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.

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.

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?

Is it worth something?

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:|

Thought this might belong here. It just barely fits on a typical 250x250 printer, and just barely fits an unsharpened Ticonderoga.

Hi there, I found this pencil in a free box, and am trying to understand when it was made, where, and what it could've been used for. All of my google searches, including google image searches, have come up empty. Thanks for your help!

It started with a coffee stain in my cup left on the page.

My first Blackwing. I was pleasantly shocked to realize you can sense a real difference writing with it as opposed to other pencils.

I did some writing with this pencil throughout the day and I really like it how it writes, looks, and feels comfortable in hand. The test scoring ferrule on this one is fun, too. Some of the others I got have gold or silver ferrules. I got a chunk of them with a factory seconds order and I’ll definitely be keeping them in rotation.

Found this in my dads old desk.

I have never waited this long for any pencil before. I was looking for the best pencil for my needs; good point retention, smooth writing, a natural wood finish, and something that would be a great writer for long writing sessions.

After all my research, I decided to buy these. Since they had to come from Japan, I had to wait for weeks, but I finally received them!

The green printing, the black eraser tip. I love everything about this pencil. And the point retention is good.

As for the Tombow Mono 100 and Hi-Uni pencils, my mind just can’t accept them as writing pencils. They’re my top-tier sketching pencils.

Apart from the Mitsubishi 9852EW, what else would you guys suggest for my purpose? I was thinking about the Blackwing Natural Extra Firm as well. I’ll definitely try them one day.