The Staedtler Triplus Fineliner Pen Sets come with a nice cardboard insert to hold the pens in place. Our son has Ikea’s Micke desk which has a whiteboard back. Staedtler’s Triplus set insert is held in place on the whiteboard by two magnets.
It’s a great way of storing the Staedtler Triplus pens: they don’t take away desk space but are easily accessible and have a fixed place they can always be put back to.
Staedtler Triplus × IKEA MICKE The Staedtler Triplus Fineliner Pen Sets come with a nice cardboard insert to hold the pens in place. Our son has Ikea’s Micke desk which has a whiteboard back. Staedlet’s Triplus set insert is held in place on the whiteboard by two magnets It’s a great way of storing the Staedtler Triplus pens: they don’t take away desk space but are easily accessible and have a fixed place. #staedtler#ikea#triplus
Another Noris in the Wild. This time from the cover of a single by indie-pop band Von Wegen Lisbeth. I got to know the band because of their song on the Crucchi Gang album and noticed that their latest single features what is unmistakably a Staedtler Noris.
I believe that the use of the cover of this single falls under “fair dealing” as described by the UK Copyright service.
Lidl UK has a few nice Staedtler offers in store again.
You can get a pack of Indonesian Minervas or German eraser-tipped Noris colour pencils, now called ‘Noris erasable’ (great for writing / marking text etc) plus many other items (including jumbos) for £1.99 or 2 for £3.
I get why there is a market for fake luxury pens, but creating fake versions of affordable pens seems rather ridiculous. In this case the pencil being copied costs less than £1. Yes, you could argue that £1 is much more than what you’d pay for a no name pencil …but if you think about how long a pencil lasts (when you use it the way it is supposed to be used [1]i.e. writing or drawing on paper, I mention this because if you use pencils e.g. to mark wood it won’t last very long, so a Lumograph might not be the best choice for that) then I have to say that the Lumograph is excellent value for money. You can enjoy writing with an excellent pencil for weeks or months for much less than what a coffee costs on the high street.
top: real, bottom: fake
Bleistift blog reader Koralatov made me aware that fake Lumographs are being sold on eBay and I couldn’t resist ordering a pack to have a closer look.
The fake Lumographs next to a ‘real product’ in a Staedtler Box
Differences
The box
The fake Lumographs come in a Staedtler Box. In Europe the Lumograph usually not being sold in this box, but, and this was new to me, Staedtler confirmed that in Asia you can actually buy the Lumograph in this box.
Some of the information on the box doesn’t make sense for a graphite pencil. The lead protection that is being mentioned on the box (the triangular red logo you can see on the photo above) is a technology that is being used for coloured pencils, not for graphite pencils, so certainly has no place on Lumograph packaging.
The floppy fake Staedtler box compared to a robust real Staedtler box
The pencils
The wood being used is very(!) different to the one being used for real Lumographs. It is very pale, we’re talking basswood pale or even more pale.
The hardness is only printed on one side of the end of the pencil instead of being printed on all sides. Some pencils don’t have the hardness printed at all and for most pencils the indentation around the hardness is very deep, as if they have been stamped too hard.
top: real, bottom: fake
The fake pencils are being sold as Chinese made factory seconds. Staedtler does produce the Lumograph in Asia, but it is made in Indonesia with German Leads. The real Indonesian Lumograph pencils are marked with “German Lead” instead of “Made in Germany” and use cheaper wood, like Jelutong. They are also sold in other Asian markets, as seen at this link.
top: fake, bottom: real – notice the different wood colour
Suffice to say that these fake Lumographs are very scratchy, even the soft degrees, and are not nice to use at all.
i.e. writing or drawing on paper, I mention this because if you use pencils e.g. to mark wood it won’t last very long, so a Lumograph might not be the best choice for that
