I don't get out to thrift shops as often as I used to. And when I do go, it seems I less often find something of note. Yesterday, I was surprised to find a bag full of unopened stationary supplies. I was pretty excited. The bag had several packages of pencils, a Venus hole punch, a couple of plastic ACME rulers, some erasers and a bunch of hole reinforcers. Much of this was made overseas but a couple of the pencils were Canadian.

I've seen the package shown above on Ebay in the past but never with the Commodore 64 contest. Contests are nice because it they provide a specific date. This contest closed on August 1st, 1985.  The package has not been opened and so we don't know if this could have been a winner... there is a "scratch-and-win" patch on the card inside to see if you've won. I have several Venus Laurentien coloring pencil packages with the Commodore 64 contest but this is the first pencil product that I've seen it on. 

The pencils in this FaberCastell package just say "Canada HB" on them. Otherwise, they are identical to the Venus 1600 pencils in the other package I found. Packages like this are sometimes the only way to identify mystery pencils they have no manufacturer or brand name. You may notice that one of the pencils is missing its eraser. The package is sealed and the eraser is not inside so it must have come from the factory this way... not a sign of high quality. The product code on the front of the package is CDAP-10-HB (the code on the other Venus package was VP-10-SW). I'm wondering if this package was a bugdet set of pencils made for a bargain retailer. This package had a price tag on it from Metropolitan. This was a Canadian variety department store chain based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The last of the Metropolitan stores closed in 1997. 

Hear are a couple of recently found Canadian made Eberhard Faber erasers. They are ready for retirement... world weary and stiff. The Pink-N-Ink 127 eraser has pink on one side for removing pencil marks and blue on the other side for ballpoint ink removal.  These remind me of images from Lisa Congdon's blog and book "A Collection a Day". Day 1 is a collection of erasers. A fantastic website to take a strole through.

This brings to mind an eraser mystery. At the Museum of the Atlantic there is an exhibit showing artifacts from the Halifax Explosion which took place in December 6th, 1917.  One display shows artifacts from school children... pencils, an eraser and a marble.  I've always thought that the Pink Pearl eraser looked out of place. While Pink Pearl erasers were made by Eberhard Faber in 1917, it appears that the EF logo and what remainds of the "Canada" printing on the bottom right don't seem right. Eberhard Faber made erasers in the US but not in Canada until the 1950s. and the EF between two horizontal bars logo also seems to be a 1950s or even 1960s logo.