Where It Isn't Supposed To Be

This article has been included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 7, now available here.

If you don't want the book but you enjoy the article, please consider supporting the Blog project here.

I hinted at something a while ago (Volume 6 page 138), when I was discussing the sixth color of Eversharp Pacemaker pencils – an example in plastic normally found on the company’s “Varsity” line:

Hold my beer, I said in response to the challenge of finding a blue version of Eversharp’s Varsity plastic, teasing out a couple of later Eagle pencils:

There’s more to that story.  I’ve had a couple other examples of Eagle-made pencils in Varsity plastics.

The brown one is marked Trupoint on the clip – that’s a Sears store brand previously made by other manufacturers over the years, including Eclipse and Autopoint. The other is marked “Cascade”:

Here are the Cascade and Trupoint pencils shown alongside their Eversharp Varsity twins:

A search for newspaper advertisements turned up one in the Stillwater (Oklahoma) Gazette on September 15, 1939.  “Cascade” was another Rexall drug store brand, and the advertisement specifically refers to the “striped Pyralin” barrels:

Another advertisement for the Cascade, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on September 8, 1942, shows the Cascade in a more swirly plastic:

I’ve turned up three examples of the Cascade - one in Eversharp’s Varsity plastic, and one in that swirly plastic illustrated in 1942:

That swirly plastic matches the plastic found on most of the pencils I refer to as “Deco Eagles,” dripping with art deco style:

Then there are the more exotic Deco Eagles, in colors and patterns you don’t see very often. 

There’s examples in the “stars and moons” pattern in various incarnations, and at bottom, note that red Eversharp Varsity plastic.  

But you might have noticed that third Cascade, the one in the middle of the picture . . . seen that one anywhere before?

These are “circuit board” WASP Clipper pencils, made by Sheaffer.  Boy, that Cascade plastic is close . . . I recently found a “Deco Eagle” in the brown version of that plastic and – maybe because it was so far out of its element – I just noticed another brown Eagle lounging in that drawer made from the same stuff:

This Deco Eagle is the only one I’ve seen marked “Epenco” rather than “Eagle” on the clip, although the clip is the same:

I was excited to find one of these in circuit-board like plastic and posted it online - Mike Crawford saw it, and mentioned he had some Epenco pens along these lines, so we came to terms in order to add to the story I knew I would be writing here:

Eagle’s version of the WASP “circuit board” plastic isn’t exactly identical - instead of sharply defined squares, the plastic background on my Eagle-made versions have a wavy plastic background.  The colors are slightly different, and of course - the WASP doesn’t come in red:

Still, I’m sure it was no coincidence.  What was a coincidence was finding another pen in a random online auction – a brown one to match my Deco Eagle pencil:

The "World's Largest Manufacturer of Shoes"

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.

An Tran had this one to offer at the DC Show:

I had to buy it, not just because the color is really nice, but because it has a name on the clip I hadn’t seen before:

“Sundial Shoes,” a company which in the 1950s marketed itself as “The World’s Largest Manufacturer of Shoes.”  Although it’s usual to see custom made clips rather than an imprint on a barrel on an advertising piece, I was fairly confident this was not made by a shoe company and I wondered who might have made it for them.

I think I have my answer.  Here it is shown next to a Trupoint, the Sears brand manufactured by Eclipse (see https://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2014/12/stepping-it-up.html):

Note the same top and the same tip, although the clip is quite different and the Trupoint is a bit shorter.  So let’s put it next to another Trupoint:

There you go.  Same length, same clip, same everything but the cap (but by the way, you can interchange them and they fit each other).  No doubt in my mind this is an Eclipse-made pencil.

Speaking of Trupoint . . .

In yesterday’s post, I concluded that a pencil marked "Trupoint" was made by Eclipse, because the clip and overall construction were identical to that of another Eclipse subbrand, the Marxton:

That’s worth circling back around to for a minute. "Trupoint" was a brand name used by Sears, Roebuck & Co. for pens and pencils, and what appear to be the earliest examples I’ve found – earlier than the ones I pictured here yesterday – also appear to have been made by Eclipse . . .

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 3, 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.

Stepping It Up

Well, at least it didn’t take me a year.

On one of the online forums late last December, one of the users had found an "Enduro" fountain pen and requested information. I said that I thought the Enduro was an Eclipse brand, and I promised to come up with some photographs to show why I believed that.

I then promptly forgot to do it.

So at long last, here are a Trupoint, an Enduro, a Moderne and a Marxton together:

I’d noted the similarities between the Trupoint and Moderne clips here before (http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/08/first-blood.html), but I still hadn’t made the connection with Marxton. As for the Enduro, I’ve had it laying around the museum for a couple years, but it wasn’t until I saw the Enduro pen in that online post that I thought to pull it and do some comparing. Note that while the four have slightly different trim configurations, the clips with those stepped upper sections are identical . . .

To learn more, this full article is included in The Leadhead's Pencil Blog Volume 3, 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.

First Blood

This was the first thing that caught my eye at the DC show.

Ah, that first purchase at the pen show, when it seems nobody has anything smaller than a twenty, and this was only five bucks. People could have been selling Lincolns for six bucks all day long and done pretty well, I’d imagine.

This wasn’t quite what I’d remembered of the Trupoint, which usually turns up in a lizardskin sort of pattern, like that seen on page 158 of The Catalogue . . .

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.

To order, here's the link:  Volume 1 at Legendary Lead Company