One warm spring afternoon in 1981, on the short walk home from the bus stop after school, I noticed something laying on the sidewalk: a black and white mechanical pencil marked "Sheaffer's" on the clip. It was my first mechanical pencil, and that little Sheaffer became my daily companion over the next few years as I filled journals, did my homework, and idly doodled my way through the rest of my schooling. I still have it today.
After 1 started collecting pencils in 1999 or so, my little hoard of Sheaffer pencils expanded. At first, I "fished with hand grenades:" Sheaffers would arrive in lots that included other pencils that interested me, and I would compare every new arrival to all of the others that resided in a shoebox. If a Sheaffer pencil that came in differed in any respect from what I had, I would hold onto it. Some day, I thought, I'll get them organized.
By the time I settled down to write The Catalogue of American Pencils in 2011, 1 had a shoebox full of Sheaffer pencils. With the help of Matt McColm, 1 sorted them into groups in order to present what I had accumulated in some semblance of order. The result was somewhat satisfying but by no means complete, and after the book was finished, back they went into that shoebox.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der April 2023-Ausgabe von PEN WORLD.
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