The Kenrite’s imprint reads “St. Louis,” which is the biggest reason I’m looking elsewhere.  After all, why would someone in St. Louis import product from North Bergen, New Jersey when there were two great sources for pencils like these locally – Ritepoint and Quickpoint?

Ritepoint wasn’t the logical answer to me, since I haven’t seen anything like this bearing the Ritepoint name.  Quickpoint, though, is a different story:

At first blush, these don’t look like a match.  However, all three of these Quickpoints are rear drive pencils, and while the company did turn out thinner models, none of the ones I’ve found have this older style clip.  And it is the same clip . . .

Larry Derails Me (A Little Bit)

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; 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.

My friend Larry Liebman bequeathed this one to me:

It’s a Quickpoint, with really cool graphics advertising the Rock Island railway:

The gift was an invitation - to start a niche collection.  No, Larry doesn’t collect Quickpoints . . . at least not specifically.  What he does collect are pencils with trains on them:

The thought is intriguing.   My collection has always been organized by manufacturer, and whatever personalization they have, whether it be a name or an advertising imprint, is incidental. Otherwise, it would be nearly impossible to navigate my way around the museum and find something . . . or anything.  I have made just a few exceptions, and each time the results have been disastrous.  There's this grouping of all of my ebonized pearl Sheaffer Balances around the super hard to find golf pencil:

Since I had separated these from my other Sheaffers to group them by material rather than by construction, when I pulled together all of my Sheaffer special-banded Balances for a family photo I posted on facebook, I forgot to pull the ebonized pearl double band out of its special corral to join in the shot:

So there’s a shot I’ve got to redo.

Then there was the “Parker bridge pencil panic of 2017" – the case of a lost, very rare and very expensive pencil that I was more than a little frantic trying to find when I reorganized the museum last year.  After a couple hours of searching, I finally remembered that at some point I decided it would look nice with my other card-themed pencils (in particular, with my Parker bridge set).  There it was, much to my relief, lounging across the red suit bases:

Aggravation notwithstanding, the sight of Larry’s spread of train-themed pencils did stir a question in my mind . . . I’ve got literally hundreds of advertising pencils like this, many of which haven’t been organized yet and are piled up in drawers and cigar boxes.  Like my early days of collecting Sheaffer pencils, if I see something neat I pull it aside to think about more someday, and someday hasn’t come yet. 

I’m sure a cool picture of a train has generally spiked my neat-o-meter enough to throw the switch and redirect it to the roundhouse – but the roundhouse for the manufacturer of the pencil, not a newly-constructed one just for train pencils. 

How many do I have with railway advertising, I wonder? 

After that earworm got into my head, this Scripto Wordmaster passed into my hands, clustered together in a lot of pencils I bought for something else.  I pulled it aside, but it didn’t make it to the drawer containing my other Scripto Wordmasters.  It’s still sitting in a pretty random place, on the showcase that holds my Ruxton Multi-Vider prototypes, for two reasons . . .

First, it has a train on it. 

Second, I can't find the Quickpoint now to put them together.  After I photographed it, I didn’t put it with my other Quickpoints . . . now THAT’S a first . . . and because I didn’t, hell if I know where it is!  Apparently I took Larry's invitation to heart and put it somewhere by itself, alone in some out-of-the-way new roundhouse and waiting for other new arrivals.  I’m probably going to spend a lot more time than I care to admit going through every drawer looking for a $2 Quickpoint with a picture of a train on it.

Until I do, that Scripto is going to stay right where it is – in a random but front-and-center spot where I’ll be able to find it again when the other one surfaces. 

Then, as Janet and I always say, two’s a coincidence and three is a collection.  I’m sure I have a collection at this point.  I just haven’t collected them together yet.

Thanks a lot, Larry - looks like I”ve got one foot aboard a new train.

Don't Be Too Quick to Assume

This article has been edited and included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 5; 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 glance at thisone in a junk box might cause you to dismiss it as just another Quickpoint:

It’s a habit of mine to read the clips, even when I assume I know what’s there, or should be there.  If I had a penny for every Quickpoint clip I’ve read . . . well, let’s just say reading this one is what keeps me in the habit of reading:

“Newton Mfg. Co. Newton, Iowa.”   A search of newspapers reveals that the company was founded around 1908; the earliest references I could find to the firm were in a burst of advertisements for salesmen which appeared in papers across the midwest in mid-August of that year.  The Company remained in business until 2015, when it filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and was acquired in bankruptcy by HALO Branded Solutions.

This Newton dates to the late 1930s or rerly 1940s The Newton pencil raises a question which has led some in the advertising pencil collector’s circle to accuse me of heresy: I’ve never been fully confident that Quickpoint pencils were made by Quickpoint, and a pencil identical to a Quickpoint but bearing the name of another midwestern advertising specialty company indicates that either one was made by the other, or a third party made pencils for both.

Quickpoint is twenty years younger, founded in 1928 according to the company’s website.  Occam’s razor suggests that since Quickpoints are so common and distinctive, and this is the first Newton I’ve seen, that Quickpoint made its own stuff and for a time made a few pencils branded for Newton.  Yet Newton has “manufacturing” in its name, while Quickpoint does not, and Lipic and Ritepoint were in Quickpoint’s backyard . . .

Subbrands of Subbrands

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.

As I continue to document and file away more “no name” pencils, I came across this one, with a cool perpetual calendar amidships.  It looks like a Quick Point, many of which share these colors, features and microscopic imprints:

I always look a little closer at these anyway, since once in a while one will turn up imprinted with “Kemper Thomas” on the clip (Kemper Thomas was headquartered in Cincinnati, which always does an Ohio boy like me proud).  This one, however, was neither Quickpoint nor Kemper Thomas:

It’s marked “Erickson Co. / Des Moines.”

And now for something . . . well, if not completely different, at least a little more obscure.  When I ran across the bottom one in this picture, I was sure it was a variant of the “Neldun.”

Neldun pencils turn up every so often, usually with a navy blue lower barrel.  I’m showing off a little bit by comparing the flattop example with a marbled green lower barrel:

However, that flat top and paneled barrel were just a little bit off . . . as was the name on the clip.  This one’s no Neldun:

It’s an “Allbright.”

Good Enough to Eat

I ran across this one recently, and it falls into the "why didn't someone else think of this" category:
The pencils is certainly made by Quickpoint, a pencil manufacturer in St. Louis that made a wide variety of advertising pencils.   That conclusion is based not only on the shape of this pencil, but on the advertising on the side:

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.

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