I'm really partial to the ancient hex-barreled 3, 4, and 5 series long-lead twist pencils, and the later transparent twist pencils. I have a couple ... <G>
During the 1960's-70's, inexpensive Scripto mechanical pencils were found in the hands of many of my elementary, middle, and high school classmates. I moved on from them when I went to college, and they kinda went away without my taking any notice. I still have a well-worn Scripto "Yellow Pencil" that works fine, but never gets used. Recently, I ran into this site, Roger Russell's, Scripto Pencil History Page here: http://www.roger-russell.com/scripto2.htm.
This reignited my interest in the Scripto brand, and I was lucky to have a friend with an excellent, unused, P350 MP that he was willing to gift me. Mr. Russell presents much more knowledge on his page than I can offer about these pencils, so I'll just say that the P350 is a tiny, light, well-built little Japanese-made pencil that reminds me of the Zebra F301 MP. They use .5mm lead, and though I have yet to load it, the click mechanism feels very positive.
For a bargain basement pencil, the few I had in elementary school worked well for many years. I wasn't as much into finding/keeping pencils as I am with pens. Most of my student work on pencil is long lost or starting to rub off into oblivion by now.
I've got a couple of Autopoint pencils that are great, plus some old silver pocket pencils that I really don't know much about, except that they aren't really rare.
-- Edited by WriteAway on Friday 12th of July 2013 08:54:55 PM
Your Autopoints are very clean; good, solid models!
Of the silver pencils, the middle one looks like a Cross; look for "AXT" on the nose somewhere. The top one is the oldest of the lot, very Victorian in design.
Thanks for the input on those, Mike. I do like Autopoint stuff, pencils and their pens, of which I have a few. Still American made and good quality and great value.
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