The Second, Third, and Other Shoes Drop

My only complaint about the DC Supershow, held every August, is that so many of my friends are there that it is a challenge finding more than a few minutes to talk with each of them. Things only slow down to a reasonable pace on Sunday, by which time everyone is so thoroughly exhausted and “peopled” out that we are collectively ready to return to our normal, quirky lives.

I don’t even bother to set up on Thursday, so I can see everyone and share things we brought to show each other; I’ll typically have a backpack containing only a case of things I brought to show people and a bottle of Jameson’s. Both are typically empty by the time festivities end on that first day.

As I wandered about the room, my old friend R. George Adams flagged me down. R. George, you may recall, found that weird Stylofede pencil for me (see “The Pencil and the Tramp” on August 5, 2025), and he’s got a great eye for the unusual and the weird. 

This time, R. George wanted to offer me some wonderful pieces out of his collection of Carter’s pens and pencils. Two of his fountain pens enamored me; usually, I’m too cheap to spend big money on fountain pens, particularly in the first few minutes after I arrive at a show, but I was unable to resist these.

At the time, I assumed one of these was a duplicate of the DeLaCo example from yesterday’s article because I couldn’t remember what the imprint read. I didn’t mind adding a complete and intact example, even if it proved to be a duplicate, but I was pleasantly surprised when I got home:

Yesterday’s DeLaCo pen is now in the company of identical pens marked Superite (DeWitt-LaFrance’s later flagship brand) and Laughlin, of Detroit, Michigan. As for the nibs, the Superite has one of those “S” marked nibs I was telling you about yesterday, and the Laughlin has a number 5 size Snapfil nib.

That Snapfil is an unusual nib, typically found on the General Manufacturing and Houston Pen Company’s Snapfil lines of fountain pens (General Manufacturing also produced those grail “Kaligraf” pencils). By the time these were made, around 1920, Laughlin was sourcing pens rather than making them; I don’t know whether the company sourced nibs and pens separately and put them together or whether this is a random replacement.

R.George had a few pencils to show me, too. They are the four examples in the middle of this next image:

Before I get to R. George’s pencils, a word about that black hard rubber example at top. It is one of the earliest of the Carter-branded pencils, a rebadged version of the hard rubber Superite pencils. The Carter Ink Company purchased DeWitt-LaFrance in 1925, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility that Carter’s was sourcing pens and pencils from DeWitt-LaFrance before the sale.

This one came to me from an online auction that closed shortly after I got home from the DC show – it’s a duplicate that’s both an upgrade in one respect and a downgrade in another:

My other black hard rubber example has badly discolored hard rubber and corroded trim . . . but it has a price sticker. Both of my black hard rubber examples have groups of lines on the barrel. DeWitt-LaFrance made identical pencils for the Rexall Drug Stores under the “Signet” line; Signet pencils had gold filled trim, and the black hard rubber ones came either with or without those groups of lines. See “Chasing and Fixing Signets” (July 8, 2021: Volume 7, page 246).

All but one of these Carter’s pencils have nickel trim rather than gold-filled, but the existence of that red hard rubber Carter with gold filled trim suggests that there’s no reason all of these others might also come with that trim . . . and the Signet line was also offered in mottled hard rubber, too. 

The first of the four Carter’s pencils that came from R. George is that great pink and white oversized pencil; these were student or utility models, I believe, and to my knowledge there were no comparable fountain pens. With an exposed eraser, I’ve only found these in black or red hard rubber, and the crown tops found on these student models are unique to this series.

I wrote about that blue one during the first year of the blog – see “If Only All ‘Student Pencils’ Were This Nice!” (March 30, 2012: Volume 1, page 159). While larger, these are also lighter since it’s a thinner plastic barrel rather than the more hefty Coralite or hard rubber.

The second R. George Special was that Pearltex pencil in blue . . . or blueish, anyway. Pearltex shades vary from one pencil to the next and no, that’s not discoloration, which comes from exposure to rubber ink sacs, ink, or a combination of the two, something that typically doesn’t plague pencils. When I bought it, I had checked my notes, and I thought this one would fit nicely into my collection, which included what I thought was a short grey and the short and long models in blue. However, when I got them all together under the strong lights in my photo setup, it isn’t so clear.

My “gray” ringtop looks more pink, and the “blue” ringtop looks more gray. Colors on the Pearltex series are so often a matter of degree, though, and in this case I’m just content that R. George’s addition is clearly different from what was already represented in this series. 

The third R. George Memorial Carter is in lapis Coraltex – it’s very close to a model I recently wrote about in “Duly Twisted” (October 2, 2025). In that earlier article, I noted that I already had three Lapis Carter pencils, but this one is a variation I didn’t have:

Carter pencils with a single band at the top are earlier; Carter’s fountain pens are shown with a single wide cap band in newspaper advertisements from 1926 through mid-1928, while advertisements beginning in late 1928 illustrate double cap bands like these. While these advertisements do not show the matching pencils, I don’t believe it is a stretch to say that the banding on the pencils matched fountain pens made at the same time.

The two white Pearltex examples at the bottom are a story all their own: the oversized model was the fourth R. George Special from the DC Show, and Terry Mawhorter had the ringtop. I was happy and a little irritated at the same time to find these, because I had to reshoot a picture that was a real pain in the neck to stage. Here’s the original image, taken to commemorate the addition of a ringtop identical to the one I got from Terry:

This shows Carter models in white Pearltex, which evolved on a slightly different track from the same pencils in other colors. The top three examples are not a match for any other Carter’s pens or pencils of the era.

I had planned an article months ago about why  streamlined ringtops in white Pearltex have a single trim bands at the top, while all the other colors have twin bands.

Later versions in white Pearltex match the same models in other colors . . . mostly. The last of the full-length Carter pencils blended elements from the flattop series with the cheaper Carter products made in the 1930s.

Carter eventually abandoned the distinctive LaFrance clip; these later models sport very unusual colors, but I haven't found one in white Pearltex.

Later Carter ringtops are unmarked and were not made in as wide a range of colors, but the distinctive Pearltex and trim are unmistakable. Note the shorter caps on the grey models – this is too small a sampling to draw any conclusions, other than that there were two different cap lengths.

During those sad last days of Carter’s writing instrument production, not even the side clip models were marked with the Carter’s name.

In fact, it wasn’t until 2018 that I was able to confirm that these were made by the company, established by indirect means in “Settles the Issue in My Mind” (February 25, 2018: Volume 5, page 164) and from scant newspaper advertisements in  “Chapter and Verse” (October 9, 2018: Volume 5, page 263). Formal confirmation arrived after I acquired a 1931 (or so) Carter catalog from Rob Bader (see “The Inconvenient Question” on June 12, 2021: Volume 7, page 190).

As Carter’s Ink Company prepared to throw in the towel with the production of writing instruments some time in the early 1930s, there were some final modifications – or debasements, depending on how you view it – to the designs, including the addition of a standard black and pearl to the lineup and the deletion of the domed tops.

I haven’t yet found a flat top Carter pencil like this in any Pearltex color. If I do, however, I’ll be reshooting that white Pearltex spread yet again.

The Graf Bader's Ballast Box

I had to check with those who were involved in this story to be sure everyone thought it was as funny and worth retelling as I did. They do.

A few weeks before the Chicago Show, I had purchased a huge collection of . . . er . . . high quality ballpoints and pencils from the estate of a collector in Kansas. I didn’t make the trip out west, though. Dan Schenkein lives in Kansas, and he was my boots on the ground. I sent Dan some money to spend, and spend it wisely  he did - eleven large priority mail boxes landed on my doorstep packed to the brim with stuff. For a couple weeks, you couldn’t see our kitchen table while I sorted through everything.

After I had neatly packaged everything by brand and taken what I wanted for my collection, I texted Rob Bader to see if he wanted to buy everything else. “Should I bring a trailer?” he asked. I told him he should bring a Zeppelin. A grand purchase warrants a grand entrance, I said. 

That Thursday morning in Chicago, Rob docked his Zeppelin on the roof of the hotel and came down to the ballroom, where we did our thing – he took piles and piles of stuff, and I took a few pieces of paper from him.  

This year’s Chicago show was the busiest I can recall – so much so that I was pinned down at my display by a frenzied crowd of pencil folk for almost the entire weekend. I didn’t have much time to get around the room, but during one of my brief excursions around the room, I saw that Rob had a box full of big, colorful flattop pens on his table, dumped unceremoniously out on the table in true Baderesque fashion.

I really wanted to do a deep dive into that pile, but it was causing quite a stir; I couldn’t get close enough to Rob’s table to see anything with the frenzy of buyers, and I didn’t have time to wait. By the time things quieted down, Rob had said his typical Irish goodbye and the Graf Bader turned south and floated away before I had the chance to see what I was missing.

Raleigh (the Triangle Pen Show) came a few weeks later, and Rob was back with what was left of that big, beautiful box spilled out in a smaller but still enticing pile awaiting a thorough pillaging. This time it was quiet enough that I could spend some quality time seeing what there was to see. Most of it was parts only – caps and barrels without nibs, sections or feeds, but this little guy leaped out of the pile and into my hands:

Rob and I share the same sickness that keeps us perpetually buried in pens and pencils. The reasonable and normal thing to do when you find something you like in a pile of stuff is to ask for a price on that one item. Rob and I are neither reasonable nor normal: when we find one thing we like in a whole mess of stuff, we assume there’s got to be a whole bunch more good stuff in there and we want to know how much to buy it all.

At least Janet knew I was wired that way when she married me.

Usually, Rob and I don’t use money in our transactions. When I find things on his table, he’ll tell me to take it with me and he’ll swing by later to pick out some things to take in trade. This time, however, he was fully laden with the things I sold to him in Chicago, and he wanted to lighten the load a bit and get back some of those pieces of paper he had given me the previous month.

How much would I offer? I threw out a number – five hundred bucks. You have to start somewhere, I figured. The Graf Bader must have been sagging pretty low at that moment – done, he said. Everything was dumped back into the box, and back I went to my own table. I hadn’t set anything out yet, so I spent the first couple hours sorting through everything to see what I wanted to keep and what I might leave out on the table during the rest of the show.

I pulled a few things out of no real significance - there were quite a few large Waterson pens in there, just caps and barrels, but I’ve got a soft spot for that rascal Mr. Kelly (see “The Banker and the Specialty King” on June 25, 2021: Volume 7, page 285). There were a few other odds and ends I kept, but most of it I laid right back out on the table.

In my mind, I got my money’s worth just out of the couple enjoyable hours I spent going through a fresh box of stuff. As for the initial object of my affection, it remained the first thing I had pulled out of that box. I didn’t look at it very close, but I knew from the clip it was made by DeWitt-LaFrance, one of my pet obsessions around the museum, and on closer examination it had an imprint even better than I had hoped:

DeLaCo was one of DeWitt-LaFrance’s earliest trade names: I know from the pencils, all of which are marked Patent Pending – the ubiquitous Superite pencils came later, when the imprints were changed to “Pat.” on both the barrels and clips. As with nearly everything else in that box, it was missing a few parts – there was no nib and the top piece had gone missing.

I knew that these parts were missing when I bought the box, but I didn’t think it was a big deal - Superite nibs are still relatively easy to find, and I figured any old generic black plug would finish it nicely. On that second point, I was wrong. On closer examination, the plug on the barrel end isn’t black – it’s a dark olive green with black zebra stripes.

That’s a tall order to find a correct replacement, although hope is always springing eternal that the peanut gallery might help me out with finding that part some day. I still thought I got my money’s worth. 

I didn’t know how right I was.

I had an appointment at the Raleigh show to meet Robert Speerbrecher (“Speerbob,” for those who have seen his listings on eBay). Bob was running low on inventory, so I had told him the Graf Leadhead would be landing in Raleigh with a few of my own ballast boxes and we could help each other out. Bob came looking for pencils, but when he saw a few rows of big, colorful flattop fountain pen parts, his focus shifted immediately. 

Bob asked what I wanted for the pens, and I invited him to make me an offer for what he wanted. He offered an amount per piece for all of the flattops, and that number was low – at that per unit price there was plenty of money to be made, if like Bob you have the parts needed to make complete pens out of them. For a moment I thought about whether I might do the same thing, but I don’t have a stock of spare fountain pen parts and heck . . . there were so many of them that when Bob’s unit price was multiplied by the sheer number of them, I would triple my money on what I paid for the entire box. The Graf Leadhead jettisoned that box of ballast in exchange for some much lighter pieces of paper. It was a good day for both of us.

Later in the show, Rob Bader asked me how I made out with his box, and I couldn’t resist telling him a good story. Rob laughed, because he had an even better one: “I paid a hundred dollars for that entire box, and I sold nine hundred dollars out of it in Chicago before you bought what was left,” he said.

I didn’t want to write about this until I shared the punchline with Bob Speerbrecher – fortunately, he thought it was as funny as Rob and I did. Everybody came out a winner on this one, and Bob is already well on his way to recouping his investment, too.

It’s like my father-in-law used to say: that’s why they put the backs on playing cards.

And then, just two months later, I would have even more reason to be thrilled that I had been involved in the grand Zeppelin flotilla of 2025 . . .

Wrong in the Right Way

The only difference between fiction and nonfiction is accuracy. Statements in print that are later proven wrong can demote an entire work from a scholarly text to a pretty picture book.

“This is what I have observed, here is how it compares with what I know, and here is what that evidence leads me to believe,” is how I approach new conclusions. In those terms, new evidence does not prove anything I said wrong, since all I’ve provided is a snapshot of what I thought I knew at the time. If anything, I’ve invited further study and the greater understanding it yields.

That being said, print publication is cruel. Once a book is printed, all the author can hope for is that it encapsulated as accurately and as completely as possible all of the knowledge that was rattling around upstairs as of the moment it was committed to print. If everybody waited until they know everything there is to know or that will ever be knowable to write a book, there would be no books. 

Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry thoroughly exhausted me. I poured into it everything I have learned about the brand over the last 25 years, and I believe it will remain a valuable reference long after I am gone with all the information it contains. However, I know nothing is complete, and I knew that I’d be circling around with updates and corrections.

Just not too many, I hoped. And not too soon.

This is my longwinded way of telling you that at the end of Eversharp: Cornerstone of an Industry, I posed a question that was unnecessary, because I had the answer right in front of me. That answer adds a little bit of context to the Eversharp story that, had I remembered it at the time, I might have added it into the book.

I am proud, however, to report that I was wrong in the right way.

On average, my books are “done” two or three months before the printed books are available. During that time I’ll make last minute tweaks, but it becomes more and more difficult as the production process moves forward until it’s time to call – literally – “pencils down.”

The Eversharp book had been picking up steam for months through 2024, with contributors offering me artifacts to photograph or acquire for the book. The law of inertia applies: new finds were continuing to arrive even as the printers were asking for proofs.

By the 2024 DC Show in August, the book was essentially complete, subject only to a final round of editing with the assistance of that most loyal knight Richard Keith. At the show, I picked up a few additional things to include in the book – no worries, since I do my own layout – reshooting and substituting images was still a simple matter.

Mostly.

Right before that show, an online auction yielded a solid gold early Heath-clip Ever Sharp, which I had referred to but had not shown in Chapter Three. By the time I had it in hand for photography, the layout was so tight that there was nowhere I could squeeze it in. I added one last page to the book: page 434, titled “Stop Press,” includes several images of that important find, and I was able to work a reference to page 434 into one of the captions in Chapter Three.

This article is not about that pencil. That “stop press” page, however, opened the door for what I’m going to tell you next.

At the DC Show, I reconnected with Myk Daigle – a fervent supporter of my research and the books I write. Myk had a couple parts on hand, and he gave them to me. “Maybe you can use these in your book,” he said.

I tucked them away to look at when I got home. If I can match these up with the metal Eversharp model to which they belong, I thought, I can swap these caps over and reshoot the images in which those models appear.

There was a problem.

I turned to pages 64 through 67 in the book, which provide a four-page table detailing every cataloged pattern of metal Eversharp pencil, together with the years in which each was cataloged and their model numbers.

Wahl’s catalogs did include a Model 22; it was the barleycorn pattern listed only in 1921, but it was only offered in gold-filled – nothing in silver plated or sterling.  Model 034 similarly made no sense, because Wahl did not use any model numbers with a leading zero and besides, Wahl’s model conventions provided that ringtop model designations ended with the suffix “SW,” for “short with ring.”

These were the first square-peg model designations that did not fit neatly into the round holes I had already documented in the book. I had to acknowledge it, so I used the last couple inches at the bottom of the “Stop Press” page 434.

Here’s the part where I got it wrong in the right way.

I said only what I knew. I explained how Model 22 and 034 did not fit into what I had compiled with respect to Wahl’s model designations, and the book ends with this statement: “Perhaps these were for Heath’s clutch pencils or Heath-made pencils marked for the Carey Pen Company, both of which used these same caps (see pages 42-44). Perhaps also there is something more to learn about these, still out there and waiting to be discovered.”

Observation, evidence, and a guess based on that evidence. Ending with an unanswered question like that is a valuable acknowledgment that any book exists in a continuum, as a statement of what was known at the time in a universe that will inevitably expand. Some day, I hoped, someone would come forward with the answer.

I didn’t know it would be me.

And I didn’t know I already had it.

While I was writing the Sheaffer and Eversharp books, I continued to add other things to my collection - but to keep my work table clear and stay focused, I was diligent about photographing new additions and putting them away to keep them out of sight and out of my easily distracted peripheral vision.

One of the things I had turned up along the way, back in February 2023, was a group of pens and pencils made by the DeWitt-LaFrance Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts – best known as the makers of the “Superite” brand of pens and pencils. The lot had surfaced in an online auction:

Yes, I do pick up fountain pens when the occasion calls for it – and when it comes to a cult brand of which I am a rabid devotee – the occasion calls for it. I had not seen a Superite fountain pen with a price band:

I shot these images in March, 2023, just as the Sheaffer book was being released and nearly a year before work began on the Eversharp book. If or when the blog restarts, I thought to myself, I’ll write something about these.

This was not what I had planned to write.

After the dust settled with the Eversharp book, and page 434 along with all its other pages were irrevocably committed to print, I dusted off that file folder of pictures, and I noticed that the top two pencils in that group shot had price bands that strongly resembled those found on early Ever Sharp pencils. I wondered . . . 

The example second from top is marked Model 10-B, printed in the same font as Myk’s Model 034 ringtop cap.

Which leads me to the coup de grace:

There it is: the Model 22 cap that Myk Daigle gave to me came from a Superite. Oh, I was so close . . . I had suggested Myk’s caps might be from a Heath-made pencil, and while that guess was wrong, it is fascinating that Superite pencils have caps that are identical to those on an Eversharp.

George W. Heath & Co. made the earliest Ever Sharp pencils, using modified and repurposed barrels from their clutch pencils (and which were also rebranded for the Carey Pen Company). When Wahl took over production of Keeran’s Ever Sharp in October 1915, it was because Keeran was frustrated that Heath could not keep up with his orders. Given Heath’s apparent refusal to allow Wahl to use his patent pending clip (as evidenced by Keeran’s hastily designed spade clip and John Wahl’s tombstone clip), Heath apparently did not take kindly to the transition.

It would be unreasonable to think that Heath would dig in its heels on the use of Heath’s clip, but would nevertheless willingly cooperate in supplying caps or the tooling used to make them . . . Wahl likely copied them, since the basic crown-shaped design was not the subject of any design patent or trademark and was in the public domain.

That would leave George W.  Heath & Co. with idle tooling and perhaps a supply of parts in late 1915 . . . and DeWitt-LaFrance burst onto the scene out of nowhere in 1918. I now believe that Heath either supplied caps or sold tooling to the fledgling DeWitt-LaFrance Company so that Superite pencils would sport caps so similar to those on an Eversharp that a couple of them erroneously wound up in a book about Eversharps.

There’s more evidence to support this theory: as I noted in “Wahl, Sheaffer, and the Race for Boston” (beginning on December 26, 2016: Volume 4, page 300), by 1921 the Wahl Company had noted it had hundreds of competitors who had copied the outward appearance of the venerable Eversharp. The Wahl Company only sued one of them: DeWitt-LaFrance (Volume 4, page 325).

I had previously thought Wahl singled out the makers of the Superite for litigation because DeWitt-LaFrance was one of the more successful companies offering writing instruments that looked like an Eversharp. Given what I have learned, I now theorize that the purpose of the litigation was to knock out a competitor that was producing parts that looked exactly like Eversharps - the very parts Wahl had copied in the first place.

Let’s add one last potential morsel to this theory. Here’s the nib from that fountain pen in the group:

Note the “H.” 

I asked David Nishimura whether that could designate “Heath,” but he does not recall any evidence that George W. Heath & Co. made its own nibs, and suggests it might stand for “Hicks” or something else.

And it starts again. Observation. Evidence. And a guess.

The DeWitt-LaFrance Freak

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.

Yes, I’m rabid for all things DeWitt-LaFrance.  That’s the only reason I caught this one:

The online auction included some two dozen pencils all in one go, most of which went straight into the junk box.  What caught my attention was that I had searched for auctions containing the word “Superite,” DeWitt-LaFrance’s flagship brand, and this was the only thing that even remotely resembled anything DeWitt-LaFrance might have made.

And it resembled a Superite only very remotely, with that straight top.  I made sure the seller accepted returns before I bid, just in case nothing in the photos was actually marked Superite.  Imagine my glee . . .

“Superite Desk / Pat. Pend.”  I’ve never heard of one, I’ve never seen one catalogued, and I’m always tickled to find something I didn’t know existed.

Demonstrating Something New

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.

A few months ago on Facebook, my friend in Switzerland Guillaume Chappuis posted a picture of a few pencils he had lounging about the Alps, and one in particular caught my eye:

It’s a Superite, made by DeWitt-LaFrance, and the patent pending language on both the clip and the barrel of the pencil indicates a date of manufacture between late 1919  and mid-1920:

The pencil is made of what many manufacturers referred to as “silni,” for silver nickel (Matt McColm corrected me.  Says Matt:  "Nickel silver, German silver, alpacca, silni are all names for a copper-nickel-zinc alloy that resembles silver in color, but contains no silver."), and the three-diamond pattern typical of DeWitt-LaFrance pencils is found on the barrel:

But what sets this example apart is that it is a demonstrator, with carefully placed holes revealing all the business going on inside: