trade or sale? 
those are minty fresh. looks super clean
@young These were my stockpiles in case the one I was daily using completely dies. But I’ve been using my 1052 a lot less recently (blame the S5), so maybe one day I’ll get rid of one of them (maybe not in the near future, also they’re not rare anyway)
That being said, a late-version 1052 is still in my all-time top 5 daily writers.
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Weekend Lineup No. 24 / 2026
Thanks to Allan @0zmac and Allen @DarkwingDuck for getting these famous leadholders ;-)!
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Always have a soft spot for those Automatic 303 color variants 
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Brass clean up time… the Tom Dixons don’t seem to age at all! I wonder what their alloy or treatment is?
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Me too
Honestly, I feel the same about them as I do the colored elevens.
I hope I come across the others
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Looking forward to this
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What is the pencil at the top? It looks very similar to a Mitsubishi W-Knock M5-59 demonstrator.
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It is Schneider K20 ballpoint pen.
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Thanks! What an idiot I am… now looking closely I can see the ballpoint cartridge. Overlooking that, I thought it was some kind of double-knock mechanism.
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The lighter tone of the brass usually suggests a higher zinc content, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there was also some aluminium in there to improve its corrosion resistance.
A similar family of alloys are the aluminium bronzes (historically also known as aluminium gold) in which the zinc is replaced by aluminium, probably best known for their use in coinage. To my eyes, Tom Dixon’s pens have a similar light gold colour, and the presence of aluminium would probably help to moderate the weight of these chunky pencils.
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I wonder if that’s why the Sakura Craft Lab 001 brass looks so bright after cleaning. Moreso than other things I have made out of brass.
Rotring PS2 & Martin Tech-Lok flew in from @DarkwingDuck
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I tried to find out more about the alloys used for Sakura pens, but the descriptions tend to stop at “brass”. Bizarrely, the product specification for the Sakura craft lab 001S Gold lists the body material as “Aluminum, Metal” (unless, of course, it is an aluminum bronze after all).
The silver version states the body material to be nickel silver, a copper-zinc-nickel alloy (aka German silver). They describe both pens as developing a patina over time, so I imagine they must be free from any lacquer or coating.
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Voilà! What is your EDC?
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Thanks @speedfreek, I hadn’t come across the name Nordic Gold before for a type of aluminium bronze.
In pencil terms, an alloy named “aluminium gold” was used by Perry & Co from the late 1870s. Within a few years, their range had expanded considerably.
Even before the discovery of aluminium, Birmingham manufacturers produced copies of Mordan’s patent mechanical pencil made of a light gold or silver-coloured “composition metal”, a term that seems to have been used for various alloys containing two or more of copper, tin, lead, zinc and antimony.
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I have very few ‘All-Black’ pencils because I usually collect Japanese wooden pens, but here’s a photo of my tiny collection.
Also, the custom PG5 is by Sharp Tank, a Korean maker.
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