On Buying Pencils (Online)

What I recommend:

Given what you know about pencils —and you should develop that knowledge – look for a variety of pencils, search using specific terms, or use general terms, and item numbers. You never know how someone has chosen to identify their pencils for sale.

Search by brands, and by color, and buy in lots, make offers, and explore pencils in your general area of interest. Develop a general area of interest. I generally only do American pencils. I don’t go looking for German Staedtlers or Japanese Hi-Unis or German Faber-Castells, although I own them and respect their quality. I don’t go looking for artist pencils, although I’m an artist – I know all true artist pencils are going to be good. But I’m good there. Trust me, I don’t need anymore. No matter how broad your specialty, specialize.

Know what you’re bidding on – There’s no getting around it. Unless you grew up around a variety of pencils and you just know your pencils (lucky you), you will have to pay to become familiar with the products out there. You will get burned. That’s okay. Learning costs money.

You have to know the history of pencils. Pick up a book, or two or three. Pick up Petroski’s Pencil book and refer to it when you have a question about what you’re looking at online. Understand that markings on a pencil change over time. The brand by itself is not enough. Brands change hands, manufacturing companies change hands,  factories and countries of manufacture change, quality changes (sometimes it gets better, sometimes worse). Again, be ready to eat some bad purchases. Look at the pictures, read the descriptions. And don’t buy from sellers with a history of poor reviews.

Here’s a formula that I wish I would always use when buying pencils. It can probably be improved upon.

I’ll define some terms:

General use – I’m a user of pencils so I consider how much use I can make of a pencil, even knowing that I will never use more than a fraction of what I have. My general use art pencils range between 2Bs and a 2H. For writing, I can use anything between a 2 and a 3. A number 1 is too soft for writing for me.

Special use – these are your specialty pencils. These are special use because they may not be pencils that you use on a regular basis. For me, these are 3Bs. I’ll use them when I want to get a very raw line and anything between between a 3H and a 5H.

Very limited use – How many yellow pencils can you use. How much are you willing to spend on pencils that you won’t use very much? Maybe you can change these to special use by switching the paper. I didn’t have much use for my Berol made Eagle yellow ochre Verithins until I needed to draw, a lot, on rolls of black paper; I didn’t have much use for my Venus yellows until I started using them alongside other colors. I’ll play around with a 6H.

No use – Don’t count these when making a purchase. I really don’t need a white pencil ( I think). I don’t need pencils with plastic leads for writing on film– these are the filmograph pencils. I can count with two hands how often I’ve used 9Hs, 8Bs, etc.

Use Total Cost: Seller price + taxes + shipping

Use a per pencil cost calculation: Total Cost/count of pencils

In general, I heed the per pencil cost, to keep me grounded. I don’t want to regret my purchases. I’ll pay more for sealed, boxed, or cased (boxes inside of boxes) — cellophane is so awesome — or what is otherwise in new-in-box quality. It’s amazing to me that quality pencils have survived 60, 70 years in exceptional condition. Condition matters. I don’t mind dusty pencils – a good wiping restores them. But a pencil can be damaged. The wood can be split. Poor storage or just normal oxidation can wreck a pencil’s ferule. I hate pencils with used erasers. I don’t mind a few sharpened pencils. I was going to sharpen them anyway. I don’t like them all sharpened, unless they’re sharpened by the manufacturer. I know that Dixon ferules are susceptible to splitting from age and oxidation – the metal is so thin. I don’t hold that against them.

If a pencil has general use appeal – for example, if it’s a pencil that can be used in everyday writing or drawing – then it’s a straight bulk price sliding scale.

The sliding scale:

Sometimes you just want to have a particular pencil, so you’re willing to pay a higher per dollar amount. For me, that’s a dollar a pencil for special situations – like, I really want this Vermilion Green old timey Colorbrite – fine, I’ll pay 15 bucks total for a dozen. You should pay less on a per pencil basis if buying in bulk, though. So, if you’re willing to pay a dollar a pencil per dozen, maybe you should be willing to pay no more than 50 cents per pencil at volumes of 3 dozen; 25 cents at 6 dozen; 15 cents at 10 dozen, 10 cents at 15 dozen. Now, I’ve purchased in bulk single color, single make pencils, because I just had to have them — this is the case with the Venus Postal Reds for which I paid 70 cents per pencil for six dozen. But in general, if what you’re getting is a whole bunch of the same or very similar (all reds) then you should price the pencils down if more doesn’t mean better for you . Consider the quantity and lower what you’re willing to spend for the same type of pencil in bulk. Am I willing to pay 30 cents for all reds at quantities of 200? This is actually something that I’m contemplating and so far I’m saying no. Twenty cents? Sure. Put me down for that.

Cretacolor Nero Medium (#3)

The Nero is an Austrian made, Cretacolor branded,  oil based charcoal pencil. I didn’t know they were oil based until I looked them up, just now…I knew they weren’t graphite, though. A graphite pencil has a very limited value range….a light pencil can only get so dark, regardless of how hard and how much you lay down. Eventually, you develop a graphite shine that will prevent you from laying down any more graphite. You basically have to plan or adapt to the choices you’ve made and a graphite drawing with varying intensities is the result of a suitable range of pencils (light, dark). The Nero is different.

With the same Nero pencil, you can have very dark over very light and many shades in between. I’ve used this to good effect. I can, for example, do a preliminary sketch with more refined layers on top and I can color over the earlier work and get a fuller range of values all from one pencil. Now that I think of it, I was doing the same with the oil based Cretacolor Sanguine 5.6 mm leads. The drawing builds on earlier layers. The Nero pencil is well made and I haven’t had any problems with core breakage like I used to have with charcoal pencils, which means Cretacolor has a good formulation going on. They also sharpen well. Highly recommended.

The American made Dixon Ticonderoga Medium 2 5/10 pencil

I recently acquired a half gross of Dixon Ticonderogas in a medium grade, the 2 5/10. These came in a case of six one-dozen boxes. The case made it extra interesting for me, and so I was willing to go a little further with cost. Ended up costing me 41 dollars, which isn’t bad, considering the cost of good pencils nowadays. The American made Dixons are extra special for me, anyway.

The medium is a harder grade than the more common Soft-No. 2. The harder grade is more appropriate for writing, where the hardness translates into longer sessions in between sharpening. I compared the pencil to all my No. 3s, which are my idea of a writing pencil, and the Dixon medium was softer than any of them. It was very similar in performance to the Ben Franklin 500 Medium.

The overall quality of the medium was consistent with other Dixons – a good pencil, not in the same league as my Berol or Blaisdell made Ben Franklins or Black Warriors. The paint job on the Ticonderogas consists of fewer layers, the grain sometimes breaks through the paint, there’s less luster. Still, a good pencil, just shy of greatness. Everything has a cost. Oh, what might have been.

Finally, I looked at my post for the Dixon and noticed that it was, in fact the Medium that was such a favorite of Roald Dahl.

From Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl by Donald Sturrock

Trial by fire

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to do a lot of drawing on big paper — very big paper. I was drawing on rolls of 48 inch wide colored paper, mostly black.  I made 7 foot tall drawings that I would then trace over onto other sheets and then cut out. Finally, the cut outs were glued to red roll paper that was stapled onto frames. The end products were used for a fund raiser and people loved them. People posed next to them and took pictures.

Of course I waited until the last week to do everything, from constructing the frames to settling on the designs, drawing, cutting them out, and then recreating them after some accidents with a certain dog and spray fixative. In the end, I made six figure drawings and put down a lot of lines.

The time crunch made me work with confidence and efficiency. I got everything together: paper, tape, and I prepped by sharpening dozens of pencils before I began a piece. Once I got started, I didn’t want to have to stop for anything. Well, the hours of drawing were a great test for the supplies I had chosen. I leaned on my tools and here are some results:

The vintage Eagle Verithin in Yellow Ochre (No. 736), of which I have many dozen, performed admirably. The color went down nicely and stood out on the black paper. I now feel vindicated in buying so many of these on eBay. When I had first bought them, I had some buyer’s remorse, wondering what the heck I was going to do with so many yellow pencils. Yellow’s not suited for white paper in general, but the pencils worked nicely on black paper. Random art supplies to the rescue.

The Pentel Hi-Polymer eraser did a good job of sufficiently erasing large areas and not tearing the very thin black paper even while I worked quickly back and forth. When I had to remove the yellow color completely, it did a great job of that, too. Eraser shavings piled on the floor.

I did have one miss, though. I tried using the white, modern Mexican-made Prismacolor and while great for indicating the final (preferred shapes) they were, ultimately, a disappointment. The colored core was not bonded properly to the wood, so the core got pushed out the other end. I wanted to continue using the white, though and fixed the problem by using painters tape on the exit end. I won’t be buying these anymore. Trust me. A real shame. The white was soft and bright on the black, and stood out in stark contrast to the black and rough yellow sketches. These pencils are typically a dollar a piece and are total junk.

In the end, the Verithin once again performed admirably and the Pentel Hi-Polymer eraser earned it’s place on my drawing table. But bye, bye, Mexican-made Prismacolor. Thank goodness for eBay, where old art supplies wait for their final destinies (to show up their modern would be successors). I’ll definitely be looking out for a box of American made white Prismacolors with a bonded white core to wood case — nice concept.

The Mitsubishi Hi-Uni Pencil — The Perfect Pencil?

The Hi-Uni is made by the Mitsubishi Pencil company in Japan– oddly, no relation to the car company — and are the best pencils I’ve ever used. The Hi-Uni is the high-end flagship product — the company offers other lines but Hi-Uni is the most readily available (circa 2014). They can be bought from Amazon, eBay, and Jet Pens. In Japan (again, circa 2014), a dozen Hi-Unis retail for 1,680 yen , which translates into $15.50. In the US, the lowest prices I’ve seen hover around twenty bucks.

Feature of the Hi-Uni:

• sharpen excellently, the bonding between the graphite core and wood is superior, as close to seamless as I’ve ever seen it. There’s no unseemly broken off wood.
• the thick coat of lacquer/paint conceals the grain and cutting of the pencil and withstands scuffing (I keep most of my pencils in cups — and every other once-shiny pencil looks dull, while the Unis keep their shine. I don’t know of another pencil with such a concealing and protective coating
• excellent paint job, stamping and overall finish. Care’s gone into every detail
• aromatic red cedar wood shavings — the color is unique among all the pencils I’ve ever used; the aroma is worth inhaling
• the graphite glides on paper across the full range of degrees — I used up a lot of 2Bs in my drawing journals, so I can appreciate the difference (dark lines, low scratching)
• excellently graded from 10H to 10B. Things go bad with the ridiculously hard and brittle 10H — other than that, no problems

It’s great when a company decides to create something better than it has to be.

According to an eBay seller from Japan, engeika:

“…like all other Japanese people, Mitsubishi Hi-Uni wooden pencil has been our lifelong companions. Back in my junior high school, only elite family kids could afford Uni pencils. It was ranked more expensive than that time’s daily used pencil.”

Every graphite grade is  comparatively smoother than other brands, even taking into account that Japanese pencils run darker than the German pencils, for example. This smoothness in the softer grades (including the 2B),  has a drawback (or maybe feature, if that’s how you see it) and that is that the graphite smudges much easier than other pencils. You could also say it erases better. Some artists will welcome the smudge-ability, but other, perhaps more precision artists may balk at it–or they could learn to adapt to the features of this particular tool.

Best pencils? Best quality? Best consistency? Most beautiful? I think so.

Perfect? Well, there’s no eraser… 😉

Just kidding. These are perfect.