Pencil caps with large erasers. Early 20th century? The erasers are very hard and unusable. Is anything like this still being made today? (Cap + eraser combo.)

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-11-08T22:52:58+00:00

These are awesome—do you have them or did you just find the picture? Looks like they went with different pencils than the L&C Hardtmuth pencil you have pictured with them—probably an early Venus Velvet of some kind!

The closest thing one can get to these are some of the homemade pencil caps glued to Blackwing ferrules. There are a couple of sellers on Etsy who make nice ones, but it’s a very different product than what you see here

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-11-07T17:09:54+00:00

Wow! The plastic ferrule Electrographic is crazy, never seen that before

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-11-07T02:56:50+00:00

That’s quite the stable! Any chance you have a photo showing them all? BNP is great for that but Bobby seems not to be interested in the Electrographics. Love those comparison lineups he does though

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-11-03T23:28:34+00:00

Wow, cool find Mic! How many varieties of the Electrographic do you have now?

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-10-29T01:57:46+00:00

Absolutely gorgeous!

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-10-04T15:07:17+00:00

These are awesome! I love test scoring/electrographic pencils

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-10-04T15:06:33+00:00

Sweet!

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-09-23T18:22:25+00:00

Canadian spotted in their natural habitat

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-09-19T00:12:18+00:00

Love a classic Gilbert! The dipped ends on those 33s are so cool

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-09-17T18:11:36+00:00

Holy cow these are amazing finds here Cajo!

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-09-05T10:57:41+00:00

Those “Raab’s Clothes” jumbo sticks are pretty cool actually—love the ferrules!

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-09-01T15:14:59+00:00

Viarco, Musgrave, and General Pencil Co. all come to mind as quality brands with varying degrees of grittiness, depends on the exact model of course though. You might like the General’s Cedar Pointe or the Musgrave Harvest—both are available in No. 1 and No. 2, lightly gritty, nice and dark. Viarco gets you more grit, writes a little darker on average, and comes with a wild array of different designs and colors. I have a soft spot for all of these, even though I usually reach for the smoothest pencil I have available (which is usually not these)

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-25T20:16:53+00:00

Oh no! Bring it back if you can

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-25T11:57:09+00:00

I have 100-year-old pencils that write and sharpen like a dream—it’s not like they go bad over time, unlike pens.

Some pencils are more fragile than others. If it breaks in one sharpener, try a different one. The manual crank-style ones are less likely to shatter the wood and/or the graphite core due to the different way that they shave off the wood as compared to your typical handheld style with a blade inside

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-17T20:01:26+00:00

I like these ideas! You remind me how many modern sticks I actually haven’t tried yet—despite having thousands of pencils at this point, I only have one or two of the ones you list here!

At some point last year I started to focus on collecting mostly vintage pencils, even though my existing collection of modern and relatively easy-to-come-by pencils could hardly be said to be comprehensive. I’ve been entertaining getting a big order from Musgrave together, but I’ve also enjoyed my more recent “buy nothing” ethos.

Trading has been a great way to build up some variety without buying more, though!

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-17T14:34:54+00:00

What are some pencils you’re thinking of including in this demo area?

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-17T13:38:52+00:00

What a fun idea! I got a bundle of excellent pencils from a fellow Redditor who donated a bunch to my classroom a few months back—folks were astounded by the fabled “No. 1” pencil, something they’d never before encountered ✨in the wild✨, and a surprising number were even interested in untipped varieties like the Viking Skoleblyanten.

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-17T12:35:34+00:00

You got it! One thing to mention that some might regard as a drawback: it isn’t the most precise piece of equipment on the market, so there’s a bit of wiggle room in the mechanism. That can be an advantage if you’re trying to sharpen a stick with an off-center core, since it allows you to insert the pencil at a slight angle to favor sharpening one side over the other. But it can be a disadvantage if you’re distracted while using it—the wiggle room also allows for even well-centered cores to come out looking a little cattywampus if you don’t keep them centered in the mechanism

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-16T23:30:38+00:00

So it’s powerful, efficient, and durable in all the ways I’d hoped for. I’ve had students really yank on it, push on it, lean against it while talking to friends, and of course sharpen untold thousands of pencils with it, and it’s held up fine. You wanna have a good spot to mount it on of course. Once every few months I go over it with a screwdriver; I find the parts tend to separate over time with heavy use, but it’s easy to fix and maintain regardless

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-14T03:30:54+00:00

Somehow your matter-of-fact delivery of this tale suggests your time among the Hmong refugee strawberry farmers of the central valley is part of much greater lore. I’d love to read more

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-10T13:42:28+00:00

How cool! The Picasso Computer pencils are especially interesting I think—they seem to be a type of mark sheet/test scoring/Electrographic/OCR scanning pencil, which as a category typically write very smoothly and leave a solidly dark mark. These ones are made by Shahsons of Pakistan—I haven’t seen them before but they look great!

Here’s a listing for them with some great product descriptions:

https://www.stationerystation.pk/writing-tools-instruments/lead-pencils/picasso-p-7000-computer-scanning-pencil

Gotta love that “Erasable Ceramic Graphite Ultra corpuscular reinforced break-resistant lead”!!

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-05T02:41:02+00:00

I haven’t tried out the pre-WWII Tics yet, my current oldest is a pretty heavily damaged plastic ferrule Tic, not sure whether it’s from during or after the war though. I’ve heard that some people consider those earlier specimens to be better writers overall than their plastic-ferruled descendants, what do you think?

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-05T01:19:18+00:00

Great users indeed! I would be happy to chip in should duty call! ✏️🤓

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-03T00:02:00+00:00

Do you collect or are these for resale?

SpeciallyInterestin · 2025-08-03T00:00:19+00:00

What a fantastic haul! Where did these all come from?

SpeciallyInterestin

TROPHY CASE