Since We're North of the Border . . .

David Isaacson wrote a nice article for the Pennant (that’s the magazine you are missing if you aren’t a member of the PCA) a while back about Canadian Sheaffer Balances and the subtle ways in which they differed from their American cousins.

Sometimes, when articles on an obscure subject are published, dealers hop on the bandwagon and bring examples like what they’ve read about to the next show. Usually, when I’ve got an article like that one rattling around in my head, I may notice things along those lines that I wouldn’t have noticed before.

And of course, you can’t rule out the dumb luck that seems to bring things to my doorstep more often than not.

But lately, equal parts of availability, observation and dumb luck have brought a few Canadian Sheaffers home to live at the museum, and it’s worth pointing out what makes them just a little different from what you normally see around here.

First, here’s a set I decided to splurge on as a birthday present to myself – because it included one of those pesky pens, I wouldn’t ordinarily have paid this much for it, so I needed a better excuse than usual to spend the extra money:

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.

Sheaffers, Eh?

The Michigan show was a lot of fun, but in a different way than the DC show is fun. In DC, you’re constantly busy – buying, selling, trading, and when all else fails, socializing until just a couple hours before it’s time to get up and start buying, selling and trading all over again. At smaller shows like the one in Michigan, there’s much more time to talk with people. You’ll make more friends than money at these things.

Such was the case with Bob Everett, who was sitting with Mike Kirk right behind me. Bob had brought a case or two of Sheaffer pens and pencils, and Mike was helping him identify what was what from copies of old Sheaffer catalogs Mike had brought along. I hadn’t met Bob before, but as we got to know each other I found out that he certainly comes by his interest in Sheaffer honestly – his father, Clyde Everett, was President of Sheaffer Pen Canada from 1957 until 1970.

I was able to help a little bit with dating the pencils that Bob had brought with him, and there was one pencil among all the others that, as I looked it over, I just had to ask him whether it was just for lookin’ or for sellin’:

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.