“It was a dark and stormy night…”
Actually no, it was not; more likely, it was a lazy afternoon, a few years ago — many or few moons, it often depends on the point of view of the Reader, but you are more than welcome to picture a much younger Leonov on the scene, with a much smoother grin on the mask in the avatar picture, and with a shinier armour on which the battlefield of life had not put yet all the marks waiting ahead.
My collection was proliferating on a small desk without a plan, its growth driven mostly by my love for vintage drafting instruments, and I was desperately milking the internet for a sounder knowledge base to calibrate my decisions about purchasing or letting go any of the countless items available on the Bay at the time. Splinters of model names were slowly crossing the language barrier between Europe and Asia (rarely helped by my limited command of the english language), and more than a few veterans had already established a regular showcase of marvels on their Twitter accounts. The age of the blogs had far past its sunset, but there were still traces around, hidden in the crevices of the already-exploded social networks.
I had come into contact with many cool pieces of history by browsing around (knew about the Micromatics, the Alpha Matics, the rOtrings 700’s, the cool Pentel’s and the vintage Pilot’s, the sleek Uchida’s), and I had managed to score what I believed were some good bargains on key specimens (the Mechanica in 0.3, the TK-Matic L, a new-version Automac, maybe a Uchida Drawing Sharp D), but I felt the arena was much bigger, and I needed more information, especially since the beloved leadholder-dot-com website was tanking and vanishing from the web.
I started roaming the shores of Reddit, and one day I asked the search engines the stupidest question possible: “What are the five best mechanical pencils ever?” I was not really expecting an answer, just the usual list of threads with majestic photo albums of collections; that time, however, the answer was somewhat different.
Someone had recently written a short but poignant piece about the-best-of-the-best-of-the-best five or six pieces any collector needed to be aware of. I took a dive into that post, and my perspective shifted.
Maybe it was the style of the post: the author seemed not to be offering his educated opinion on the matter (like the vast majority of blog posts I was consuming), but rather he seemed to be stating the facts, from a technically impeccable and morally neutral standpoint. There was no room for negotiation in his top list, as in a mental reminder to the self, and in a sense there were no openings for debate. One could agree or disagree with the list, but it was very hard to find angles to attack that position, as it exuded long experience, masterful command of the technicalities, and utter knowledge of the catalogues and histories.
The six gems mentioned in that post (Pilot H-5005 Hi-Mecha, MitsuBishi Hi-Uni 5050 FF-Matic UniCarbo, Pilot Automac E500, Pentel QX PN-305, Sakura AT-Matic ATS-3000, Porsche Design Classic Sterling Silver) were almost unobtainable unicorns already at the time: impossibly high price points, painful scarcity on the market, fierce competition between deep-pocket buyers, even high risks to be scammed, and yet that reading triggered something. I started dreaming big — or rather, I started dreaming bigger.
I started saying to myself: one day, maybe, who knows.
In the meantime, I had a series of Alpha Matic’s to chase (I think I had an “anthrazit” at the time, but the “weinrot” and the “azurblau/marine” had already been on my wishlist for a while), and many lower-level expendable pieces to discover in the dusty drawers of some back shelf of old Italian shops about to close forever. The grinding had to go on for a long time before even imagining the possibility of seeing one of the crown jewels chosen by that Reddit user. But those six pencils, way above and beyond the famed “Toxic Five” many were talking about, had to be something else entirely, and they deserved to be kept in the list of most-wanted specimens, even only for the sake of the game.
And what a game it was indeed! It took time, money, luck, effort, and help from friends and contacts (a huge amount of each one of the above concepts, in different proportions for different occasions), but these rare oddities proved to be ever so slightly less impossible to find, and sometimes a smidge less impossible to purchase. Even the Sakura, a fleeting ghost I had only spotted from afar, with its “most unique auto-feed mechanism ever”, somehow allowed me to come close enough to attempt a quick move to make it mine.
To get the E500 I had to leave my family’s Christmas celebrations early, to fight a bid war in the late evening (blessed be the auctions with inconvenient closing time); I seized the 5050 when an European seller showed it on Ebay (pricey, but worthy every cent); the QX was the centerpiece of a large trade with one of the Knockos last year [I won’t name names here, but allow me to say he’s the beaked superhero of MP’s 
]; and then again, here on Knockology, a year later, the same conjuror of opportunities causally mentions that an AT-Matic might be available for a reasonable figure…
After chasing them for so much time, and after comparing them to the plethora of other fabulous specimens I have had the pleasure of amassing throughout these years, I can finally confirm that the Reddit (super-)user was right: those models are the best and the beasts of the whole set — each one is uniquely special, uniquely quirky and uniquely amazing to handle and use — and while they demand a careful management of their own aura in order not to diminish it, it is very hard to find anything better — still, I have my Frankenpencil built out of a lightly modified and refitted AlphaMatic which I love above all the others, and the leadholder category makes of course for yet another story, as it does the sub-category of “longitudinally-challenged” MP’s.
I also found out, in a moment of inspiration, that four sixth (or two thirds, as someone with better understanding of fractions would put the matter) of the top pieces in that list do have a form of protective cap, to secure the delicate mechanisms their tips can offer, and those caps have reconvened here for a proud group picture.
The highest-end capless MP is the one considered the best one, the Pilot H-5005, which is so excellent that it can dispense of the cap itself (the double knock mechanism compensates effectively the lack of a detachable protection). I know very little about the sterling-silver PD Classic, as precious metals are not my cup of tea in a pencil, but perhaps a cap is there as well — or it is not, who am I to know?
So… what now? Is the collection over because a much older, poorer, and beaten-up Leonov has somewhat come as close to the top of the pencil mountain as he could possibly imagine? I do not think so. Quite the opposite, indeed: maybe it is time to streamline the collection, focus on less “mainstream” pieces, and explore the depths and widths of the arena from yet another angle (did anybody say “Technopress”?). For every chapter coming to an end, a new one begins — perhaps, with a humble plastic-y model carrying a weird feature, or a strange set of body proportions.
And then, of course, there is the H-5005. That one demands the big bucks for sure (or an even stronger moment of luck). One day, maybe, who knows. Perhaps, it is time to start dreaming even bigger — it comes at no additional cost, right?
Many, many years later, this is still one of the very few games I really love to play.
PS: This piece might feel like the usual self-aggrandising delusion of a very lucky person who took some very poor economic decisions in an age of strife, and I cannot deny that part of it contains an amount of self-celebration; in the end, I have devoted a lot of my energy to this hobby so far, and it is an aspect of my life I am proud of. Also, I have crossed that moment in one person’s story when reaching a milestone never deserves any crumble of public acknowledgment, and I think this is the right place to celebrate such kind of achievement.
Still, at the core of this entire longform lies an enormous, implicit, heartfelt thank-you note to the world-wide community of people who made it possible for me to study, learn, purchase and exchange all of my beloved pencils. From the great collector who happened to be the Reddit user behind that list, to the aficionados working late at night to upload pictures, scan catalogues, and pour encyclopaedic knowledge on the web, to the hidden masters of the craft keeping insane collections hidden from the public view, only for a brief fraction of those to percolate through mailing lists and private conversations, to the remote acquaintances and friends helping me get pieces far beyond my reach, to even the “frenemies” grabbing that missing object right before the moment I could click on the “buy-it-now” button.
This is a very solitary endeavour, and yet it is, in a sense, a very social aspect of my life, shared with all of you in front of a computer screen, with whom one day I may trade or discuss about these tiny, impermanent writing instruments full of magic tricks and love.
In the mists of these perilous times, and in the waves of this tumultuous tempest, I look at the caps of my beloved pencils, and I feel a bit less alone, a bit more relieved, a bit more protected myself, even a bit happier. It is a pleasure, and an honour, to share this feeling with you here.
As the Founder often says: knock on! 