Diamonds . . . But Not In the Rough

Diamond Medal was the top-of-the-line store brand name used by Sears, Roebuck & Co., which also acquired the Webster brand name from the Rex Manufacturing Company, and Gold Medal. Sears didn’t actually make any of the pens and pencils it offered for sale under any of these names, but rather sourced them from several different manufacturers.

At least as far as mechanical pencils went, Sears is known to have sourced fountain pens in the mid-1920s from C.E. Barrett & Co. in Chicago, which in turn sourced mechanical pencils from the Rex Manufacturing Company – or at least, Barrett sourced the mechanisms from Rex. Outfitting a Rex to match a Barrett-supplied fountain pen involved nothing more than threading two ends of a celluloid tube, which might have been done by Barrett in-house. The extent to which Barrett actually made anything, including fountain pens, is unknown.

I don’t know of any Diamond Medal-branded pencils that were clearly attributable to Rex, although Rex-made Gold Medal and Webster pencils are easy to find. These two examples were likely sourced from C.E. Barrett:

The jade example at bottom is the closest you’ll find to a Rex-made product branded for Diamond Medal, but I can’t connect the dots conclusively back to Rex; if I could, that would be groundbreaking, since identical pencils were supplied to many other manufacturers.

That black and pearl example is almost identical to another Diamond Medal in my collection . . . and I dwell in the celebration of all things “almost.”  

The flattop version was Diamond Medal’s “Standard Pencil,” and with a pointy end they became the “Diplomat,” the uberest of ubermodels at Sears. These next two examples might be a little earlier, with their stodgier bell tops:

I know that cream-colored one came from the late Tom Heath by way of his daughter Jennifer, who has been to a number of shows liquidating Tom’s collection. Tom used these half-circle tags to identify where and when he bought things; unfortunately, to my knowledge he didn’t leave behind a key to his system.

I didn’t want to highlight the imprint, but both are the same: Diamond Medal / Diplomat Pencil. These tie in well with what I last posted about the Diamond Medal, in “The Middle Children” (August 10, 2016: Volume 4, page 121). In that article, I shared this image of a trio of pencils: from top, these are the full-sized Diamond Medal Diplomat in that same cream-colored celluloid, a pencil marked Sheaffer on the clip, and a burgundy and black faceted example with Parker works inside (the material is also likely from Parker).

I’ll circle back to Parker in a minute. Bear with me.

In “The Middle Children,” I presented the evidence that the W.A. Sheaffer Pen Company supplied C.E. Barrett, or Sears directly, with writing instruments for a short time. Here is another image from that article, comparing that Sheaffer-marked example to a Gold Medal in that same, distinctive plastic:

Now lets think about that large Diplomat with its bullet-shaped top. I haven’t been able to wrestle it apart, but I bet I know what is inside:

These are Sheaffer flattop pencils, and this image was included in “Most’s Influence on Sheaffer” (September 9, 2016: Volume 4, page 161). Lucifer Most, inventor of the Salz ‘Salrite, developed this mechanism for Sheaffer, and it was used from the flattop era of the 1920s through the earliest Sheaffer Balance pencils, through 1932 or so. Note that the thinner bell-top pencil at top bears a striking resemblance to those ringtop Diplomat pencils . . . 

But wait: there’s more. Some of the most attractive Art Deco pencils ever made were this series of Diamond Medals, and I bet I know what’s going on inside these, too . . .

All of these Sheaffer-derived Diamond Medal pencils appeared around the time the Rex Manufacturing Company fades away at the end of the 1920s, likely as a result of Parker’s patent infringement case against Rex over the washer clip. Sears was apparently shopping around for other suppliers, and The Wahl Company also got a foot in the door. The Diplomat made a fleeting appearance in Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry. On page 164 in Eversharp, I shared images of an Eversharp Dollar Pencil from around 1930. The clip, however, is marked “Diplomat” in the same script found on the Diamond Medal above, rather than Eversharp:

This is the only example I have found of a Wahl-made product supplied to Sears; it isn’t surprising, since Wahl supplied Montgomery Ward with rebadged Doric pens and pencils. In the end, though, it was the Parker Pen Company that won the Sears writing instrument contracts, including Diamond Medal branded pens and pencils, such as these:

That top one came from Dmitry Grinberg at the Ohio Show a few years back – most of you know him on eBay as “Rare Pen” with the California license plate in his listings. It is a rebadged Parker Challenger, perhaps made at the same time Parker offered these around 1934 or so, or maybe a bit later using obsolete parts.

This one is as pristine as they come, complete with intact gold infill to accentuate the imprint:

The clip is the same, other than the substitution of that neat Diamond Medal logo substituted for the Parker name:

As for that second one down, with its faceted barrel and typical Parker Duofold burgundy and black, is a match for one I shared in “A Nice Blend” (July 31, 2017: Volume 5, page 64).

As for those other three, those striped plastics were not typically used on Parker products. Not typically, anyway . . .

The top example shown here has all of the typical Diamond Medal badging, from the clip to the barrel imprint.

The other one came to me via Eric Magnuson, who prevailed on me to take it off his hands during a visit to the museum a few years ago. It lacks a barrel imprint and is currently equipped with an ill-fitting, split-arrow Parker Vacumatic clip.

The clip isn’t correct – I checked in with David Isaacson, who said that yes, there are precious few pens and pencils made in plastics generally reserved for rebadges such as Diamond Medal, but with Parker trim. This one should have a blade-style Parker clip, like the one on that burgundy and black Parker Royal Challenger shown at bottom in the image with Dmitry’s example above. I haven’t replaced it yet - as I recall, that clip doesn’t quite fit on this one.

Speaking of unusual Diamond Medal plastics with Parker-marked counterparts . . . 

The upper example came from Gabriel Galecia Goldsmith in that bunch of stuff I acquired a few months ago. The bottom example is the Parker version, another find that came from Eric Magnuson which appeared in “Sooooo Close” (May 30, 2020: Volume 6, page 140). When that original article ran, I did not know this plastic was intended primarily for use on Diamond Medal pens and pencils; David Isaacson immediately recognized it as such, so at the end of Volume 6 I included a brief update concerning these Parker “De-Re-Badged” or “un-rebadged” pens and pencils, as David calls them (Volume 6, pages 242-243).  

David shared with me several images for use in the book of his fountain pens, including an advertisement for Diamond Medal pens in these plastics, which were offered in brown as shown, as well as grey and green.

A First Round of Sheaffer Balance Updates

I’ve often joked that A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils is a book about the Sheaffer Balance, flanked on either side by the little bit that came before it and the little bit that came after. I’m only exaggerating a little bit: Chapter Three, concerning the Balance, is a quarter of the entire book.

Of course I’ve got several updates to offer about the Balance, and by no means will they fit comfortably in just one post. We’ll get a good start today.

This first one came my way just as I was closing out the book, and there wasn’t time or space to include it:

The Sheaffer Balance is a series that requires thought on several levels at the same time whenever you find one. At first, nothing looks out of the ordinary about this one, because all of its elements are so familiar. What is unusual here, though, is how they come together on this example. The pencil is a Tuckaway and is probably from around 1942, after the earlier metal Tuckaways were redesigned to match Sheaffer’s new Triumph line. Similar pencils are shown on page 88 in the book . . . almost . . . 

At top is one of the 1942 Tuckaways shown on page 88. When production returned to normal after the War, the Tuckaway’s lower section was made longer, the bands were narrower and a stubby clip was added (the one shown is a Valiant Tuckaway from 1945 or 1946, as shown on page 152).

What’s wrong in that picture is the over-the-top military clip. You might think there’s a simple explanation for that: obviously, you might think, someone replaced a clipless Tuckaway cap with one from a full-length Balance model of the same era.

You thought wrong.

Full length Balance pencils with those military-style clips had narrow bands - occasionally you’ll find one with an uncataloged “jeweler’s band,” but those measure at widest a quarter inch or so - I haven’t seen an over-the-top jewelers’ band pencil in carmine red, and I’ve never seen that clip on a pen or pencil with the extra-wide, wartime Triumph band. Triumph models had regular “radius” clips. Even if this cap was swapped over from something else, I have no idea what that something else would have been.

Speaking of Tuckaways, a minor note to add with respect to page 152, Figure 6-26 in the Field Guide. I only showed four colors, but I am pleased to report that the 1947 Valiant Tuckaway, as with the other Tuckaway models, are found in all five colors. 

In this next image, these striated celluloid models include subtle details not shown in the book, because I didn’t know they existed:

At top, this striated Balance ringtop surfaced in an ordinary online auction and it is so easy to miss that I was pleased that it slipped under the radar and cost me so little. Ringtop Balance pencils in marbled plastics are more “normal,” although the double banded ones are quite a bit tougher to find.

This was the first time I had seen a striated celluloid Balance in ringtop configuration. In marbled plastics, it might be dismissed as a marriage of parts, since it is easy on the earlier marbled ones to replace a separate end piece with a ringtop. Once the striated celluloid era began, however, the caps were made from a single, uninterrupted piece.

The pen and pencil set at bottom in that earlier image took a long, winding journey to my doorstep that was more interesting than a few clicks on my cell phone to place an online bid.

 I had first seen this set at the Don Scott Antique Show – the frenzied first show of the season –  in November, 2022, just as I was finalizing what I was going to include in the book. There’s this one dealer whose tables are covered with shallow box lids full of random little stuff, and I’m always finding a handful or two of odds and ends. I pondered whether I should get it to include in the book.

Alas, as Rob Bader says, the dealer wanted a fair price, and I was looking for an unfair price. Besides, I thought, I’ve been spending a lot of money buying things to photograph for the book, and the only thing that is odd about it is there’s no Sheaffer’s imprints on the clips . . . that isn’t so unusual, right?

Wrong. After Janet and I left the show, I went through the images I had included in Chapter Three - this image, now memorialized on page 71 in the Field Guide, illustrates that when a Sheaffer Balance is found with an unmarked flat ball clip, it was accompanied with a special, wider ribbed “jeweler’s” band, not a simple thin gold filled band. 

Dang it . . . that’s nearly all the time, not all the time. David Isaacson recognizes these as a scarce but recognized variant, something that he refers to as a “fusion pen,” since the fountain pen combines the plain trim band and unremarkable Sheaffer number three nib (features usually reserve for Sheaffer’s lower tier offerings) but also has a white dot on the pen cap and an unmarked flat ball clip (features generally reserved for Sheaffer’s higher quality pens). 

Dang it again . . . I wish I had at least mentioned that in the book. No worries, I thought, I’ll pick it up at next month’s show. I returned to the Don Scott show in December and tracked down that same dealer, turning his display upside down looking for this set, but it wasn’t there. I asked the guy about it – no matter how many consecutive months I drop money on him, he never remembers who I am – and he casually waved me off. “Oh yeah, I already sold those,” he said.

Double dang it, with a side of grrr. He had answered me too quick; there was no way he had any idea what he had on his own tables, I thought. He just wants me to go away, and go away I did.

Of course that didn’t prevent me from stopping by and browsing his stuff month after month, usually buying a few things each time. At the March 2024 show nearly a year and a half later, I made my usual stop by his booth and . . . there it was. I didn’t even tell the dealer how happy I was to see it . . . I just stood there like a human ATM and robotically handed him the fair price noted on the tag. It was a long-awaited day, memorable mostly for how anticlimactic it was, leading up to a picture that should have been in the Field Guide.

The new set is at top, followed by a “normal” Balance pencil with the narrow band and Sheaffer’s clip as expected, and a normal-ish example with plain clip and jeweler’s band.

Sigh. The dumb things we remember . . . like the fact that this next set was in an online auction that closed as I sat in the lobby at the tire store, waiting for them to charge me a lot of money to reshoe my horse while I was looking for ways to spend even more money on my phone over a tiny styrofoam cup filled with black liquid. I think they called it “coffee,” but I don’t think that word means what they think it means.

Suffice to say I paid dearly on both fronts, and David Isaacson has dibs on the pen in the event I ever choose to split up the set. The wallet this set came in is marked Sheaffer’s on the inside and the outside - it was made by Farrington, a well known maker of wallets, money clips, and other stuff along these lines.

Apparently the wallet is collectible in its own right; I started down a rabbit hole of research into that subject, then quickly came to my senses. This is about a spectacular pen and pencil set, not the container I said as I slapped myself silly. These off-catalog, special cap bands are a special niche for Balance collectors, and the vast majority of the time they occur in the earlier marbled celluloids. It is only in vary rare instances that they are found in striated celluloid, as shown on page 78 of the Field Guide.

The short example in Sheaffer’s “Rose Glow” shown in this image from the book is mine, and the other two pictured were on loan from Gabriel Galecia Goldsmith – I mention that only because Gabriel has expressed such pride in the fact that two of his pencils made the book that it’s worth acknowledging him for his help again. 

There’s also a niche within a niche here. Within the world of these special bands, and without any apparent rhyme or reason, sometimes the spaces between these split bands are painted over with black paint, and other times they aren’t. This set combines both.

Yes, the trim is worn . . . but as I like to say, if you don’t like that, go out and try to find a better one.

I have one more addition to report to you now - with more updates later, after I get them photographed. This one also came from an auction, but not of the usual online sort: my friend Pearce Jarvis has started a writing instrument auction house in Canada called North American Pen Auctions, and he’s been attracting really interesting lots, including this nifty little set:

These are the smallest pens and pencils in the Balance series (excluding the golf pencils), referred to as the “Petite Balance” in Sheaffer’s 1930 catalog, its one and only appearance. They are shown in the Field Guide with narrow gold filled bands on page 59, and in bandless configuration on page 61. Here is the image from Figure 3-65, showing the bandless ones:

Actually, this was the fourth version of that image I shot for the Field Guide. The original included only five of these, but as I bought up variations that I didn’t have to photograph I kept adding to the group. Any more examples, and I figured I might need a fold-out centerfold so readers could really take all of it in. After the book went to press I found something else that might have tipped the scales in favor of such a dumb idea . . . 

While I figured something like a bandless Petite Balance in jade might be out there – after all, there was no reason to think it wouldn’t be – I had no idea that there might be an “Autograph” version of the Petite Balance with all 14k trim. It seems like overkill for what was marketed as a budget product, more novelty than practical . . . but here we are. 

That makes four configurations of the Petite Balance: a bandless ringtop, bandless with clip, narrow band with clip, and Autograph with 14k trim . . .

Wait a tick . . . I think I found a bandless marine green with clip, maybe at that last Chicago show, in my pile of things waiting to be photographed . . . I’ll have to dig a little and reshoot that last image.\

Again.

And so it goes with the Balance - if you think you own or have even seen every obscure variant that might be out there, you are fooling yourself.

The Philadelphia Acquisitions

This year’s Philadelphia Show in January yielded a few more updates to A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils:

That top pencil probably belonged in yesterday’s installment of updates about Sheaffer’s metal pencils, but the condition of the paint is the best I’ve seen and its worth showing alongside my better examples.

The second one down was an unmarked pencil I found in a junk box, and I bought it primarily as a curiosity. Sheaffer Balance golf pencils are typically marked with the Sheaffer name, but on occasion they do turn up without any markings. Could this be a more gargantuan unmarked Sheaffer golf pencil?

I’m on the fence with this one - if the black and pearl color carried all the way to the top of the pencil, I’d be more convinced . . . but then again, if you subtract that the length of the part that is all black, the black and pearl part is about the right length. What the heck – it’s fun to display alongside my other Sheaffer golf pencils.

The two cherry red flattops both came from David Isaacson. The Titan is really special, but it takes a second to recognize why: in addition to the color, this is a Titan equipped for .076" checking leads, which is more clear when it sits alongside its “normal” brother:

My only other example of a Titan checking pencil appears on page 35 of the Field Guide, and it’s worth showing you them together for another reason:

You’ll notice that the gold cap is a bit shorter on the cherry red example. As explained on page 34 of the book, the way these pencils were built was changed at some point between 1925 and 1928. Those shorter caps indicate that the cap has a post with the eraser mounted on the end, a feature carried over from the earliest Sharp Point pencils since 1917. Longer caps indicate that the eraser is attached to the pencil itself. For me, that is more than a purely acedemic distinction: it means that Titan Checking Pencils were made, even if in very limited numbers, over several years. 

David’s other cherry red example neatly filled out a gap in my flattop collection. 

The two coral examples shown here were pictured on page 36 of the Field Guide, and note that there are three different clips represented here: the top one is the “Little S” clip in use when the Radite (celluloid) flattop pencils were introduced in 1925, carried over from the earlier metal pencil line. At center, the “Big S” clips (note the larger letters at either end of the word “Sheaffer’S” are illustrated in Sheaffer’s 1928 catalog. At bottom, David’s pencil has the flat ball clip introduced on the Sheaffer Balance between 1933 and 1934; this one was likely a leftover barrel put to good use after flattops were no longer in production.

This last one from the Philly Show is my favorite in this batch, because it’s one of those that you really need to understand what you are looking at before you can see what is different:

Steve Wiederlight had this one, and I passed it a few times before I could figure out why I had to have it. The Craig was a Sheaffer subbrand, named after Walter Sheaffer’s son. Flattop Craig pencils are not a particularly rare sight, and Sheaffer pens and pencils in jade are downright common. What is unusual here is the combination of those two things: I have never seen a Craig flattop in jade green. That makes for an interesting family picture:

There’s all of the known colors, with the exception of cherry red; the image of flattop Craig pencils on page 94 of the Field Guide shows one, but that example was on loan from my friend Jonathan Pollack. Another cherry red example surfaced in an online auction recently . . . I bid the stupid money, and someone else bid money that was even stupider. 

You can’t win them all and besides . . . there’s always Philadelphia next year.