Hello there!
Nice to e-meet all of you. Been lurking here for long enough that I figured I’d better introduce myself.
I’ve been irrationally interested in mechanical pencils since childhood. In grade school, the Pentel Twist Erase III was the most interesting thing available in the office supply stores near me in the US.
I remember reading Dave’s Mechanical Pencils’ post on the Twist Erase and being absolutely bewildered that someone could think it was anything short of the greatest writing utensil ever created.
So, naturally I chugged through Dave’s other content to get to the bottom of just what pencils could possibly be more pleasing than that Pentel. I read about plenty of fun pencils, and also learned that that almost none of them were available in the US without a credit card to order them with - so I took a hiatus from pencils.
Fast-forward two decades and I’ve got the credit card, a gaping hole in my bank account, and more mechanical pencils than I know what to do with. Life is good.
I opened the can of serious collecting in what I imagine is a pretty common way - tracing the lineage of the Rotring 600 back through the Rapidomatic and it’s other early Koh-I-Noor leadholder predecessors. Nowadays I sniff around for really anything that has an interesting historical or technical place in the pencil pantheon.
I work in the energy/environmental field and am a nerd for all things adjacent to the natural resource industries. Pencils & pens that have branding or promotional ties to metals & mining companies or similar industries are a particularly niche interest of mine - feel free to reach out via DM if there’s something with ugly corporate branding that you could do without in your collection!
good to have you around!