I spent a couple of hours on the site updating my knowledge, it is a pleasure to see how much information is collected on this site. I would love to update my alpha matic review of a 11 years ago with new information and maybe start collecting again. Before pausing the mechanical pencil mania, I found a possibile “grey” version. Thanks to this link I found that the proper names of the colored alphas are:
Limited Edition 230 Years Gold
Executive
Exclusive
Titanium
Bronze
Anthrazit
Marine
Bordeaux
I posted on reddit (I hope it is not a problem to cross-link) the colored alphas variants that I have, there should be also a grey version, but I may be wrong. I made some pictures with color reference and hope to hear your thoughts.
hey welcome @VitOne - glad you are here!
I found your FC aplha-matic review a while back and really enjoyed it.
I’m sure everyone would love to see an updated review when you get time.
Hey Victor, nice to meet you! Your old posts certainly helped suck me down the alpha-matic rabbit hole! I didn’t realize that was your reddit post and happy to continue the convo where ever – it would be great to figure out when that font came around. It’s so 80’s it seems like it should be on the early side of things doesn’t it??
Wow! You are the man who taught me about the Alpha Matics! I loved your reviews, I was just about starting my journey as a collector, and your Blogger pages proved to be extremely helpful. Made me want a Titanium Alpha, and all the others of course. Glad to meet you on this board!
The “red” alphas are also known as “weinrot” (i.e. “wine red”), or at least I’ve seen price tags and box labels with this denomination — not sure it is official, though.
As for the grey variant: I know of one grey “prototype” for the TK-Matic (was on sale on Ebay Germany not long ago, the seller claimed to be a former Faber-Castell designer — or a relative thereof), but the barrel does not sport any imprint, and of course the writing tip is the one for a TK-Matic, not an Alpha.
Finally, there are at least two versions of the font used on the Alpha’s barrels, one more “compressed”, and one more standard, but I only have the standard versions. I remember an Ebay listing a while ago, for an Alpha with a box I’d never seen, and the font for the words “alpha matic” was the non-standard one. I retrieved the page, and it is here.
Welcome! I’m new on that site too and I really love how much knowledge there’s here. I’ve just started the hobby a few weeks ago, so I’m still a newbie
I am happy to know that I contributed to your interest in MP. I have still no idea and looking for more info on the font, it would be great to ask Faber Castell if they can share some information.
Thanks! The font on my “gray” one seems to be the same. In the reddit post you should be able to see a color-reasonably-accurate picture with more details.
Never seen this color before, seems interesting, I tried to search but I was not able to find anything like that. If you have some pictures and share them I would very happy. It is indeed difficult to understand from a non-referenced picture the real “color” of the object.
That one is harder to id… could be a customisation (from Futura or other)…
It is pretty consistent so it suggests a point of departure from a professional font family but “squared” futuristic typefaces are easily tweaked or modified.
I will try to look more deeply into this when I get to my desktop.
I searched a few hundreds pages online with no luck. Until better info pops up I’d say it is a customised font. An inspired one. A few subtleties in this font, like it not being bluntly square or the little extension on the c, to me is an indication that there’s a professional type designer behind it… But it’s not a very complex typeface so who knows, an inspired in-house designer from F-C could very likely do something like this — and sci-fi fonts were rather popular in Europe in the 70s/80s in magazines, gaming computers, etc.
If it is a professional font you can probably find it in one of those large Mecanorma typeface catalogues from the 70s 80s if you’re able to come across one, they’re pretty rare now… They would sell stencils or “decalcs” from those, afaik.
I loved your reviews, I was just about starting my journey as a collector, and your Blogger pages proved to be extremely helpful. Made me want a Titanium Alpha, and all the others of course. Glad to meet you on this board!
