Then… I got the Pelikan Wanderlust box (pictures to follow). It’s a box with Pelikan ink travelling the world. I was supposed to get mine in December, but the box seems to be travelling to some remote islands and I was told it was held up in customs [2]It’s too late now to join Wanderlust, but Justanotherpen started a similar project..
Danske blyanter
Then… I got the Denmark booster pack I won in Rad and Hungry‘s hunt. Nice!
Here in the UK there are several TV shows about buying holiday homes abroad or emigrating. One of those shows is “Wanted Down Under”. The format is usually the same and involves showing how much more people would earn down under and showing what to expect in terms of costs, facilities etc. I’ve never seen a whole episode, but over the years I’ve seen different bits from several episodes and (suspenseful music) they have never talked about the stationery situation down under!
Time to remedy this. Let’s look at the Castell 9000 down under.
The Castell 9000‘s main markings. Top: Germany, Bottom: Indonesia Please enlarge by clicking, so that the differences are more obvious.
For the last three to four years Faber-Castell Australia [1]Their boss is our other favourite Count, Count Andreas Wilhelm Eberhard von Faber-Castell, who has been mentioned previously. has been buying the Castell 9000 pencils from their sister company in Indonesia [2]Made in Bekasi in one of several Faber-Castell plants in Indonesia. Here’s a photo of the impressive entrance.. They said that prior to this they bought them from Germany, but if Faber-Castell Indonesia is out of stock Faber-Castell Australia will request replenishment from Faber-Castell Germany.
The Castell 9000‘s bar codes. Top: Germany, Bottom: Indonesia
In reality this situation seems to be a bit more complicated than that. You might remember Kevin from New South Wales because of his guest review of the Dahle 133 sharpener. Kevin reports that for the last eight to ten years he usually only came across Indonesian Castell 9000 pencils, the exception being some mixed grade tins, which are from Germany.
Sarab from Western Australia also struggles to find the German Castell 9000, which he prefers, and reports that its not easy finding a stationery shop in Europe that will ship small orders internationally. In his experience the differences in grade of the Indonesian Castell 9000 are very subtle or non-existent. In the past he managed to get Bavarian made Castell 9000 pencils in some branches of Jacksons Drawing Supplies, but now they also only stock Indonesian made Castell 9000 pencils.
Only the German Castell 9000 (top) has markings on three sides. The Indonesian Castell 9000 (bottom) only has markings on two sides.
There seem to be so many unused numbers after 9000. I can see that Castell 9000 is an established brand, but I wonder whether life wouldn’t be easier if the Indonesian pencil had another model number – what about 9001? It’s easy to distinguish the different 9000s anyway. In terms of colour and feel the paint of the Indonesian 9000, which doesn’t seem to be water-based, seems to be more similar to the paint used for the Mitsubishi 9800 and less similar to the one used for the Castell 9000 from Stein. The bar code, lead hardness font and print on only two sides of the hexagonal pencil also give the game away anyway…
The ‘town’ of Castell. The Castell 9000 is (indirectly) named after this town, through the Counts of Castell. Nearby, on Schwanberg, you can even find pencil cedars. The first seeds to plant these trees in Bavaria were imported by Lothar von Faber (Faber, 1873, p.44) [3]Faber, 1873. Die Bleistift-Fabrik von A. W. Faber zu Stein bei Nürnberg. Nürnberg : Sebald’sche Buchdruckerei.
I would like to thank Sarab, who brought this issue to my attention, Faber-Castell Australia for further information, Kevin for further information and for the Indonesian Castell 9000 he sent me in October 2011 and Sean for telling me about the book referenced in the third footnote.
Merry Christmas! I hope that over the holidays you’ll find the time to enjoy some of your favourite pens and pencils.
I was lucky enough to get some pencils for Christmas from my wife (including a Lamy plus pencil, which isn’t easy to get in the UK and some less common Staedtler pencils), but I also got two non-pencil items for Christmas: a bottle of Graf von Faber-Castell’s new ink and a Lindauer fountain pen. In Papier Pfeiffer I was told that Faber-Castell is currently only shipping Hazelnut Brown, Stone Grey and Garnet Red – I assume this is only true for Germany though. Shops in other countries seem to stock different ink colours.
You probably read Sean’s and Gunther’s blog posts about the “Faber-Castell since 1761” book, covering Faber-Castell and its history on more than 500 pages [1]using more than 3kg of paper.
Good news if you were thinking of buying this book: Amazon UK is selling it for £38.20 at the moment – quite a bit cheaper than the price you pay in Germany.
Greetings from Germany. When I arrived I here was immediately reminded of stationery: Google Now wanted to show me how to get to M&R and KUM, it still does now after a few days here. Funny algorithms…
Personally, I’m not always keen on neon pencils. I bought a yellow Caran d’Ache 844 pencil from Cult Pens, thinking the colour would look like it does on the web site where you can see a nice yellow. I didn’t realise that it’s actually a fluorescent yellow. I understand that the nature of fluorescent colours makes it difficult to reproduce them on photos, but the yellow on the web site it nothing like the real yellow at all. I really didn’t like the colour, but I also didn’t want to spend the money on the postage to send it back. My wife is now using it.
Faber-Castell is also part of this summer’s neon colour invasion: a modified version of their grip pencil is available in fluorescent colours: the Faber-Castell Sneakers: instead of raised dots you get raised trainers.
I bought the pencils for 99c (~$1.30; 85p) each in our local Müller store. I haven’t seen them anywhere else yet. The orange KUM eraser, not fluorescent, but a nice, bright orange, was €1.09 (~$1.45; 95p). It’s a painted Magnesium sharpener. When I bought these I didn’t realise yet that neon colours are so big this summer, as I hadn’t seen the blog posts from Lexikalier and Pencil Revolution yet.
I wonder whether there’ll be more fluorescent stationery to discover…
