You may recall the megaton of vintage office supplies I got last week? Well… that wasn’t everything. In my opinion, I saved the best for last. In the bounty was not one but eight different advertising mechanical pencils all from Autopoint. Yep, the same company that is still in business making the beloved Twinpoint.
These little gems were all in mint condition and came from the same collection so they all feature Midwestern businesses. Each pencil advertises a bank, farm co-op or machinery company, much to my delight.
There are two sizes of pencil as well, the regular sized which is comparable in diameter to a hexagonal pencil and the jumbo which is a bit thicker and more similar to the size of a “manly” fountain pen.
Both sizes of pencil are still available through the Autopoint web site and cost $4.50 each. Replacement leads and erasers are also available if you happen upon any of these vintage gems that need a refill.
My husband’s friend was kind enough to pass along an enormous collection of vintage office supplies from her father and grandfather’s collection.
The Denver Post pencil, the fountain pen, ruler and letter opener belonged to her grandfather, Carl P. Stangel, who was an architect in Omaha, NE. Many of the other pieces came from her father who was a bookkeeper near Salina, KS.
This was such a massive haul, I’m going to have to save a few of the other pieces for a future post. Stay tuned!
A recent thrift score was this box of unused Ko-Rec-Type, typewriter printing error correction paper. The concept behind this material was to back space over to your mistype, insert this white paper into the typewriter, retype the mistyped characters, thereby “deleting” the original letters as the Ko-Rec-Type has white film that would cover your mistake.
Each sheet has little perforated segments of correction paper that can be used or removed as needed and each sheet is wrapped in a glossy sleeve with the same rad graphics on it that appear on the cover of the box. On the back of the wrap are the instructions for use. Crazy!

(Links for images in the collage above are all listed in the links below)
Today’s Link Love is all writing instruments!
Pencils Links:
Pen Links:
Check out this lovely photo from Rhodia Drive of a sales display from the past — maybe the 40s. I love the notebooks in the center while the ones along the edge don’t look all that different from the Rhodia notebooks sold today. Pretty cool, huh?
(via Rhodia Drive)
Faber Castell Pitt Drawing Chalks on Flickr.
Box of vintage A.W. Faber Castell black drawing chalks “Pitt” in round medium.
(on loan from the Ben Jones collection)
Glass pens and flexible nibs accompanied by bottles of ink. This is as low tech as you can go when it comes to writing. And still the most beautiful expressive way to write.
(via thingsorganizedneatly)
Photo of an office from the 30s or 40s.
(via The Office Museum)
The pocket notebook trend isn’t recent. Leave it to The Art of Manliness to find references to real men keeping pocket notebooks like the ones shown in the photo above since the early 20th century. Real men take notes, proudly, and the suggestions for uses for these notebooks are as valid today as they were 100 years ago: keeping a list of future to-do’s, names of potential contacts or recent introductions, and all those other valuable tidbits of information that can help you be more organized, successful or productive.
Also recommended is to keep a hard lead pencil with your notebook and not a pen or soft lead pencil which can risk being smudged or blurred entirely by moisture, be it rain or overturned canoe.
(via The Art of Manliness and Field Notes)