It’s 1987. You’re a professional draftsman working at a respectable firm and engaged in a variety of drafting projects. You have a multitude of choice on drafting mechanical pencils. Pentel is one of the leaders and makes the very affordable PG Graph series, as well as the P20x series. However, compared to a Graph PG5, an Accugraph PG1505 is twice the price. Now, that could be a lot if you were talking $25 USD vs. $50 USD. But back then ¥1000 was about $7 USD. So, $7 vs. $14 USD… isn’t really such a stretch. And look at the quality differences. In my book, I’d say the Accugraphs are about 4x better. And given how durable and reliable these pencils are, why not spend a little more for something better?
I wish we had some sales metrics available to understand how well the Accugraphs sold versus the Graph series. My guess is that for Pentel, they made more money on the Graph series. Despite costing 50% less than an Accugraph, it was much cheaper to make and likely sold a lot more.
EDIT: One other thing. There’s that matter of Japanese culture. Some companies would make higher end products that were JDM exclusive and made as a kind of status flex for the company. Two major examples of that in the extreme is the Pentel Scepter series, models PXE5, PXE155, PXN105, PXN205 and PXN20 (¥20000). And of course, PN305 QX. And then for PILOT there was the H-5005. So maybe the Accugraph, despite not being a notable money maker, it served as a kind of status symbol for the brand?
That’s a good point. Considering buying power at that time, the magnitude of value is higher, so yes… it was more like going from $20 USD to $40 USD. That’s pretty significant.
This was the odd thing about the Accugraphs – the varying price points! 1500, 1800 and 2000 yen. Like… did it really cost that much more to produce 0.4 and 0.3?
Thanks for the confirmation. I’d looked at a PG2003 and thought the ¥2000 price tag was the cost for the other two as well. Interesting. So the first two digits represented the price and then the last two are the lead size.
For the Pentel P series pencils, including PC, PD, PG, PS, PXE & PXN, in general, the first 1 or 2 digits indicate the price (in Japan), with the next number being the model indicator in that price range and the last being the size indicator. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as the PG2, PG4, PG5, PG7 and PMG and others. And this is all, of course, based on the price at first release.
For example
P325 started at ¥300
P515 started at ¥500. I have never seen one with that sticker, but I have pictures of the box with that price.
P1035 Scepter started at ¥1000
PC215 started at ¥2000
PD335 started at ¥300
PF505 started at ¥500
PG1015 GraphGear 1000 at ¥1000
PG1804 Accu Graph at ¥1800
PN305 QX at ¥3000
PXE155 Excalibur at ¥15000
PXN205 Excalibur Technomatic at ¥20000
