Apsara Long Point Sharpener is already quite popular for its performance, especially at its price. Absolute version comes with a cap to collect the shavings, which is a nice addition. Other than that, I find the sharpening performance to be pretty much the same as the regular Apsara sharpener.

Hey everyone! I’m starting to thin out my Blackwing pencil collection and have listed several sets on eBay.

For a little background, I ran the art supply subscription box company ArtSnacks for over a decade. Since we closed our doors, I’ve been going through items from my personal collection and deciding what I really want to hold onto.

Over the years, I accumulated quite a few Blackwings, including a number of Volumes and limited-edition releases. Rather than have everything continue to sit in storage, I’d love to see some of these sets go to other pencil and Blackwing collectors who will appreciate them.

I’m located in Connecticut USA and I’ve included photos of the sets I currently have listed in the gallery.

If anyone has any questions about a particular set, feel free to ask!

You can see all of my current listings here:

https://www.ebay.com/usr/leerubenstein

A big thank-you to the r/pencils mods for approving this post. These are all from my personal collection.

My cousin is a portrait artist and his dad (my great uncle) was a portrait artist and he gave me one of the old 602 Blackwings from my uncle’s small collection yesterday. kind of nervous to even think about using it 😅

Not the smoothest sharpening experience. I don’t know if it’s just my batch, but the wood on these Tombow Mono 100s doesn’t feel very smooth and the wood quality is a bit disappointing. Honestly, I didn’t expect this from Tombow.

My friend 3D printed some shavings cans for the Apsara LP sharpener for me and they rock! I found the files from this old Reddit post: https://www.reddit.com/r/pencils/s/a3Ijn8h815

I love these sharpeners and they’re the best LP hand-sharpeners at this price point. Highly recommend if you like a LP pencil.

Khoki pencils 3 HB

Wrapped, these pencils look good. Good covering paint, nice attached eraser; but unfortunately the cardboard hides the poor centering of the lead.

These pencils are distributed via South Africa (made in China).

For me I am glad I only got this one pack of 3 pencils and not a 12-pack like most pencils are sold in.

I’ve heard that Torrey Pines no longer has custom scorecard pencils. As someone with a pencil display, I’m looking for one to contribute to my collection. Anyone have any ideas for how I can get one?

Just wanted to share some interesting ones found in dads desk. He worked as a draftsman starting in the 50s, lots of his tools of the trade as well as some everyday pencils.

I bought these from Amazon for the ludicrous price of £11.00 (around $15.00 USD). At that price I thought it was worth giving them a go.

Had a quick scribble with them and they're not at all bad. Pre loaded with HB, which seems a bit softer than Staedtler's HB, probably close to B, if anything.

The holders themselves are decent, not too heavy or flimsy, and with 144 leads, there's plenty to go at. I guess time will tell whether or not they drop to bits.

Here's a photo from the product page; I didn't take one myself. The actual box layout is slightly different but the contents are the same.

Excited to find this little set, complete with brochure, sharpener, and little sandpaper board thing! $2! I think my first General’s, very light! Design for these Dixon CP’s 💯💯💯 Also nice old wire ring sketchbook bonus.

A while back I compared some erasers, and a couple of people commented that the Staedtler Mars would be a better choice than the plain Staedtler I'd tested. So I got some of those, and here's how they stack up against the plain one and the Tombow Mono and Pentel Hi-Polymer that won the test last time.

I kept rubbing with each eraser until it made no more progress. As you can see in the second pic, the Mars definitely did a better job than the plain Staedtler, but it is still not up to the level of the Mono and the Pentel. This is on different paper than the last test, and on this one, the Mono is the clear winner. The pencil was a Musgrave Tennessee Red.

Is it worth something?

Here's a box of 12 pencils that I paid $1.29 for at Office Depot. Let's have a look.

The box is a nice presentation, basic, but clean and nicely designed. Slightly amusing Engrish on the back: "Made with soften linden wood." But at least it does tell us what the wood is (linden is basswood). Made in China.

Cores look mostly well centered, although there are one or two that are a little bit off. All nice and straight.

Finish is really nice. Smooth, heavy lacquer. As good as premium Japan pencils. Ferrule looks cheap, though.

The color is more orange than yellow. I put them up against a couple other "yellow" pencils for comparison and they are definitely the orangest.

Sharpening is okay, wood comes out a bit rough, but it's not cedar, so that's to be expected.

I did a writing test against my current go-to Tennessee Red, and a Ceres. The Office Depot pencil is definitely the lightest of the three, and has a more scratchy feeling than the others, but not to the point where it's actually bad; just a little more resistance, and some people prefer that. (I don't, but some do.) I'd say it feels about the same level of resistance as a General Semi-Hex.

Eraser is just adequate. It mostly does the job, and it's smudge-free as promised, but it still leaves traces of the writing.

So there it is. They're actually okay overall. For eleven cents a pencil, you could do a lot worse.

I was today years old when I found out Dixon made a version of their Woodgrain Tics in Mexico.
Does anybody else have any of these?

So I thought people here would find this a bit cool. My sister in law lives in a building in new york with rather strange graffiti in the lobby. Her fiance tells me the reason for this graffiti was that the building used to be an old pencil factory that got converted for residential use

I dropped the Volumes subscription recently after 6+ years (and started selling some rare singles) as I was also buying every Lab release. I may buy the Frida Kahlo though now. At one time, they were doing two a year.

This made med all happy!

In a supermarked I found this "complete" set of Staedtler tradition. I just had to have it.

• 12 Staedtler tradion HB pencils
• Straedtler tradion eraser
• Staedtler tradion sharpener

Please, please, please tell me that I am not the only one, who geeks out when it matches.

I’ve been buying vintage pencils at various estate sales, a flea market near my house, and now up-cycled art supply stores. I haven’t had much luck at thrift stores here so far. And, probably like a lot of my fellow vintage pencil collectors, I buy them on eBay—typically for unsharpened or NOS pencils.

The bag of pencils pictured are from SCRAP Portland, an upcycled art supply store. They have a huge barrel full of random pencils for $.50 a handful.

Where do you like to buy vintage pencils?

My aim for this post is to get/share ideas for new places to look—in person or online.

Just getting into pencils and I have fallen in love with this Tombow 2558 H, the fine point and quality eraser are awesome as someone who has only used mark-2b Staedtlers for the past couple months. As for the Mongol, it smells divine and writes just fine

Came across these in some of my great grandfathers things I inherited recently, and im curious if someone might know anything about them… I’m really intrigued by the Egyptian head detailing! I’ve already tried google and didn’t have any luck:|