Posted in P200 Family, Pentel

2021… What a year for the P200! Plus Others

As I was starting to add my latest pencils to my display cases, which were up to six cases of up to 48 pencils each, of which there were 10 blank spaces in these cases, I realized I needed to add a new case, since I was adding 15 pencils. Even if I was just adding as few as 3 pencils, I would have needed more space, since I want to keep the sets together. Then while I was working on this, the 2 box sets from the previous posts came up, plus another pencil showed up unexpectedly, making it 24 pencils I was adding. Now, 4 of these pencils are not new stock, but are older pencils I got at auction. I will review these below, along with a few new custom Spoke pencils, but it made me look back at what all was officially released this year by Pentel, no matter which division.

31

Thirty one new P200 pencils were released this year. Looking back in my records, the most released in any other year, was back in 2015, when 26 pencils were released.

Here is a quick review of what Pentel released this year.

P205 “Since 1970” Silver and Gold (2)

These appear to have come out in the first quarter of the year, but appear to have been officially announced out of Pentel Taiwan on 2021/05/25. I first heard about it through a contact on my blog in February. He said they were available on an auction site in China, and that the silver was available on CultPens. I picked up the silver immediately, then a few of months later, I found a source and bought the gold version.

Loft P205 Pastels (3)

Top two old, bottom three are new

Again, in the fist quarter of the year, Loft stores in Japan released 3 new pastel colored P205 pencils. Along with 2 pencils from the 2019 P200 for Boys & Girls, these make up the set of 5 Pastel P205 pencils.

P205 Pastel/Floral (6)

In June, on their Instagram, Pentel France announced the release of 6 new Pastel P205 pencils. Of course before this, I had found these on CultPens, but there, they were referred to as P205 Floral pencils and had flower names for the colors.

P200 Brazilian Metallics (6)

In August, Pentel Brazil released their 2022 catalog and, for once I got the jump on my friend in Brazil as to what was coming out. Following up on the release last year of 3 sets of Metallic pencils, Pentel Brazil released 2 more sets of Metallic pencils in P205, P207 & P209.

P200 Brazilian Hybrids (6)

But the biggest news out of Brazil was the 2 new Hybrid pencil sets, again in P205, P207 & P209 (as someone commented elsewhere, I believe it was Reddit, the P203 is not seeing a lot of love). These are a Dichroic painted pencil, where the color shifts depending on viewing angle and light. They are some of my favorites I have seen in a long time.

P200 “Since 1970” Box Sets (8)

P200GRBXSET
P200CLBXSET

Coming out in early November from Pentel of America, the last sets of the year were released as Collectors box sets in 2 different styles: Graphite and Classic. Both of them include the standard 4 sizes, including the P203, which Pentel of America has ignored for decades. The Graphite collection has graphite colored pencils from a silver graphite (P203) up to a dark graphite (P209), and in the Classic collection, they are the classic colors: brown (P203), black (P205), blue (P207) and yellow (P209).

All of these pencils pushed my collection over the 300 pencil mark. Okay, it’s 301… but that counts… well, there are a few duplicates, where the Brazilian metallics duplicated some of the US metallics… and there is that pair of P325 pencils that have different Japanese stickers, but…

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Pencils Not Covered in another Post

Spoke 6

Spoke 6 Proto Aluminum (8.6mm grip)
Spoke 6 Proto Aluminum (10mm grip)
Spoke 6 Black-Red-Black (8.6mm grip)

Back in August, Brian Conti with SpokePen.com finally released his much anticipated Spoke 6 in a pre-release bare aluminum. I immediately ordered the smaller 8.6mm grip and received it 2 weeks later. Unfortunately, he had had some issues with the 8.6mm grip and was unhappy with the way it came out. So, he shipped the pencil with a 10mm grip and a note saying that he would ship the 8.6mm when he was happy with it.

It took about 3 months to finally get the 8.6mm grip, but I must say that this is great customer service, since I had the pencil to play with, even it wasn’t exactly what I wanted UP FRONT and cost him extra. I now have my pencil the way I ordered it, and I am happy with it.

On the very day that I received my replacement grip, Brian released the Spoke 6 in twelve different colorways. Again, I ordered mine immediately.

P209-40PB

In my last shipment from Brazil, I got a surprise pencil included. This P209-40PB, celebrating 40 Anos (Years) of the P200 pencil. I have had the other two (P205-40PB & P207-40PB) for several years, and as far as I know, this completes my collection of distinctly Brazilian P200 pencils.

In November, I won an auction for some more Disney pencils. Here is my original post about these.

DISNEY PENCILS

P565 Mickey Mouse – Mail (Yellow)
P565 Minnie Mouse (Orange)
P565 Donald Duck (Green)

As far as I know, there are still 3 other Disney characters I do not own, but am still searching for: Goofy, a larger Mickey Mouse and another Minnie Mouse pose.

With all of the Disney pencils that I and others own, and what I now understand about the Date Code, all of these were produced in 1977. All but 1 of the pencils I own are Generation 4 transparent bodies. The exception is a Generation 3 body with the size molded into the bottom. Since the majority of these finds are Gen 4, then Pentel must have been molding these bodies for these pencils. My question is, why was that 1 pencil in a Gen 3 body, and what was Pentel using the Gen 3 transparent bodies for, before these?

There are still 4 Popeye pencils I do not have.

Adding these 6 to the above 31, makes 37 new/new-to-me pencils I added this year.

My wallet says “ouch”.

Posted in P200, P200 Family

Character Pencils – Disney & Popeye

Back in December 2018, another Pentel collector I follow posted on his Instagram a picture of some P200 pencils that I had never seen.

Blog - Character Pencils - P200 Walt Disney Pencils (Japan) - Crz.riley (Instagram) 01Photo by @crz-riley

These pencils were of Disney characters Mickey Mouse (2 versions), Goofy, Donald Duck and Minnie Mouse.  In talking about these pencils and trying to place them in the timeline, we looked at a couple of things about these.  First, they did not have any size molded into the bottom of the pencils, which seems to rule out Generation 2 or Generation 3.  Next, they have the 2mm guide pipe on the tip, which led me to believe these were a Generation 1 pencils, but in the cutout, they did not say P205 JAPAN #, so we decided that these were Generation 1b pencils, which probably came out in 1972 or so.

After thinking about this a little while though, I came to the conclusion that since these originated in Japan, they were P325, not P205 pencils.

In discussing these pencils with @crz.riley, he mentioned that he had also acquired a Popeye version of one of these, and he sent me pictures of it.

Photos by @crz.riley

One thing bothered me about the pictures he sent me here is that the label in the second picture, I had always associated with later pencils.


In April, 2019, I finally received my own character pencil.

Blog - Character Pencils - z0924 - P325-WDG-MIN - Short Tip - 2069

It is a Disney Minnie Mouse pencil.  It seemed to have the same all of the same characteristics as @crz.riley’s pencils, except mine had the size molded into the bottom, so I decided that it probably fell into Generation 2.

Two months later, I received a Popeye pencil, and here is where the first of things started to change.

Blog - Character Pencils - z0954 - P325-KFP - PPL - Short-Tip - 1920

Around this time, I started to look at the numbers in the Mold Mark and see what range they fall into.  I contacted @crz.riley to find out what the marks were on the pencils he had. As I posted in the Mold Marks blog, all Generation 1 pencils fall between 1 and 8, without exception.  I also found that all of the Generation 1 pencils used a Beveled Brass Inner Body, whereas both of my pencils use a later Flat Brass Cap Inner Body, and it looks like @crz.riley’s pencils do as well.

When I checked the Mold Marks on my pencils, they were 11 (Minnie Mouse) and 25 (Popeye pleading to Olive Oyl).  @crz.riley’s pencils all fell between 19 and 28, and when I checked in my database (and listed in the Mold Marks blog), these numbers all fell in the range for Generation 4.

The last piece of information that reconfirmed my reassessment of what generation these pencils were came from another blogger who posted these.

Blog - Character Pencils - P325 - Popeye Pencils 01Photo by @Cuirassier_

These pencils had four different images – Popeye and Olive Oyl, Popeye pleading to Olive Oyl (my version), Popeye fighting Bluto and Popeye with a sea bag.  It also shows that there were 6 different color inner bodies that were used: red, pink, orange, yellow, green and blue.

@Cuirassier_ wrote on his blog (translated by Google), “It was written on the bottom of the case as a manufactured product in 1980, so it seems to have appeared briefly before and after 1980.”  This definitely pushes these pencils into Generation 4, which would make my Disney Minnie Mouse pencil a Generation 3.  It looks like they decided to use the shorter 2mm tips on these limited run pencils.  Of course, this fit nicely with the larger triangular label, as I had generally associated it with Generation 4 pencils.

Another photo he posted also clarified the model number of these pencils.

Blog - Character Pencils - P325 - Popeye Pencils 02Photo by @Cuirassier_

It looks like these pencils were model number P565 or P565ST2 for the Popeye versions.


So coming down to this, until I learn otherwise, I am calling these pencils (at least for my collection):
P565 – Walt Disney are Generations 3 & 4
P565 – Popeye are Generation 4

 


I would like to say Thanks to the following bloggers, as I could not have written this blog without their contributions.  Please go check them out:

@crz.riley on Instagram – a fellow collector of Pentel P200 and other Pentel pencils.

@Cuirassier_ on Twitter and his own blog – a Korean collector of mechanical pencils over a wide range of brands.