Quite a Bit North of the Mason-Dixon Line

I stumbled across this one at the Chicago Show at Bob Everett’s table.  When I picked it up, I was sure I knew what it was, but again I was reminded that I won’t learn anything new if I assume I know what something is:

That brown marbled plastic with white streaks in it is very distinctive, and that’s what had me convinced I was looking at an Eagle.  Here it is, in between an Eagle and a Belmont:

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.

Establishing a Connection

Sometimes it’s kind of spooky how pieces of this giant puzzle just fall into place.   Not very long ago, I wrote an article on the “Never Dull” pencils, which appear on pencils marked Eclipse, Albert Howard and the “Rexhold.”   Here’s an example of the Eclipse, in gold fill, next to the sterling Rexhold:

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.

Alligators and Snakes and . . . Karungs, Oh My

Eversharp did some really, really weird things towards the end of its forty-year run.  Between around 1950 and 1953, the company made pencils wrapped in . . . really, really weird things.  On page 78 of The Catalogue, you’ll find this picture of the alligator and snakeskin pencils the company made:

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.

Presto! A Revelation!

On the last day of the DC show, Robert Speerbrecher visited my table with a stack of slotter boxes he’d acquired from the collection of Bert Heiserman, the proprietor of Pen Haven who passed away a couple of months ago.  Was I interested in anything in there, he asked?  Among a few other things (more on those later), I saw this one and I had to admit that yes, I was:

The mechanism is a cap-actuated repeater mechanism – interesting, since it’s also a ringtop, so you have to push down on the ring to advance the lead.  The barrel has some intricate machining:

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.

Believe It Or Not

Joe Nemecek called me excitedly a few weeks ago to tell me he’d finally managed to acquire a “Ripley Vacumatic.”   It would have been easier at the time for me to share his excitement if I had any idea what a “Ripley Vacumatic” was, but now that I’ve learned a little about them I’ve got to admit these are really neat.  At the DC show last weekend, Joe and I had a little time on Sunday to set up my lightbox and take a few shots:

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.

The Bug

Early metal Redipoint pencils, made by Brown & Bigelow of St. Paul, Minnesota, are like Sheaffer pencils – they are so good that they are easy to take for granted.  I have a couple dozen of them laying about, most of which came to me because they were included with the pencil I was really trying to buy.  While I haven’t gone through them to start categorizing them in detail – yet – they check in but they don’t check out because I appreciate how well they work.

At the Raleigh Show, however, this one caught my eye and I bought it on purpose:

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.

A Few Good Pencils

I’ve picked up a couple tidbits of information concerning Eversharp-made Gold Bonds.  Gold Bond was a Montgomery Ward store brand, and over the years they were made by National Pen Products, then by Wahl-Eversharp , then by Parker.  When I last visited the topic, the family portrait looked like this:

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.