Sanford Archives - Bleistift

More Venezuelan Mongols

Leave a Comment / Pencils, Sanford / 22 January 2015 / Made in Venezuela, Mongol

After I recently received some Venezuelan Mongols Sean told me that you can get them very cheap on eBay.com. I normally prefer hexagonal pencils, but hey, they are Mongols! I didn’t expect to get them that cheap: I got three dozen Venezuelan Mongols, including express delivery to the UK, for $12.94 (~ £8.50; €11.10). Sending them within the UK, using express delivery, would probably have cost nearly as much.

The parcel was stuck in customs for a while and has officially been opened by Her Majesty’s Customs for inspection – I assume that is less of a coincidence and more because Venezuela borders Columbia, which seems to be a big exporter of drugs.

Too bad I haven’t found anyone yet who is selling the other Mongols that are still around: the ones from the Philippines.

…and there’s already more exciting stationery on its way. Shangching is trying to get me a Pentel Orenz ^[1]Should I really spell it all lower case?, which I got to know through Lexikaliker, and I also ordered a Zebra DelGuard, a mechanical pencil that looks a bit like a Kuru Toga, but that is using springs to protect the lead from breaking due to too much pressure. I hope to review the DelGuard very soon after it arrives (which might take a few weeks as it’s coming from Japan).

Price and exchange rates: January 2015

References[+]

References
↑1	Should I really spell it all lower case?

turo.pencil.land

3 Comments / Pencils, Sanford / 8 January 2015 / Made in Venezuela, Mongol, Paper Mate, Turo

Bleistift, or should I say Bleistift’s alternative address, http://pencil.land has its first subdomain: turo.pencil.land

Well, ok, it is actually the second subdomain. For a day or so there was http://penciltalk.pencil.land, a mirror of Pencil Talk – after Pencil Talk went offline I put a mirror up so that the content is still available on the web. I did ask whether that’s ok, but put the mirror up before I got an answer.

It turned out that Stephen, the man behind Pencil Talk, who enriched all our lives with so many exciting pencil posts prefers that there’s no mirror, so at the moment I’m still hoping that Pencil Talk will come back one day in the future and pencil fans are still using archive.org to access his old blog posts.

Turo.pencil.land is the site of a former student of mine who, as a hobby, creates amazing pencil drawings linked to popular culture.

…and that’s not the only pencil link. As he’s originally from Venezuela his drawings (so far) have been created using the Mongol 480, which he says is hugely popular in Venezuela. I got some Mongols from him: the round version (480), which is made in Venezuela. Nice!!!

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Sanford Artgum eraser

3 Comments / Erasers, Sanford / 26 September 2010 / Artgum, Eberhard Faber, eraser, Made in USA, Paper Mate, Paper Mate Non-Stop, Sanford

One of the blog posts I plan to do in the next few days (or weeks) is about my favourite eraser. I have no doubt about which eraser is my absolute favourite, but there are a few other erasers that are very nice to use, too. One of these is the Sanford Design Artgum art eraser/cleaner, model number 73030, an eraser I already mentioned in a previous post that could easily be my favourite if it would smear a little bit less and erase a bit better. Although this last statement did not sound very good, the eraser is not as bad as this sounds. I admit that it will smear first when you start to erase, but if you keep erasing the smeared lead will be removed, as will be any traces of the writings or drawings you tried to erase in the first place. Why do I like it? …because it is very soft and crumbly. From all the erasers I know it is the one with the most comfortable feel to it.

This eraser was originally called the Eberhard Faber Design Artgum eraser/cleaner. Its name changed when Faber-Castell bought EF and it changed again when Sanford took over.

The Artgum eraser is available in two sizes and I bought mine, the bigger one, from Granthams, a local shop that is also selling stationery over the Internet. Their current price is £1.22(~$1.92, ~€1.43), which is a good price for Europe. Manufactum sells them for more than three times this price. On the other hand £1.22 is expensive compared to the price you pay in America. I have seen a pack of two fo these erasers from a US web site for 69¢.

Links:

Dave has a review of the similar looking Boston cube eraser (which does not seem to perform well)
Lexikaliker has a great review of the Sanford Artgum eraser entitled “Gentle Giant” (Google translation of this link)
I mentioned the Paper Mate Non-Stop, seen in the photo, in a previous blog post.

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