Steelreath Was No Hack!

At first, I thought there was a typo in Dan Linn’s email, which he titled "An American Haack?" Here’s the pencil he was talking about:

The imprint on the barrel reads "Patented June 17, 1919 / Steelreath Pencil Co. Inc. / Basic, Virginia U.S.A."

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.

Soooooooo Close!

NOTE:  This article contains some errors.  See "Back To The Drawing Board" posted July 5, 2013.

When I wrote my recent article on what the first Ever Sharps looked like, just a couple weeks ago, I honestly wasn’t writing it thinking that anyone out there was going to email my right back and say "oh yeah, I’ve got one right here." I’m patient. I assumed that it might be years from now that someone would write me an email that started with "I was researching this pencil I have, and I found your article on the Internet . . . "

I really wasn’t expecting someone to email me within days with something sooooooo close (I’d add a few more "o"s, but you get the picture) to what it is that we are hunting for. John Coleman, who like many of us pencil collectors has collected in a relative vacuum of information, stumbled across my blog here and has been sending me some pictures of things he’s had laying about for awhile, one of which was this:

It’s obviously an Eversharp mechanism, but to be more correct, it’s a pre-Eversharp mechanism. Note the imprint:

"EXTRA LEADS BLACK 25c, INDELIBLE 35c/
KEERAN & CO. BLOOMINGTON, ILL."

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.

Was There a "Finestpointe?"

I really took an irresponsible chance on this one:

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.

Waterman Checking Pencils in Raleigh

George Rimakis had a few pencils in tow that I didn’t bring home with me, but we did spend some time taking pictures of them in my mobile studio:

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.

Never A Dull Moment

While I was researching Byers and Hayes for yesterday’s article, I found a reference in a couple places suggesting that the firm made "Never-Dull" pencil cases, a fact which surprised me as I had always known the "Never-Dull" as Eclipse’s early metal pencils:

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.

From the Mailbag: Byers and Hayes

Sue Hershey found a really nice pencil, and she sent me a few pictures to ask what I knew about it:

And what she found was that I knew absolutely nothing about it. At the top of the pencil, she’d found a cryptic imprint. Would that help?

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.

From the Mailbag: Roseville Novelty Works

Martha Nichols sent me an email with some pictures of an unusual pencil:

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.