America Standards

Earlier this year, in Spring, I imported some pencils from the USA.

It won’t come as a surprise that they are painted in yellow/orange and that they are eraser-tipped.

The whole look of these pencils, including the name, America Standards, and the way they are printed makes them look like a ‘big pencil’ that you’d imagine to be available and sold all over the USA…
…but as far as I can tell the company behind the America Standards pencil is a small-ish company that registered a few trademarks and uses them to resells goods made by other manufacturers.

In the case of the America Standards pencils there is a big emphasis on the fact that they are made in Tennessee. I assume they are made by Musgrave, but they might, of course, also be made by Wagner or Moon Products.

I ordered the pack of 24 in a wooden pencil box, which doesn’t currently seem available, but you can still get the pack of 100. Previously there has also been the America Standards Mammoth pencil with a jumbo grip.

Importing into the UK always attracts customs and import duties, but the pencils are beautiful and the wooden case seem really special, so the extra I had to pay seems well worth it.

8 thoughts on “America Standards”

  1. i thought American Standard makes toilet seat…..oh wait, this is American Standards with “s” 😀

  2. Thank you for featuring them. They look nice. I am tempted, but with a box of 100, I have a fear of 99 going unused.

    And they’re not the only slightly mysterious pencil either.

    Also, thank you for the links.

  3. These are lovely. With that red band on the ferrule, they’re reminiscent of the now-discontinued Mirado. (A generic red band, not a registered trademark Red-Band®!)

    It’s very tempting to buy some – but like Stephen, I fear if I bought even two dozen, I’d have 23 never used. I have about 130 U.S.-made Miradoes still to use, let alone all the Japanese and German pencils I have in backstock.

    The box is interesting. What wood is it made of?

    Since these might be made by Musgrave, I thought the box would be of the same construction as the one they use for the Tennessee Red, but it’s not. The Tennessee Red box has a different finger catch.

    A shame more pencils don’t come with the option of buying a few dozen in a wooden box!

  4. Thank you for your comments.

    Matt, my plan was to use them a bit longer before writing a blog post about how they write, but initial impressions are good. They do write how you’d expect an American #2 to write.

    id00092, and no “n” after America. I assume that the name is misleading on purpose…

    Stephen, 100 is a lot unless it is for a company or school. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was a one off production run. The ones in the wooden box and the big diameter ones are sold out, they now wait for the boxes of 100 to sell out and then decide if it sold fast enough to warrant asking the manufacturer to make more – but that’s just speculation on my part.

    Koralatov, yes, I nearly didn’t order them as I have more pencils than I need, but couldn’t resists in the end. I wish I knew what wood the box is made from. I also noticed the finger catch difference. There are also difference in construction. The Musgrave box seems to have two small nails on the slide out side. The America Standards box has width of the wooden piece at the other end halved at the side where it touches the side walls.

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