Here's a couple of links I want to share. You may have already read them, but if you haven't then I thoroughly recommend them to you.
Leigh Reyes. My Life As a Verb - Pen Zero.
What is your type of infection and your pencil zero? I've read this blog for 10 years or so... pity I don't like Disqus.
Cult Pens Blog - Mechanical Pencil Innovation
Mechanical pencil innovation. Surely one of the main reasons why we like them.
Wednesday, August 01, 2018
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5 comments:
It all started with a P207, then a P205 and a P203 six months later. The 'zero' P207 (and P205) disappeared, I was too young and careless, but that one P203 has been with me for 15 years. Still, that P207 was the beginning of all.
However, the infection came from my mother - She bought me that P207 when I said I wanted a mechanical pencil instead of wood pencils for that school year, she said that it had to be a Pentel then because "it lasts forever".
She used a P209 for taking notes at work since the mid '80s and it only died a few years ago - when she replaced it with another standard yellow P209. It was the P200 series durability that made me wonder about mechanical pencils, and the collection would start a few years later.
I have a similar story. My dad gave me my first mechanical pencil in about 1985 and it was a Pentel P205. I still have it in my current collection of almost 200 different Pentel P200 type pencils.
Probably the most similar infection to mine is the "maximum randomization", with the difference that I don't sell my pencils.
I'm not very picky, but this doesn't mean that I'm not selective at all.
I like to buy new pensils regularly, but I have a rather low price limit.
The title of "pencil zero" belongs to an old teal blue "Pentel Click 7" with green eraser that I own since I was a child (way before I started to collect mechanical pencils). Now I know that this is a vintage model of the Pentel Quicker Clicker in 0.7mm. Until a few years ago, when I resurrected this pencil, I thought that 0.7mm was a rarity, but when I went to a stationery store to buy spare leads, I discovered a wide variety of sizes, mechanisms, materials, brands, designs, prices...
From that moment my infection met a rapid escalation!
Regarding mechanical pencil innovations, I couldn't agree more with what Michael wrote in his Cult Pens Blog post. Despite their reliability and simplicity of use, mechanical pencils have pretty sofisticated mechanisms. I find this thing really fascinating, but at the same time pretty hard to explain to people who dont't share my mechanical pencil passion.
Ingenious features like what I found on Delful, Orenz, Zero Shin, DelGuard, Kuru Toga have fed my curiosity over the last years (after all I'm a geek too).
Yes, Michael nailed it. I'm sure others will have differing opinions, but to me the level of innovation and variety in mechanical pencils is far greater than ballpoints, fountain pens, etc.
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