Staedtler Mars Catalog 1980



















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oh man! Thanks for posting this

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Super-interesting reference material: it shows the “Mars-Non-Print” lead (in woodcased pencil form, and in both 2.00mm and 0.5mm), but not the “Mars Non-Photo-Blue” lead in both 2.00mm and 0.5mm. I wonder whether the non-photo-blue came after or before that year.

Also, that 783 clutch pencil is super-dope, and the corded electric eraser with full-metal grip is probably one of the last pieces in that sub-genre, after the major models from Charles Bruning, K+E, and a few other manufacturers. Then came the ones with plastic grip sections, clearly inferior in terms of quality, and then those tiny battery-powered erasers which still survive today, but I never managed to appreciate.

Man I need a serious corded electric eraser…

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It could be that the product wasn’t offered in NA at the time (everything indicates this is a NA market catalog). I once compiled many catalogs STAEDTLER sent me, chronologically, and they had market-specific catalogs and generally NA received much less attention (products) than Europe (compare 1985 US/NA MP offerings and supposed 1985/86 Europe MP offerings below).


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The Hi-Matics are even more rare than the 777s :exploding_head:

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Interesting that the mechanical pencils are labeled “fineline lead holders” Awesome materials!

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It is a possibility, but at the same time, precisely on the linked page with all your scanned catalogues, the only reference to the “Non-Photo Blue” lineup I could find was precisely on the 1985 Staedtler Mars Catalogue for US and Canada — see page 17, bottom half, where the model numbers 108-30, 208-30 and 258-30-05 are mentioned.

I found a single spare box of the fineline lead, and I got a few sets of 12 2.00mm lead cores (none from Staedtler Mars, unfortunately: one is possibly from Stabilo, the other from FC, maybe), and a box of woodcased pencils slipped away from my fingers when a listing went sold in too short a time…

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Keep in mind when I asked STAEDTLER to send scans I asked for MP scans only and so that’s what they sent, pages that contained mechanical pencils. A lot of information is missing and I think it’s “safe to say” the “non-photo blue” lineup might be in another section/page of the catalogue.

My opinion? Email them about it, their archival team is always happy to dig up the old stuff and search up information for a customer.
EDIT: 1985 US/Canada was sourced from the now gone “leadholder.com” site, that’s why it’s a “complete” scan.

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You are right, there might be missing pages where that stuff can hide, I’ll have to dig deeper. Still, I have an Italian catalogue from around that same era (circa 1984-1985), and it is the only place I can find a reference to the Non-Photo-Blue stuff. It seems it came and went in the blink of an eye.

To be fair, the cerulean-lead woodcased pencils had indeed a longer run (or perhaps a recent renaissance), as I found at least a model of the NPB pencil from Staedtler on JetPens not too long ago: the model still reads the code 108-30, but there is a “Staedtler Austria” on the barrel which makes me think either about some EU products exported globally, or more probably about some EU-manufactured models which are later distributed as niche, specialised tools via Staedtler Japan — on many “local” versions of the Staedtler official website I cannot find any trace of this particular pencil model. Weird, yet fascinating, little piece of mystery.

I wonder whether CdA’s recent offer of its NPB pencils for comic artists had anything to do with this. I remember that years ago Jetpens would have an entire sub-section of NPB items on its portal and a curated guide, which however disappeared in subsequent updates. What I think remains of all that effort are scattered splinters of that sub-collection, like the NPB refills for the Pentel Multi-8, maybe a type of thin-lead refill box for Uni Nano Dia lead or something alike, and the Berol Turquoise woodcased NPB pencils in two different flavours (one from the Verithin lineup, perhaps?).

The (sad) truth is that such hyper-specialised tools are the only leftover traces of entire industries now gone forever — or confined to a super-tiny niche of hobbyists keeping some obsolete technologies alive — which already back then were not that huge, or widespread.

My search for (more of) the 258-30-05 samples, and for at least one surviving box of 208-30 2.00mm cores goes on. :slight_smile:

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You definitely don’t need it. Nope! But maybe one day we’ll find it and bring it home with us. : )

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