The Marble Pencils

I first saw these pencils back in 2010, when they first came out.  I am not positive, but these were probably released to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of the P205, back in 1970.  What I do know is that it was the start of the release of all sorts of colors for the P205 and later P207s & P209s, at least here in the United States.

P205MB – Red Marble

P205MC – Blue Marble

P205MD – Green Marble

P205ME – Brown Marble

I got my first set of these directly from Pentel of America in March 2010. It was nice to see Pentel adding a variety to a line that has been around for 40 years. I really liked the way the body looked with the black sprayed over a base color, giving it a marbled look.

At this time, I was collecting various different mechanical/drafting pencils. Seeing these come out, helped me make my decision to concentrate on the P200 family of pencils. I had already picked up several other pencils in the family, but now having colors made the decision easy.

These pencils and, as far as I know, all other color pencils released are still a part of the 6th generation of Pentel Sharps. This would be a great break point for a new generation, except that other than the colors, there is nothing distinct between Generation 6 and these. A Generation would need to have a distinct change across the entire line of pencils for me to classify it separately, and I find nothing in a P205A that would say it was made after 2010 versus 2000, where I can tell you if it was made around 1970, 1973, 1976, 1980, 1988 or 2000, as these are points within the different generations.