Worth a Second Look

In yesterday’s installment, I introduced a fountain pen marked “Worth” with a nib marked “Keystone.” It was the first of several dominoes to fall connecting different producers.

That tied nicely into a discussion about who made pens and pencils marked “Keystone,” but with an underlying assumption that the nib is original to the pen. I agree that sometimes people put too much weight on what nib is in a particular pen, since nibs can be and often were switched out by repairmen over the last century.

In this case, I fully believe the nib is original. First, this Worth pen appears to have been made by the Eagle Pencil Company, given its similarity to other known Eagle pens:

Second, the word “Keystone” was a registered trademark owned by the Blaisdell Pencil Company. Blaisdell, by the time the trademark was applied for, was controlled by the Berolzheimer family, which also owned the Eagle Pencil Company.

All roads leading from Worth and Blaisdell point to Eagle. As I mentioned earlier, when I bought that Worth pen I didn’t even check to see if there was a nib in it – it was cheap, and the fact that I suspected it was Eagle-made without even removing the cap was all that I needed to add some fascinating context to one of our most celebrated pen history. A Keystone/Blaisdell/Eagle connection adds even more fuel to that fire. 

The Worth Featherweight Pen Company is best known today for being the loser in Walter Sheaffer’s landmark patent infringement case over Sheaffer’s design patents for the Sheaffer Balance. Daniel Kirchheimer wrote an excellent article on the litigation titled “Featherweight vs. Heavyweight” (posted here). The case is notable for the information in trial transcripts detailing the development and history of the Sheaffer Balance. 

Here at the blog, the Worth Featherweight Pen Company last made an appearance in “Worth Something” (July 24, 2021: Volume 7, page 282). In that piece, the evidence was presented that Nathaniel Worth, who tried to secretly sell his shares in New Diamond Point Pen Company to Marx Finstone’s Eclipse Pen Company, was the man behind the Worth Featherweight Pen Company. Both were represented by the same attorney, Charles Greenwald.

“One could argue that it’s a coincidence that there were two guys named Worth [Nathaniel and his brother], and a pen company called the ‘Worth Featherweight Pen Company,’” I wrote. “Slimmer still is the possibility that all were in New York City, and that Nathaniel Worth had been recently relieved of his duties at another pen company shortly before this one emerges.

“But could it still be a coincidence now that we know the same New York lawyer was representing both Nathaniel Worth and the Worth Featherweight Pen Company, in two complex cases, both of which would likely consume nearly all of his time? No, I believe this eliminates all reasonable doubt.” 

OK, so now we have Diamond Point, Eclipse, Keystone, Eagle, Blaisdell, and Worth in the mix. Hang in there . . . it sorts itself out.

I took a more significant dive into Sheaffer’s litigation to protect its design patents for the Balance in A Field Guide to Sheaffer’s Pencils (2023). “Worth was an ideal defendant for Sheaffer to attack,” I wrote on page 40, “since it was a small concern with limited resources with which to defend itself. Worth’s conduct was also intentional and flagrant: the company even marketed its pens as the ‘Safer Fountain Pen,’ and one of Sheaffer’s undercover operatives reported that Worth’s president admitted the name was chosen because the name sounded like ‘Sheaffer.’ Predictably, Sheaffer outgunned this tiny adversary, resulting in a decision upholding the validity of Sheaffer’s design patents.”

Once that judgment was secured, Sheaffer set his sights on the Eagle Pencil Company, whose products had been introduced in evidence during the Worth litigation for the proposition that Eagle had been making streamlined writing instruments like the Balance since Walter Sheaffer was in diapers. In this instance, though, Eagle was one of the more blatant of the copycats, offering metal pencils and pens painted in a faux black and pearl, shaped exactly the same as the Balance. A couple examples turned up in Susan Wirth’s belongings, in this tray of “Susie’s Eagles” with which John Martenson parted:

The Balance-like offerings in this tray filled out what I already had in the collection nicely:

The Court was quick to mete out justice against Eagle: the Court issued a preliminary injunction against Eagle as well, in a published decision filed on December 3, 1931 (W.A. Sheaffer Pen Co. v. Eagle Pencil Co., 55 F.2d 420 (S.D.N.Y. 1931)). As a result, Eagle was forced to modify the shape of some of its products and add a disclaimer to the company’s 1931-1932 catalog:

Now let’s take a step back for a second and take a breath. Yes, it makes sense that Sheaffer would first target a weaker opponent to get a favorable precedent set that his Balance patents were valid. Yes, it also makes sense that Eagle would be in Sheaffer’s sights, since Eagle was one of the more blatant copycats.

With the additional insight that Eagle was supplying the Worth Featherweight Pen Company with at least some of the company’s products, it makes even more sense. After all, if Eagle was supplying one competitor with Balance-shaped products, taking down Eagle would knock out both a direct competitor as well as a supplier.

Which got me to thinking . . . in the Field Guide I brought up another competitor who was restrained by the Courts: the Pick Pen Company of Cincinnati, against whom Sheaffer won a preliminary injunction on December 2, 1931 – the day before the injunction was issued against Eagle.

I wrote up the history of the Pick Pen Company in great detail in Volume 7 (see “Nobody’s Luck Is That Band” on May 5, 2021: Volume 7, page 88). Now that we know that Worth might have been targeted by Sheaffer because Worth was a customer of the Eagle Pencil Company, I wonder: does that suggest Eagle actually made this Pick pen?

Maybe . . . it does share the general lines of Eagle products, and Pick didn’t do much with streamlining. It is an interesting hypothesis. With my head about to explode with adding yet another company into this story, I’ll wait to circle back on that point until I have more evidence.

Now to bring this long, complicated story full circle. This all started with a discussion of James Kelley’s Keystone Banker. In those earlier articles I included this image of three combination pens and pencils, all fitted with Gordon’s “fanged” clips:

These clips are marked “Banker,” “Safer,” and “Gordon.” Gordon is easy to explain: the fanged clips were patented by William Gordon of Union, New Jersey. There were three patented versions of the clip (all three patents were discussed in “Always a Crowd Pleaser” on March 17, 2015: Volume 3, page 263). I’ve never seen the earliest version of Gordon’s clip in the flesh, and I’ve only found one example of the third. All of the other examples I have found are the second incarnation, the patent application for which was filed April 3, 1930 and granted as patent number 1,834,151 on December 1, 1931. 

As for the Banker, these combos were produced (not manufactured) by our friend James Kelley. But what of the “Safer?” Was that meant to comfort the public into believing a writing instrument with built-in spikes wouldn’t harm your shirt pocket? Perhaps . . . but I doubt it.

In Daniel Kirchheimer’s “Featherweight v. Heavyweight” article, he discussed how Walter Sheaffer’s undercover detectives had learned that the Worth Featherweight Pen Company sold pens under the name “Safer” – not because they were less dangerous, but because “Safer” sounded a lot like “Sheaffer.” Daniel included this image of a Worth box, which was introduced at evidence during the trial:

I’m not sure how all of this fits together, and the only thing of which I am certain is that James Kelley and Nathaniel Worth both sourced these combination writing instruments with Gordon patent clips from the same supplier. Was that supplier Eagle? Maybe. Were Nathaniel Worth and James Kelley involved in some way other than buying stock from the same supplier? Maybe.

Good journalists, I was taught forty years ago, do not tell you what to think – they tell you what to think about. 

The Key to the Keystone

I strive to make clear the difference between what I know and what I have deduced from what I know. In “The Banker and the Specialty King” I offered proof that James Kelley, the slick self-described “Specialty King,” marketed pens and pencils under the names “Banker,” “New Banker,” and “Keystone Banker.”

I never said that James Kelley was the only one to use these trade names. To the contrary, with a character like James Kelley it is more likely than not that others used the same or similar names, given Kelley’s penchance for “lifting” names when nobody was looking. After all, any claims Kelley himself had to use the name were so shaky that anyone horning in on that territory would have just as much right to do so.

The follow up articles to “The Banker and the Specialty King” were published the following two days in “All the King’s Horsemen, Part One” (July 26, 2021: Volume 7, page 290) and Part Two (July 27, 2021: Volume 7, page 293). Those two articles dragged other lower-quality brands into James Kelley’s orbit, including “Master” (another name lifted from the original Banker Pen Company, which marketed a “Master Pen”), Nassau, Packard, and Keystone. There may be others – in fact, given James Kelley’s antics, there probably were.

My attribution of the “Keystone” name to James Kelley was only in relation to pencils along these lines:

Then there are these, which are marked “Banker” but which were referred to in Kelley’s advertising as the “gothic” or “Keystone Banker.”

No, I did not say that James Kelley was the only person on this big blue marble to call his pens and pencils the “Keystone.” In fact, I noted one puzzling detail in that previous article: the word “Keystone” was registered as a trademark with respect to pens and pencils, but not by James Kelley:

The Blaisdell Pencil Company, by its president A.C. Berolzheimer, had applied for registration of the Keystone mark on October 27, 1921, and it was granted registration as number 153,408 on March 21, 1922. In the registration, Berolzheimer claimed the mark was first used in commerce around January 1, 1911.

Both the mark’s first use and its trademark registration  occurred before James Kelley entered the picture in 1925 or so, so I don’t believe any of Kelley’s activities hastened Blaisdell’s application to register the mark. The ten-year delay in filing the application was more likely the result of the evolving and complicated relationship between Blaisdell and the Eagle Pencil Company, the latter of which was founded and run by the Berolzheimer family.

Blaisdell and Eagle had spatted back and forth over patent infringement claims beginning in the 1890s; in the early teens, Blaisdell was still a separate entity, but as the Keystone trademark shows, the Berolzheimer family controlled Blaisdell by 1921. Blaisdell formally became a subsidiary of the Eagle Pencil Company in the 1930s.

All of this means that by the time James Kelley started selling “Keystone” pens and pencils in the mid-1920s, the Keystone name was already reserved essentially to the Eagle Pencil Company. Did Eagle make James Kelley’s Keystone-marked products? I don’t think so; if anything, they look more like something David Kahn, Inc. might have made (Kahn is better known for its flagship brand, Wearever).

But there’s another bit of evidence on this point that recently surfaced . . . unintentionally.

This fountain pen turned up at one of the shows I attended this year; it is marked “Worth” on the clip:

When I say it provides an “unintentional” bit of evidence, that’s because I bought it for reasons having nothing to do with today’s subject. I bought it because I suspected that it proved the Eagle Pencil Company might have supplied Worth with at least some of its pens, due to its uncanny similarity to other Eagle metal fountain pens:

More on that tomorrow. Suffice to say that when I bought it, it was so cheap that I did not even bother to see if it had a nib in it. But when I did . . . 

While it clearly isn’t “gold filled” to the brim, the Keystone part hit me squarely between the eyes. Blaisdell’s trademark registration for the Keystone name had established that Eagle had at least some rights by representation to the name, but I was unsure whether that was found only on wood pencils or something else – say fountain pens – that might be a bit outside of my normal area of expertise. 

Am I backtracking on my earlier attribution of the use of “Keystone” to James Kelley? No – in fact, James Kelley was exactly the sort of slippery character who had few reservations about appropriating someone else’s name, even without the legal right to do so. I think both Blaisdell (Eagle) and James Kelley were both using the mark, one with and one without the legal authority to do so.

My friend Stan Klemenowicz and I discussed my earlier Keystone article, and he questioned whether an example in his collection, which strongly resembles something branded for Morrison, might suggest that the Keystone was a Morrison brand rather than a James Kelley production.  He posted an article at his blog, “stan’s pens” titled “Kahnstone, Kelleystone, or Keystone?” (posted here) to address other examples, including a few examples that appear to have been made in France.

I don’t disagree that at least some of the examples Stan shared in his article were likely not James Kelley productions – or Eagle’s either, for that matter. One of the most fascinating parts about collecting these things is the connections they establish between manufacturers, producers, and suppliers, and surprising connections turn up all the time. Consider this one:

Stan pointed the online auction for this example after he published his article, and once I saw it I felt the need to buy it. The missing pen might have been useful in providing a more definitive analysis of who was responsible for this one, but the paper on both the pencil and the matching warranty sheet was all I needed for the point I’m making today:

The makers of this “Famous Keystone” had some serious cajones reminding buyers to “Beware of Imitations,” since this looks like nothing made by either Blaisdell or Eagle, the rightful owners of the name. The top, though, is a familiar sight:

When these turn up, they are typically unmarked  – as is this one, other than the fortuitous price band. I’ve only found a few examples marked with a producer’s name:

The two complete examples are marked “E-Z Rite,” one on the cap and the other on the clip:

The third, however, provides another possible, surprising connection:

John Holland? Now wait a minute, my sharp-eyed peanut gallery might say . . . that might be a cap from a Rex Manufacturing Company pencil (you can just make out the “four horsemen” patent dates to the right of the name). Rex is well-known to have supplied pencils to John Holland, so isn’t that just a convenient replacement? Bear with me on that . . . there is sufficient “junk box provenance” with this example to suggest that this cap accompanied this pencil from whomever might have manufactured it and yes, I think that “whomever” might have been Rex.

More on that later, because this web is already sufficiently tangled. The question of the day is this: who made the Keystone? The answer is simple: anybody who thought they could get away with it without being prosecuted by Blaisdell, Eagle, or the newly-minted Federal Trade Commission.

That last sentence, combining the words “Eagle” and “prosecuted,” leads nicely into what I was going to tell you about the Worth Featherweight Pen Company. That story tomorrow.

Worth Something

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Nathaniel S. Worth was in a tight spot after Marx Finstone died on December 22, 1927.  He was working for the Eclipse Pen and Pencil Company.  He had an agreement with Finstone to trade his stock in the New Diamond Point Pen Company for Eclipse stock – but he couldn’t perform his end of the deal because his shares were in the possession of one of New Diamond Point’s other shareholders, Charles Flaum.  He made the unwise decision to confront Marx’ widow, Lillian, about his stock, and Lillian simply fired him.  Exactly when that happened isn’t documented in the Court records, but it was shortly after Finstone’s death and certainly well before affidavits were filed in Worth’s 1929 appeal.  

Nathaniel’s son, James Worth, was also employed at Eclipse, but James was not in the same pickle.  He had possession of his shares and had turned them over to Marx, receiving his Eclipse shares in exchange.  Whether he was also fired by Lillian isn’t documented; in his 1944 testimony during the Diamond Point litigation, he stated that he had been working at the Norwalk Tire & Rubber Company in Connecticut for eleven years, leaving a gap between 1927 and 1933 during which we know nothing about his activities.

Precisely during this gap, between 1928 or 1929 and James’ appearance in Connecticut in 1933, a pen company called “The Worth Featherweight Pen Company” emerged in New York.  This new company quickly ran afoul of Walter Sheaffer in numerous respects, leading to a court case against the company in which Sheaffer alleged violation of Sheaffer’s design patents for the Balance as well as unfair trade practices in adopting the brand name “Safer,” which in combination with the Balance-like shape of its products sound too similar to “Sheaffer” to be coincidental.

Daniel Kirchheimer provides us with a wonderful account of Sheaffer’s litigation with the Worth Featherweight Pen Company in his 2012 article, “Featherweight v. Heavyweight” (the article, last revised in 2017, is still online here, and it also appeared in the winter 2017 issue of The Pennant).   

I had previously thought the name “Worth” might have been used by the company to associate its products with “value,” since the only name associated with the company according to Daniel’s article was Worth Featherweight’s president, Walter E. Bauer.  However, now that we know there were two men named Worth who were in the pen business, one of whom had been summarily fired from Eclipse in 1928 or 1929, I couldn’t help but wonder – is it possible that Nathaniel S. Worth, perhaps with his son James, started a “Worth Featherweight Pen Company” after alienating both Eclipse and New Diamond Point?

Every lead I followed to find some connection between Nathaniel or James Worth with the Worth Featherweight Pen Company was a dead end; in desperation, I went back to pour through Daniel’s article, looking for any detail I could find connecting Nathaniel S. Worth with the Worth Featherweight Pen Company . . . 

And I found it.  

The clincher, plain as day, was right there in Daniel’s article all along – it wasn’t really relevant to the story Daniel was telling, and it was contained in one of the pictures he included in the article, not the text.  

In his article, Daniel tells how Worth Featherweight’s legal team requested several delays during Sheaffer’s case against the company.  It was later revealed those delays were requested for an ulterior purpose, so that Walter Bauer would have time to send out letters to other pen companies requesting their assistance and support.  This letter, signed by Bauer and dated May 15, 1930, was introduced as evidence by Sheaffer to prevent any more delays.

I began to scour the letter looking for any connections with Nathaniel Worth . . . and there it was.  Right in the first line: “You have undoubtedly heard from Mr. Charles Greenwald, our attorney.”

The only way you’d make the connection was if you had just read a few hundred pages of trial testimony in the 1929 Nathaniel Worth litigation.  Since I had just had done so, I remembered that I had just seen that name:

Charles Greenwald was the same attorney who was representing Nathaniel S. Worth in the Marx Finstone/New Diamond Point litigation in 1929.

One could argue that it’s a coincidence that there were two guys named Worth, and a pen company called the “Worth Featherweight Pen Company.”  Slimmer still is the possibility that all were in New York City, and that Nathaniel Worth had been recently relieved of his duties at another pen company shortly before this one emerges.

But could it still be a coincidence now that we know the same New York lawyer was representing both Nathaniel Worth and the Worth Featherweight Pen Company, in two complex cases, both of which would likely consume nearly all of his time?  No, I believe this eliminates all reasonable doubt.  

Nathaniel S. Worth was the man behind the Worth Featherweight Pen Company.  Perhaps he quickly sold out to Walter A. Bauer, or maybe Worth just brought him in to serve as President, preferring himself the more behind-the-scenes roles of board member, secretary, and/or treasurer.

I’ve written about Worth twice, both in articles published in 2017.  The first article concerned a flattop pencil with Worth’s trademarked W and feather on the clip - I theorized that Conklin supplied at least this model to the Worth Featherweight Pen Company (see Volume 5, page 1):

And then there was that second article, about a metal Worth pencil that surfaced just after the first article was published (Volume 5, page 121).  Since the article was written, I’ve found a second, cleaner example:

“I don't have enough information to say this was produced (not made) by the same Worth,” I said . . . “but I do think this one resembles pencils marked Morrison and Eclipse.”

Damn . . . I love it when things come together so nicely.  Four years ago, this was just a random observation, and I didn’t even share a picture to show why Eclipse came to mind:

Given that Nathaniel Worth didn’t come into Max Finstone’s orbit until 1926 adds another wrinkle, because metal pencils were on the whole suffering from a precipitous drop in popularity in the United States in favor of bright colored celluloids by that time.  

I’m not suggesting Eclipse or Worth made either one of these, because throwing Morrison into the mix suggests that all three pencils were supplied by someone else – pencil design and manufacturing is a specialized art, and most pen manufacturers acquired pencils from other manufacturers rather than creating and building their own.  Some went on to develop their own products later, some did not. 

That all these companies were supplied by a jobber is supported by something imprinted on the back of the barrel of that second example of the Worth I found – “Pat. Oct. 10, 22":

The patent date is listed in American Writing Instrument Patents 1799-1910.  It refers to patent number 1,431,510, issued to David Zakim and assigned to the Sterling Metal Novelty Company of New York:

Perhaps Nathaniel Worth and/or his son James were in the pen business before they joined the New Diamond Point Pen Company, and they happened to source pencils from the Sterling Metal Novelty Company, which also supplied Eclipse and Morrison. Perhaps Marx Finstone commemorated the Worths’ entry into the firm with pencils marked with his new business partners’ name, before Finstone died and things went south with them.

There’s one other point Daniel Kirchheimer made in his article that causes me to circle around to something else I’ve written about here before: a combination pen and pencil with Gordon’s “fanged” clip, but marked “Safer” on the clip (Volume 6, page 63).  

The comments I made with regard to these were so offhand that I didn’t even create an index tab for “Safer” at the blog.  In an earlier article about the Gordon (Volume 3, page 265), I commented on this Safer-marked Gordon clip – “‘Safer,’ huh?” I said.  

I was thinking – but didn’t say – that I thought the word “Safer” was a suggestion that the combo was safer to carry in one’s pocket without losing it, but not much comfort for all those Gordon owners out there with ripped shirt pockets.  Of course, as long as these combos are, you’d need a really deep pocket to carry one of these around.

Daniel’s article suggests that “Safer” had a more sinister meaning - a deliberate attempt by the Worth Featherweight Pen Company to sell pens with a name that sounded a lot like “Sheaffer.”  Daniel found where Sheaffer’s legal team introduced in evidence a box so marked, accompanied by a guarantee certificate from the “Safer Service Pen Company” of New York:

According to Daniel, all of this came to a head in the Sheaffer/Worth scuffle in the spring of 1930, and William Gordon applied for his patent for this second (and most common) version of his “fanged” clip on April 3, 1930 – right in the middle of Daniel’s story.

I still can’t say for certain that William Gordon wasn’t just trying to reassure his customers that their shirt pockets would remain intact with fanged clips marked “Safer.”  However, given the timeline and everything else I know now, I’m leaning towards the belief that Nathaniel Worth and Walter Bauer sourced specially marked clips marked Safer from William Gordon – before they were quickly stopped by Sheaffer from offering them to the public.

A Death Most Untimely

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As detailed in yesterday’s article, Marx Finstone’s personal history is a convoluted one.  Maybe the editors of the New York directories just couldn’t get the poor guy’s name right, calling him “Mark Finston” and “Max Finstone” at times.  Then again, maybe Finstone was deliberately adopting aliases; before the unincorporated “Eclipse Fountain Pen Company,” who knows what pen brand names Finstone used?

Was Finstone deliberately trying to throw people off his trail?  Perhaps . . . after Finstone’s sudden death on December 22, 1927, his secret master plan was revealed: to merge The Eclipse Pen and Pencil Company with its biggest competitor, the New Diamond Point Pen Company – without Diamond Point knowing it.

First, for bit of background about the New Diamond Point Pen Company.  The company’s early history spilled out in a lawsuit filed decades later, on August 6, 1943 (Kolber v. Kolber, New York Supreme Court).  Briefs filed in the appeal of that case neatly lay out the ownership of New Diamond Point, beginning in 1921 when Charles Flaum, a wealthy businessman with no experience in the pen business, wound up with 100 percent of the shares in New Diamond Point after his son-in-law passed away.

Flaum was “anxious to find associates who would take a more active part in the business.”  Morris Kolber left the liquor business to become a shareholder, as did Morris Neulander, a milliner, and each of them bought 25 percent of the company’s stock.  Morris Kolber was in charge of manufacturing, and Neulander handled shipping for the company.  

Between 1921 and 1925, Flaum sold another 25 percent of the stock to Nathaniel S. Worth; shortly after, Nathaniel’s son, James V. Worth, joined the firm, and he became an equal owner of New Diamond Point’s shares – as of 1925, the five shareholders (each owning 20 percent) were Flaum, Kolber, Neulander, Nathaniel Worth and James Worth.  The Worths became dissatisfied with New Diamond Point and started looking for other options . . . 

Enter Marx Finstone, owner of all but two share in Eclipse Pen and Pencil Company.  

In 1926, Marx was obsessed with finding a way to merge his Eclipse Pen and Pencil Company with three other New York pen companies:  New Diamond Point, Salz, and J. Harris & Co.  His overtures to New Diamond Point had been flatly refused – the Worths and their 40 percent stock ownership supported the merger, but they were outvoted by the other three shareholders.  The unhappy Worths and Finstone therefore hatched a plan for Finstone to secretly accomplish what New Diamond Point had publicly refused.

The plan went sideways, and in retrospect it would have failed anyway; however, Finstone’s untimely death hastened the lawsuit that was filed in New York Supreme Court, Nathaniel S. Worth v. Charles Flaum.

On December 26, 1926, the Worths and Marx Finstone entered into a contract providing that the Worths would come and work for Eclipse.  Each of them would trade their 80 shares in New Diamond Point for shares in the Eclipse Pen and Pencil Company of equal value – the number of shares was left blank in the contract until the accountants could finish Eclipse’s annual report, which would provide the value of Eclipse stock.  

The parties acknowledged in their agreement that the Diamond Point shares were subject to a shareholder agreement dated February 14, 1924, which required the Worths to give New Diamond Point 60 days’ notice before selling their shares.  New Diamond Point would have the right to repurchase them first.

In January, 1927, Eclipse’s accountants concluded that the 80 shares each of the Worths owned was worth the equivalent of 62 shares of Eclipse common stock and 536 shares of preferred stock.  On June 30, 1927, James handed over his New Diamond Point shares to Finstone, and Finstone issued shares of stock to James Worth as provided in the agreement.  

Nathaniel, though, had a problem.  He didn’t tell Finstone that he had bought his shares in New Diamond Point from Charles Flaum on a installment payment plan, and Flaum was still holding Nathaniel’s shares as collateral until they were paid off.  There was still $2,700.00 due.

Nathaniel claimed – after the litigation started – that at the time the contract was signed, he didn’t say anything to Marx Finstone about his deal with Flaum because he thought he would be able to just walk into Flaum’s office, hand him $2,700.00, get his shares and bring them back to Finstone to trade them for his Eclipse shares.  

Nathaniel was a moron.

The record is unclear whether either of the Worths ever gave notice to New Diamond Point that they were selling their shares, but either way the “secret” infiltration of Marx Finstone into the company could not possibly have been a secret.  The remaining shareholders in New Diamond Point had just voted that they did not want to be in business with Marx Finstone.  

If shortly after that vote the dissenting shareholders gave notice that they were selling their interests, New Diamond Point would know Finstone was trying to sneak in the back door and, with Charles Flaum’s vast resources behind it, New Diamond Point would certainly repurchase the Worths’ shares.

Therefore, it is not surprising that when Nathaniel Worth walked into Charles Flaum’s office with $2,700.00 to pay off the balance due on his New Diamond Point shares, Flaum refused to accept it and refused to turn over Nathaniel’s share certificate. Finstone refused to give Nathaniel any shares in Eclipse until he could produce the share certificate, so Nathaniel gave Finstone $3,000.00 – apparently, the $2,700.00 plus something for interest accrued on the debt – and Nathaniel testified that Finstone was going to go and personally demand the shares from Charles Flaum.

By late 1927, Nathaniel had given Marx Finstone $3,000.00, he didn’t have his New Diamond Point shares, and Finstone had not yet issued him his Eclipse shares.   Right at that critical moment, on December 22, 1927, Marx Finstone suddenly died.  David Klein testified that he was present when Nathaniel confronted Finstone’s widow, Lillian Finstone, and demanded his shares in Eclipse.  In response, Lillian simply fired him.

Without Marx Finstone’s leadership, Eclipse quickly ran into financial trouble and was placed in receivership, while the executors of Finstone’s estate scrambled to pick up the pieces.  By the time Nathaniel Worth filed his lawsuit, all parties were in agreement that shares of stock in Eclipse were essentially worthless.

The lawsuit Nathaniel filed was against Charles Flaum, demanding the return of his shares in New Diamond Point.  Nathaniel claimed he had the right to sue for them pursuant to a part of his agreement with Marx Finstone, which required him to do so in order to keep his dealings with Marx a secret.  On the other hand, lawyers for Finstone’s estate argued that since Nathaniel had already sold all of his interest in New Diamond Point in exchange for the now worthless shares in Eclipse, if anyone had the right to sue Charles Flaum, it was Finstone’s estate.

This entire history survives only because the Court denied Nathaniel’s request to switch lawyers, and Nathaniel appealed that minor procedural ruling.  There’s no written opinion I could find which explains what ultimately happened in Nathaniel’s case – at least, not directly.  

The 1943 litigation between the Kolbers over the ownership of New Diamond Point contains an offhand remark by one of the attorneys which clarified the ultimate outcome:  “Around 1926, as a result of litigation the two Worths sold their shares [in New Diamond Point] to the remaining members of [New Diamond Point] for a total price of $21,221.50, financed in equal shares by the purchasers.”  

All that effort the Worths and Marx Finstone put into their scheme was for naught; predictably, New Diamond Point repurchased the shares of the company rather than allow them to fall into the hands of Finstone’s heirs.  For the Worths, it was somewhat of a happy ending – at least they were compensated for their investment in cash, rather than being forced to exchange it for worthless stock in Eclipse.

Eclipse, for its part, survived its receivership; apparently, once Finstone’s executors sorted out this mess (and likely, many others Finstone left behind), the company was able to recover.  M. David Klein (who was Finstone’s brother in law, as he stated in an affidavit filed in the 1929 appeal) took over leadership of the company, which thrived at least as well as any pen company could during the Depression.

For What It's . . . Worth

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A few months ago, I posted an article concerning a large flattop pencil marked with a W in a square superimposed over a feather, the hallmark for the Worth Featherweight Pen Company (

http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-one-pennant-rejected.html).  It was only because I had just written that article that this one grabbed my attention online:

The clip is marked “Worth,” with a W circled by a wreath above the name:

I’m not prepared to say that this is the same Worth, but I do think this one also has it’s origins in New York.  Unlike the one shown in my earlier Worth article, I don’t believe Conklin had anything at all to do with this one.  If this one bears similarity to anything, it’s to some pencils marked Morrison and Eclipse.

And also to these

These two, marked “Premo” and “Deluxe,” were introduced here five years ago (see http://leadheadpencils.blogspot.com/2012/08/keeping-it-light.html) and, with the exception of a slightly different clip, they are the same as this “Worth,” pattern and all.

I’m noticing a pattern of names associated with value here . . . worth, premo, deluxe.