From left to right:
Gold Ring
Shine
Star G
Royal
Royal D
Royal L
88 Gold
Eros
Gold D
Robin 2500 H
Gold II 5000
Silver II
Over the last year, I’ve accumulated quite a few Korea Pilot gold executive style pencils. Back in their heyday, they applied a fairly wide variety of finishings to their higher-end offerings. I especially like the various clip styles they decided to use.
What further surprises me is that, given some Korean brand’s reputations from that era of being a little lower quality than their Japanese peers, Korea Pilot’s manufacturing prowess shines through. I’m not sure if any of these are actually gold plated, but the plating has stood the test of time on all of them.
Unfortunately, I don’t have enough knowledge about release dates for most of these, but I think it’s safe to say that most came from the 80s to 90s. There aren’t any catalogs out there that I know of, but if we were ever to get a hold of any, then the significant differences in seals and tags would surely allow us to chronologically organize them better.
My best guess is that the mid-shaft stickered ones are the oldest. The circle-stickered ones or the square-stickered ones might be next and the plastic-tagged ones would be the most recent. The square-stickered ones could be for export, as I think those were acquired from Thailand.
Does anyone here have any executive Korea Pilot models they’d like to share? I’m fairly certain there are quite a few more models out there.
Actually how’s the stationery scene like in South Korea? I only know it gets some of the coolest limited edition releases, but how is it like in general, apart from big enthusiasts and collectors
I think it’s pretty big. I’m more of a collector/enthusiast myself, so I can only speak to that aspect of the scene. I just use my pencils for good old fashioned writing.
I don’t know too much about the fountain pen or art scenes either, but there are a boatload of stationery stores all over. You have big names, like Kyobo Bookstore and ARTBOX, which have a presence in every major city, and then you have Alpha, which is a chain of either old mom and pop shops that converted into them or newly-opened branches.
And then there’s a literal sea of independent stationery stores, old and some more recently opened, that are positioned in front of schools, in old downtown districts historically catering to the city’s professional class, and on main boulevards serving the general public. Of course, I can only assume that every month that passes a handful of old stationery stores close down due to low sales or, probably more commonly, land redevelopment. I’ve seen some myself in the midst of closing down during my explorations. Definitely sad to see. And it just makes my imagination run wild.
I hope that kind of answered your question haha. The collecting scene is very active. Plus there’s a handful of handmade craftspeople making custom mechanical pencils and pens and fountain pens out of a variety of materials.
Discontinued Pilot Korea mechanical pencils are really difficult to find, so it’s amazing that you have collected that many recently. I share one pencil that has a similar feel to the ones in your photo(pencil version of pilot 745 fountain pen). Nothing else comes to mind at the moment.
