Looks like typical sun damage on Pilot’s red and pink finishes.
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I think Cameraen is a different seller who has been watching Elton and bumping up his prices. I first discovered Cameraen in 2021, and back then, he was unloading lots of nice pieces for crazy-cheap prices.
It would be impossible to be in his position and not respond to the stuff Elton has been doing.
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I bough 5-6 pencils from Elton on eBay once, They all disappeared in post, but he was actually the one who messaged me and offered a full refund. Did kind of turn me off from buying overseas though.
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Fortunately with eBay and PayPal you have some recourse as a buyer when things like that happen. The fraud protection ebay has is good. The feedback system also seems to keep things in check.
Unfortunately the ability to leave feedback is unavailable on the proxy services I am familiar with, so IMO a bit more risky, albeit way cheaper.
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Cameraen has been selling vintage Japanese pencils for about 5 years (if I remember right). I’ve bought a number of pencils from him, also before his prices went up. He’s not a one-man band. He has a couple of guys he works with to source writing instruments from Japan. But Elton’s notable markups inspired Cameraen to raise prices. Occasionally he has decent pricing, but some models are way overpriced.
Looks like it’s some kind of aging degradation. It’s very uniform, not blotchy as you’d expect from direct sun or heat exposure. At least yours is more like a “salmon” color. That brownish hue on the example you linked from eBay looks a bit revolting.
I started collecting not too long before Elton first started selling on ebay. He just had a few items for sale. He used a cute box with Bambi on it or something as a backdrop when he started. He was also on the Reddit sub somewhat regularly at that time. Late 2020 maybe?
I connected with him on Reddit and then also connected with him on ebay. If I remember correctly, he reached out about selling items to me since I was heavily in the market. He is happy to sell direct and has more inventory than he can post on ebay. On Messenger he used to send me loads of photos of filled MP trays to show me his whole inventory and I would pick the ones I liked and we would make a deal. I would end up paying 50-70% of his ebay prices, and overall it was a pretty good deal.
But the most interesting thing was just chatting with him. His main interest is to help people source the items they want. He has clients (including myself back then) who ask for stuff and he goes and finds it to sell to them. He loves to connect people with heritage items. He told me the story of a client who lost their dad’s precious MP as a kid. The kid grew up and wanted to restore that broken past. Elton sourced the item for him. He said that is the joy of MPs for him.
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That’s really nice to hear you made a great connection with Elton. Did you ever find out how he sourced the bulk of his collection?
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As an Ebay seller, that’s the problem of “consolidating” packages, for me. If I can replace an item, that’s ok, but I normally use the money to buy groceries so if I can’t replace the items it’s a nightmare to think about refunds. As such, and since I’ve been shipping for free for many years now, I usually ship items separate or maybe in groups of 2 or 3 max if they’re not too expensive. I prefer spending a little extra shipping them one by one rather than being surprised by a situation that will be much harder for me to resolve.
But from my experience, lost packages are rare events. In 10 years of shipping worldwide I’ve had about 0,5% or less of misfortunes. Some of those could even be scammers, you can’t really tell. Either way, it’s the Universe telling you singular events are a reality and that next time you could be winning the lottery.
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I think that is secret sauce. Wish I knew!
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I know Elton has posted pieces we’ve seen on YAJ months before. (Thinking of the big Ohto Piston Sharp lots from early 2023 as one example.)
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