Saved from a Japanese thread on Twitter…
1988… is that the 1969 of the Mechanical Pencil era? 
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Tombow wins for their catalog design (vs. Pentel, Pilot, and Mitsubishi).
I especially love the Variable page—the bottom half in particular where the 3, 4, and 5 are presented together 
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This is great! This is novel to me and I’ve tried to dig around online and some with the internet archive to see as many files of Tombow Catalogs as I can. Does anybody know of great resources to find full catalogs of Tombow? (One thing I have noticed with Tombow and their tendency to be design-savvy is that older versions of their website and catalogs are blocked due to anachronistic plugins etc.)
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This is awesome, but I wish we could see the SH-1000LP/SH-1500LP models.
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Catalogs are the true holy grails for collectors. They are far more rare than even the most rare MP.
If you find one, please consider posting it here in the Catalogs category!
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It seems I have hit upon one of THE questions within mechanical pencil collecting. And yes, sure, any I can dig up I can start compiling up onto here. I have been wanting to create a local file on my own of just Tombow materials, anything from catalogs, product promo images, and perhaps printouts of older, now extinct, webpages from authorized Tombow resellers.
Do you have any advice as for how to post them? Such as, what are ways to upload/display any files into KNOCKOLOGY that are some of the most user-friendly?
Sadly I do not have any physical catalogs, only one or two much more current varieties in a document form on my computer.
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This is perfect, actually. Scanners are steampunk tech at this point, and physical stuff doesn’t do much good in a digital world.
So it’s great you have documents and not physical copies!
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I absolutely geeked-out when I discovered phones have the ability to “scan” a page as a document. So, if I ever come into any physical ones I could digitize them using that method.
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I will take them either way (physical or digital). I can make my own PDFs from the physical, and have done so with the 79 Pentel Catalog.
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I’m a big fan of the TOMBOW EXTA line. Some real gems in it.
Fascinating to see the catalog identify it in more detail. I know there’s a gold version with what looks to be a mahogany wood used for the grip, but I’d always thought there was just 1 other variant–some kind of wood with steel body. Apparently there’s 2 grades of wood in the brushed steel finish models. Maybe teak and oak?
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The 2k and 3k model are even indistinguishable in the catalogue! I also didn’t know there was an intermediate step between the 2k and 5k version …
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Actually, there is a slight distinguishing feature. It’s more noticeable on the clip and the rear plunger. The wood on the SH-2000AE is lighter. The SH-3000AE wood is a little darker. The kanji lettering looks nearly identical, except for the 3rd line from under the model number. I’m wondering if this mentions the type of wood used for the pencil.
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Unfortunately, the kanji is not about the wood type.
5000-yen: gold plated shaft / ゴールドメッキ軸
3000-yen: rhodium plated shaft / ロジウムメッキ軸
2000-yen: stainless steel shaft / ステンレス軸
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Thanks, Kelvin! Good to know. Fascinating. So it’s about rhodium plated vs. stainless steel… and the wood appears to be just random variations in coloration. I wonder if that rhodium plating is just to furniture or the whole body. I don’t ever recall coming across an EXTA Deluxe with a polished silver tone metal body (only brushed steel or gold plated).
BTW, further down that page are some interesting variants, with horizontal grooves in the body widely spaced apart. I’ve never seen any of these in the wild.
I’m also really shocked at how the VARIABLE was priced at only 1500 JPY! I’d have thought at least 3000 JPY.
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I recently bought an Exta 5k (my first 5k one), and it has the grooves – so they exist ;-). I have one or two 2k Extas, but didn’t check for grooves (the new one is still lying around, while the other ones are buried in storage).
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SH-5000AE - Maple grip (楓), gold coated
SH-3000AE - White birch grip (樺), rhodium coated
SH-2000AE - White birch grip (樺), stainless
SH-5000EL - Leather grip, gold coated
SH-5000EL - Leather grip, rhodium coated
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Sharp! I missed the kanji at the end of the first line
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The leather variants were later (?) extended to several colors (red, black, …?) and also lower categories (2000EL?).
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I also wonder if it’s “pleather” or “faux-leather.” I have just one of those… and it strikes me as closer to being synthetic than actual… unless that’s just the treatment. I have seen Platinum make use of leather a lot on a number of fountain pen and rollerball pen models… and it always looked a bit nasty to me on used examples, even gentle ones.
I’m also pretty sure that TOMBOW EXTA comes with some kind of synthetic rubber/vinyl grip, unless that’s just the leather in as-new condition?
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Very cool! Were the lines on your EXTA 5K visible in the photos, or a later surprise upon receipt?
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