2011 is the year Faber-Castell celebrates its 250 year anniversary (1761 – 2011). Stephen from penciltalk told me about an anniversary set of 6 Castell 9000 pencils that was for sale on eBay. Faber-Castell gave these away at this year’s Paperworld trade fair. Unlike the centennial tins with 12 and 72 pencils, this tin does not contain the normal Castell 9000 pencils you can buy in shops, but Castell 9000 pencils with 1761 – 2011 * 250 years printed on them. They are not available in shops (yet), but according to comments on Faber-Castell’s facebook page Faber-Castell seems to consider producing them for sale. Let’s keep our fingers crossed!
Stabilo celebrates the 40th anniversary of their Boss Highlighters. As part of this anniversary there is a giveaway from Tiger Pens, where you can win Boss mugs, and a game from Stabilo where you can win Boss mugs, USB sticks and other prizes (there are different prizes for different countries).
Staedtler‘s historic pencil construction kit will unfortunately not be available in shops. The good news: you can order these kits directly from Staedtler for € 5 each. You can also get Staedtler’s historic Lumograph tin (100 M12H: € 16.20), the historic Tradition tin (Nr. 110 M12H: € 14.40) and the historic Noris tin (Nr. 120 M12H: € 9.60) directly from Staedtler. All of these special items are only available while stocks last. The historic pencil construction kit is not available yet, but can already be ordered.
Staedtler also managed to get the support of Stephen Wiltshire for their pigment liner. Lexikaliker mentioned him in his report about the Paperworld 2011 and I mentioned him previously in this blog post.
The photo of Stephen Wiltshire using a Staedtler Tradition has been taken from Top Gear Episode 5 of Series 14 and has been used previously in a blog post from March 2010 about the Staedtler tradition. I believe that the use of this image falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.
Thank you for sharing these details, Matthias! Yesterday afternoon I have received an email from Staedtler so I was able to spread the good news about the tins too, albeit considerably later than you 😉 I have learned that the pencilmaker kit will be available at the beginning of the second quarter.
Thank you for all the news and information!
I’m curious, does that ratio of prices for the three Staedtler tins reflect the general pricing for those pencil lines? I understand that the Mars Lumograph 100 is the ‘premier’ product, but I’m not sure why the tradition is valued higher than the Noris. Weren’t the 175th anniversary pencils (Mars/tradition/Noris) in cardboard tubes priced identically?
Thank you for your comments.
Gunther, I am really looking forward to receiving the historic pencil construction kit. Thank you for the update about the release date.
Stephen, I was surprised about the prices, too. Here in the UK the Noris and the Tradition are always cheaper than the Mars, but in some shops they are the same, in some the Noris is cheaper, in some the Tradition is cheaper.. but in any case the Tradition is always way cheaper than the Mars, their prices are never that close.
I am not sure about the prices for the 175th anniversary tubes, I think they might have been similar. I should pay attention if they are still available next time I’m in Germany.
salve come fare x avere il kit dell’anniversario dic ostruzione storica?
Sorry to drag up an old post but re-reading this post got me thinking about trying to acquire the Staedtler Tradition and Lumograph tins noted above. I had no chance with the Noris as they are not sold in Australia. The beauty of purchasing pencil gear in Australia is there is so little competition from fellow buyers, that when a shop gets a product in, it nearly always sits on the shelf for an eternity. This was my luck today when I managed to find a newsagent selling the Tradtion Tins of 12 ‘HB’ discounted to $3.95, I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I didn’t have the same luck with the Lumograph set price wise but finally found a retail art supply store in another city that stocked them. This is only a summary of the real difficulties I had in finding these lovely sets but well worth the chase.
Which tin? The anniversary tin? I’ve never seen it in a shop. If they are available in shops in Australia for these prices then Australia sounds like a stationery paradise.
The 100 M112H Lumograph historic and the Tradition historic M112H as described in your post above.
That’s really great. I wonder why the Tradition tin was reduced, it was only released a few months ago…
>I wonder why the Tradition tin was reduced, it was only released a few months ago…
uninformed seller (newsagent), few buyers… Australians only seem to think abput iphones and ipads.