January 2018 – Nimrodd's Blog

Pentel P209 Kirari Pencils

Posted on January 29, 2018 by nimroddfw

In the United States, Pentel had been distributing alternate colors of the P205 since 2010. The Kiraris were the first size I found after the P205s.

In 2014, Pentel Japan released the Kirari line in 3 colors; Cherry Pink, Violet & Gold. They released Brush Pens, Gel Pens and these Pencils.

I picked up my first set of these pencils in December 2014 from an eBay dealer out of Japan. Finally in 2016, I started to collect the pencils in their original packaging and bought another set in September from a couple of different Japanese dealers.

I am not sure why, but the packages number these pencils as XP209 instead of just P209, as is printed on the pencils.

XP209-P Cherry Pink

XP209-V Violet (Muave)

In my experience, the Pentel color code V has always represented Violet, but for this pencil, I have seen it called Muave.

XP209-X Gold

I apologize for the photos of the pencils themselves, as the color did not turn out very well. I may end up going back and taking these pictures again and replacing them.

P200 Family, Pentel

Singapore P205 Pencils

Posted on January 15, 2018 by nimroddfw

I do not remember when I first saw these pencil, but they were first released in 2013 in Singapore. My first encounter with these was actually the White one that was later released in Canada in a 2-pack with a standard black P205A, when I purchased it in December 2014. This was also the first time I had encountered a P200 pencil with printing, that did not print the model number printed on it.

I finally got a hold of a full set of these in September 2016 from a dealer in Singapore. I ordered them off eBay and received the 5 pencils above. I later ordered another set and the dealer sent them to me in the original packages, which came with a package of Ain 0.5 2B lead.

The original set are in my display cases and the packaged set is on my display board.

P205-BSG

This is the Red version of the pencil. As I said above, this set of pencils are the first time I encountered this short style of printed text.

As far as I have seen, this pencil, along with the next two (CSG & GSG), are only available from Singapore.

P205-CSG

The Blue version.

P205-GSG

The Yellow version. I do like the contrast of the red text on the yellow pencil.

P205-PSG

The Pink version available from Singapore, and supposedly from Canada (as P205-P). In June 2016, Pentel Canada announced pink versions of several of their pens and pencils in support of The Breast Cancer Research Foundation (http://pentel.ca/news/16). I have not been able to get one of these, but I believe it should be the same as the Singapore version. As of this post, it still shows as being available on the Pentel Canada website.

P205-WSG

The white version from Singapore and Canada. As I said, this pencil was released in a 2-pack, but I have never seen any mention of it on the Pentel Canada website.

P200, P200 Family

Pentel Stein P303S / P305S Pencils

Posted on January 1, 2018January 1, 2018 by nimroddfw

The next several blogs are going to be about P200 family pencils that were not sold in the USA. Most of these pencils also have a barcode that shows where that pencil was registered.

The Stein pencils were released back in 2012 in 0.3mm (P303S) and 0.5mm (P305S). I purchased a set of the 5 P303S pencils, but I did not try to buy they P305S pencils until they were already gone.

These pencils were all white bodies with 5 different color inks available, all saying the same thing. Except for the name STEIN, all of the text reads with the pencil oriented with the eraser on top and the tip at the bottom. From the top (near the eraser), is the size designation with 3 lines on each side of the .3 or .5. Below that are four lines of text:
Design
Tshirts
Store
graniph
Below this is the word “STEIN x” in the normal orientation for the P200 pencils. The only place that Pentel appears is in the first line of the cutout.

P303S-AW / P305S-AW

These pencils are white with black text. Even though I did not purchase the set of P305S pencils back in 2012, I managed to get one P305S-AW in July of 2017.

P303S-CW

This pencil is white with blue text.

P303S-DW

This pencil is white with green text.

P303S-FW

This one is white with orange text.

P303S-PW

The last pencil is white with pink text.

I am not absolutely positive, but I believe these were released as one of the first items in the Stein line of pencils that Pentel is now releasing.

Barcodes

This post is really just an informative post about how barcodes work, and what they can tell us about where a product is from. Since this blog is about my Pentel collection, I will be using Pentel barcodes, but this applies to most barcodes in general.

All Pentel pencils that I have seen have either a 12-digit or 13-digit barcode (there are other lengths of barcodes, but I am not going to cover those).

UPC-A Example
12-digit UPC-A (Universal Product Code version A) used in United States and Canada.

IAN-13 Example
13-digit IAN-13 (International Article Number) used in the rest of the world. This is sometimes referred to as EAN-13 (European Article Number) or JAN-13 (Japanese Article Number).

Barcodes can be divided into 3 parts (yes, it is actually more complicated than that, but for simplicity, this works). For the IAN-13 code, the first 7 digits are the assigned Company Prefix and for the UPC-A, it is the first 6 digits. The next 5 are assigned by the manufacturer as a unique identifier, and the last digit is a check digit.

What we are concerned with here is the 6 or 7-digit Company Prefix. This tells us who the manufacturing company is, or in this case, which of Pentel’s regional companies is the primary distribution point.

To find this information, you can go to http://gepir.gs1.org/index.php/search-by-gtin and enter the 12 or 13-digit barcode number, it will return the company associated with the Company Prefix. In some cases, it cannot find a record associated with that code, but will at least return the region it is associated with.

The chart below shows what is returned for an example product barcode from every region that Pentel has barcodes associated with P200 Sharps (that I have seen).

Barcode & Example Item	Company Prefix	Country Code	Company
065921923739 P205BP2 P205 Black & White Pack	065921	CA	Pentel Stationary of Canada Ltd. 5900 No. 2 Road Unit 140 Richmond, BC V7C 4R9 CA
072512044902 P205BP2-K6 P205 2-Pack	072512	US	Pentel of America, Ltd. 2715 COLUMBIA ST TORRANCE, CA 90503-3861 US
3474372050609 P205-GA Carbon Black P205	3474372	FR	EUROPENTEL SAS 43 RUE FRANCOIS DE TROY BRY SUR MARNE 94360 FR
4711577064437 XP205-1X	4711557	TW	PENTEL STATIONERY (TAIWAN) CO., LTD. 2F., NO. 152, SEC. 4, CHENG DE ROAD 104 TAIPEI TW
4902506304919 XP209-PX P209 Kirari Pink Single Pack	4902506	JP	ぺんてる（株） TOKYO TO CHUO KU 1038538 JP
7610924040155 P205-WN White (Blank Text) P205	7610924	CH	Pentel Papeteriewaren AG Gewerbestrasse 20 Egg b. Zürich 8132 CH
7898419160872 P205-FRPB Ferrari Red P205	7898419	BR	PENTEL DO BRASIL IMP EXP IND E COM LTDA R DONA MARIA FIDELIS, , 130, PIRAPORINHA R DONA MARIA FIDELIS, , 130, PIRAPORINHADIADEMA, SP 09950350 BR
7908429600210 P205-HDCPB Hybrid Green/Blue	7908429	BR	PENTEL DO BRASIL IMP EXP IND E COM LTDA R DONA MARIA FIDELIS, , 130, PIRAPORINHA R DONA MARIA FIDELIS, , 130, PIRAPORINHADIADEMA, SP 09950350 BR
884851008244 P205M-CX Metallic Blue P205	884851	US	PENTEL CO., LTD. TOKYO TO CHUO KU NIHOMBASHIKOAMICHO 1030016 JP
9310821509738 PEXP205FB P205-FB Fluorescent Red Package with Lead (Australia)	9310821	AU	Pentel (Australia) Pty. Limited PO Box 306 NORTH RYDE BC, NSW 1670 AU

What does this information tell us? Well, for example, the P205-GA Carbon Black pencil that is sold in a lot of places, such as https://www.jetpens.com/ (a US reseller of pencils from Japan), was not originally released by Pentel Japan, but actually by Pentel Europe in France. Does this really mean anything, probably not in reference to these pencils, but if you find a pencil with the barcode attached, you can at least have a starting point on where to possibly source the pencil. At one point two of the barcodes did not return company information, but did at least return the region they are associated with. This does not mean that these are bad numbers, it may be that Pentel for that region, just purchased a range of barcodes, instead of a Company Prefix, or the registration was in process.

If you are interested in learning more about this, here are links to a few Wikipedia articles:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Product_Code
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Article_Number
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcode

[Edited 10/25/2021 to update the registration information for 7610924 and 884851. Also added was the registration for Taiwan (4711557). Also minor update to the last paragraph, since the two codes are now registered.]