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.
My last CultPens order came with a special freebie that’s just to my taste: a ‘CultPencil’ – no they don’t call it CultPencil, I made that name up.
In recent years CultPens’ freebie has usually been a smile clip (10+ years ago goodies were often pens from Stabilo, Schneider and others), but for now and only while stocks last (and I believe stocks are very limited) CultPens is throwing this pencil in with every order.
I’ll show you the nice goods that led me to receive this surprise freebie another time. Today I just want to let you have a look at this beautiful pencil.
Despite looking very similar to an Impega / Lyreco pencil [1]The Lyreco HB pencil is the only wood cased pencil in my employers stationery cabinet, so I come across it regularly it is actually from from Staedtler’s promotional range.
At the end of the pencil one side spots the CultPens logo while the other side is labelled ‘This is a pencil’.
It is a nice writer, but it is still a promotional pencil, so don’t expect to see quite the same smooth writing experience as with a Mars Lumograph.
Staedtler is of course no stranger to the world of promotional pencils. I have a huge collection of their promotional pencils. Below is the CultPencil (top) with a small selection of promotional pencils (below the CultPencil) made by Staedtler in their British factory in Pontyclun. Notice how the Granada Studios Tour, a film studio tour in Manchester, is labelled for left-handers [2]which reminds me of Staedtler’s more recent left-handed stationery..
You can find out more about Pontyclun and Staedtler UK’s history in this 2011 blog post.
Thank you very much to Michael from CultPens for providing me with more information about the CultPencil.
References[+]
| ↑1 | The Lyreco HB pencil is the only wood cased pencil in my employers stationery cabinet, so I come across it regularly |
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| ↑2 | which reminds me of Staedtler’s more recent left-handed stationery. |
A few weeks ago David from Helping Hands Craft contacted me. He asked me if I want to review any of their products. I wasn’t aware of their shop before he contact me but was quite impressed by their selection of Faber-Castell products. As a review item I picked the Goldfaber pencil set for £4.50. Looking through their Faber-Castell items I was positively surprised to see other unusual items, for example
Back to the less exotic Faber-Castell item I want to write about today: The Goldfaber set contains
The Goldfaber pencils are made in Indonesia, just like the Columbus, its Irish cousin, and the Bonanza, its Arabic [3]The Bonanza used to be more widely available, but seems to be difficult to get outside the Middle East cousin. The pencil set is marked as being Made in Germany, so I was initially surprised and thought Goldfaber production has moved back to Germany, but when I checked with Faber-Castell they confirmed that this is a mistake and that they will fix this in the future. They have also confirmed that the Goldfaber is made in Indonesia. Unfortunately that’s as far as I got. My further request to get my suspicion regarding the wood being used confirmed was not successful.
The Goldfaber 1221 pencil is a nice writer. It is HB but writes darker than a Castell 9000 in B. I am not surprised though – I always found the 9000 to be lighter than similar grades in other pencils. Pearson’s Graphite 2015 confirms this, the Goldfaber HB is listed with a darkness of 12, the Castell 9000 B with a darkness of 8 [4]higher value = darker. The wood being used in the Goldfaber is also very good. For the price you pay the quality is excellent, but it can’t compete with high-end pencils from Faber-Castell or other brands. Out of the four pencils from the set one is slightly bent, two could have a better centred lead and all four don’t have a perfect paintjob. These small shortcomings don’t detract from the positive impression left by the dark graphite and the nice wood, especially not at this price [5]Eraser and sharpener are approximately half the value of the £4.50. There was also a faint smell of paint when the Goldfabers were fresh out of the box, something Faber-Castell’s Castell 9000 with its water-based varnish doesn’t suffer from, but the smell disappeared after a while.
The German-made sharpener, presumably an Eisen 040, does an excellent job, as does my favourite eraser, the Malaysian-made 187120, a dust free / no dust eraser.
Overall, this is a very nice pencil set, especially if you want a nice eraser and want a small sharpener and don’t need it to be a container sharpener.
Just to spell it out, I have not been paid for this blog post or for any other blog posts.
References[+]
| ↑1 | an underrated sharpener brand I have been occasionally mentioning over the last twelve years |
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| ↑2 | find out more in this 2010 blog post |
| ↑3 | The Bonanza used to be more widely available, but seems to be difficult to get outside the Middle East |
| ↑4 | higher value = darker |
| ↑5 | Eraser and sharpener are approximately half the value of the £4.50 |
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.
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 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 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.
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.
Suffice to say that these fake Lumographs are very scratchy, even the soft degrees, and are not nice to use at all.
Since we’re talking about pencils: Here’s a bonus link for you: It’s a Dutch music album called Bleistift from 1981:
https://www.discogs.com/Bleistift-Bleistift/release/1914478 – I wonder how it sounds like. I assume it’ll sound quite different to the Pencil Revolution song.
Today is polling day in the UK – with lots of local elections taking place.
Because of the Covid situation the UK government’s advice is to:
bring your own pen or pencil (there will be clean pencils available at the polling station if you forget to bring your own)
https://www.gov.uk/how-to-vote
