Does anyone know about this set?
It was my dads. Im not sure if the NIjI was the pencil that came with the set originally.
I’ve seen similar on eBay but no mention of when it was manufactured
Does anyone know about this set?
It was my dads. Im not sure if the NIjI was the pencil that came with the set originally.
I’ve seen similar on eBay but no mention of when it was manufactured
Interesting! HELIX is a household name in Singapore where the tin box of instruments was a required purchase for students entering middle school. Those never included any MPs for decades. Then in the last 5 years, after being acquired by MAPED, they started bundling an OEM Zebra Drafix 300 in a clear case. Was tempted but didn’t scratch that itch.
FWIW, that NIJI branded pencil reminds me of a similar one by Raymay / Reimei Fujii.
Updated with a quick shot. It was branded for Spalding…
Scripto has a ubiquitous variant of this pencil, as does Zebra.
This set is probably assembled using different sources: notice that the yellow sharpener is a M+R (Möbius & Ruppert, I think) tiny lead pointer, and I’m sure that stuff is produced by a completely different company from Germany, selling almost exclusively sharpeners, both for office/school and make-up purposes — M+R is as well a wholesale company, hence the secondary market applies their own brand tags.
The lead container reads “ATLAS”, possibly yet another supplier. “Made in Italy” should rather be “Assembled in Italy” (if it ever was assembled here, which I doubt).
The pair of compasses and the whole set look similar to other items alike floating around the Italian (European?) market a few decades ago, e.g. INCA compasses; my family used to have one box like this, bought “just in case”, but actually never used. Mine dated probably between the 70’s and the 80’s, yours look a bit more recent — 80’s–90’s perchance? — given the transparent plastic lid.
Unfortunately, apart from the sentimental value, the build quality does not look as sharp and robust (no hard feelings here, I’m just used to other brands and to a completely different level of sturdiness, precision, and mechanical exactness), but I’m sure it served well its intended purpose, as did the pencil.
This is an old Staedtler geometry set, “GEOSET 559 81C” from maybe about year 2000? Note the seemingly similar MP. My MP is unbranded despite the Staedtler name on the set.
The original compass from this set appears to be lost. The set is of generally piss-poor quality. Why I kept this is a mystery.
This pencil looks like a Sakura Slide Sharp NS-500BP.