Discovered in our Scout group’s hut, this American-made Dixon Trimline not only made it into Europe, it also managed to survive several decades hidden between other pencils and kept in pristine condition.
Notice the slim and elegant font and the blind-stamped U.S.A., left of the writing.
A smidge of the beautiful orange paints seems to have made it’s way into some of the knurling on the ferrule.
The last photo ended up a bit blurry, but if you are using a computer to read this then please have a closer look at this pencil by clicking on the (other) photos to admire this pencil’s details.
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.
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.
Smile clip (green) and CultPencil (blue yellow)
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.
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
the Faber-Castell’s erasing knife. In the past I couldn’t find this one anywhere in the UK, so Gunther sent me one from Germany,
Back to the less exotic Faber-Castell item I want to write about today: The Goldfaber set contains
4 Goldfaber HB pencils,
a sharpener (presumably from Eisen [1]an underrated sharpener brand I have been occasionally mentioning over the last twelve years),
and the big version of my favourite eraser [2]find out more in this 2010 blog post.
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.
Goldfaber 1221
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.
Sharpener and eraser
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.
A video with an overview
Conclusion
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.
