I just created a Facebook group to share rare Ritepoint pencils and other mechanical pencils. The group is dedicated to exchanging information about all types of mechanical pencils. I set it up so that posts are private to group members and won’t appear on everyone’s timeline! Interestingly, some of my close friends didn’t even know I collect pencils. They discovered a post of mine in another group and playfully teased me about it. It was funny, and they even shared stories about my previous collecting habits, like my fascination with erasers.
I just wonder, why isn’t there another major mechanical pencil forum?
What did collectors and enthusiasts do for the past 2 decades the internet has been around?
There’s also no ballpoint pen one… nowhere to discuss mechanisms. All just fountain pens!
Also, and this is only my suggestion for the sake of debate, not a theory, and it is subject to be wrong rather than right;
I guess because most of mechanical pencils collectors are relatively older, many of them/us have developed back and forth heated conversations when each one was less flexible and less adaptive to accept the dynamic changes in societal norms, which required them to be extra careful not to offend anyone. I have personally witnessed some of these heated relationships, which ended up with many people leave groups managed by certain individuals, and others block others, and so on. The good thing is that my observations consist of a small sample, not large enough to conclude statistical significance.
However, the reason purely behind the page I created is to 1) make conversions private to the group members only, 2) Shed light on Ritepoint pencils and similar brands such as Quick Point, Lipic, and Ozark Pencil Co., 3) Share a lot about the history of advertising specialists from the 1930s & 1940s linked to many collectible pencils that I own, 4) Share some super rare Ritepoint pencils that I own, and finally, 5) Share some of my research on the Lipic family business that started in St. Louis during the Progressive Era, expanded during the Roaring Twenties, and surprisingly, skyrocketed during the Great Depression and WWII (due to very specific reasons highlighted in my research).
