Some time ago there was a rumor that Pilot would discontinue production of the S30. Today I have looked at Pilot’s mechanical pencils and noticed that the S30 is gone from the overview. You can search for the S30, but the link that is displayed leads to a page that no longer exists. As with the recently discontinued S5, I couldn’t find an announcement of the production stop for the S30.
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I don’t think Pilot makes a press release or announcement when a product is discontinued. In the case of the S30, it was ostensibly due to a malfunction or design failure to account for heavy pressure writing styles. So we only have those gossip tweets from better connected folk who may know an official retailer etc.
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A press release might have been unusual, but maybe they would have kept the pencil on the website but put a note like “While supplies last” (like Mitsubishi did in their catalog not too long ago).
Edit: From xhantos in r/sharppencils:
And from the same catalog:
The catalog is about a year old, so this is nothing new 
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In checking up on the PILOT S series being completely absent from the US Pilot Pen website, I went to the Japan PILOT Pen website and also came across that befuddling change–the absence of the S30. And I also did a search for it, found the entry item, but that linked to a dead page.
That’s a pretty short product run, isn’t it? Released around July of 2021… discontinued 3.5 years later. Apparently word of the discontinuation was circulating back in July of 2024 (LINK).
The tweet made there by that Japanese account cited a lead retention problem. Apparently if the pencil is written with strong pressure for enough time, the clutch will fail and the lead will get pushed back inside. I don’t recall this ever being an issue with the Automac.
So this raises a couple of questions. Wasn’t the S30 supposed to feature an actual improvement over the Automac mechanism, hence the reason why the Automac was discontinued? You’d figure that if there was an oversight regarding the clutch, couldn’t they have fixed it with an update? Or… perhaps the effort would be too costly to justify, given the sales momentum of the S30?
And lastly, there’s that nagging question… should one buy an S30 to have, just for collector value? I mean, we saw how the Automac resale prices spiked up a lot after it was discontinued (although even on YAJ and Mercari, those prices have come down as it appears most collectors have gotten a few examples for their collections at this point). And consider the Staedtler 777 Micromatic. That model is notoriously fragile. And when it breaks, it’s usually a hopeless job to try fixing it.
I wonder if the S30 issue can actually be corrected by cleaning the chuck. Maybe there’s some graphite buildup over time that promotes the slippage. At least if it can be cleaned and restored to proper function, that’s not nearly as bad as a Micromatic 777 fault. But if it fails and then the clutch just won’t ever grab well enough again… that could be a real killer. Perhaps if you do get one that’s functional, never write with it using heavy pressure. Always a gentle hand. Or simply don’t use it at all!
But the lead retention problem isn’t necessarily the only flaw…
Someone posted THIS, 6 months ago. The owner had it tucked in a bag, loosely, so it’s possible it experienced undue force. It appears to have been a crack along a natural groove in the grain of the wood.
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Needs a self sabotage meme for folks who buy nice pens and just chuck them into a bag 
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