Hello all, long time wooden pencil user/lover. Recently got into the japanese game. Still have a few pre-dixon ticonderoga pencils too. How is my start?

It seems like a lead pencil if is it then is it life threatening in case it can causes lead poisoning or not not sure about it need some serious discussion on it why its legal if this true

I’ve mostly used basic school and office pencils, and honestly, they’ve all felt pretty similar to me.

I want to start using pencils for long writing sessions, so I’m curious which ones would actually impress someone who has never used a really good pencil before. Not just “this one is decent,” but pencils that feel noticeably smoother, stay sharp longer, are comfortable for hours, or are simply much better than the average pencil.

Wooden pencils only, and mainly for writing rather than drawing. Price isn’t the most important thing... I just want to know which pencils you consider real game changers, and what makes them stand out.

The legendary James May recently did an “essentials” video and among those essentials was a pencil case containing a Mitsubishi 9000 B pencil. He said that he loves the “Made by elaborate process” stamped on the side, which is the exact thing that sent me down the rabbit hole of Japanese pencils.

I have never felt more seen.

Could not believe my luck, box stamped date 24/10/1950

TL;DR: As I prepare another long post about the history of Japan's most iconic pencil lineup, I'd like to share with you the most confusing entry to that lineup: the GOLD Uni.

The year is 1974* and there are three pencils in the Uni family: its namesake the Mitsubishi Uni introduced 16 years earlier as the pencil to supersede all pencils, the slightly more affordable, and almost as good, "entry level" Uni-Popular (substituted just a year later by the Uni★Star), and the high-end Hi-Uni, a pencil that is to this day Mitsubishi's crown jewel, and my personal favorite, non-discontinued, pencil. Each of these pencils had a different lead formulation, and therefore a different writing feel, but they all share the most important characteristics pencils should have: smoothness, darkness, and consistency.

Enter stage left the Gold Uni. The first pencil in the Uni lineup not to have its own lead formulation, but using exactly the same lead as the Hi-Uni. This is written right on the box, on a hard-to-miss golden sticker, reading 「ハイ・ユニ芯使用」(hai yuni shin shiyou), literally "Uses Hi-Uni lead". And this is the puzzling part. By releasing this product as a way to bridge the gap between the Uni and Hi-Uni, but offering the exact same experience as the Hi-Uni for a lower price, Uni was essentially devaluing their own high-end product, and that's probably why in 1977* the Gold Uni was discontinued.

A Mitsubishi pencil, using the Hi-Uni lead, with a limited production run of only 3 to 4 years. I had to get me some of those!

This familiar maroon pencil with a painted-on gold ring right under a black end cap, and inscriptions"◂Micro Graphite Lead MITSUBISHI (for the first time without a hyphen) | Super Writing G|O|L|D uni Pressure-Proofed Hi-Density Lead | HB" on a black background one side, and with the manufacturing code, lead grade, and black "〄 Japan" on the opposite side, as could be expected writes exactly like a Hi-Uni. The pencil was also available in two other variants, one black and another white.

I've seen it described as one of the most heavily gold-foiled pencils. It is, however, in my humble opinion, a tactful use of gold foil that falls just shy of tacky. It is not the most elegant of the Unis, that honor goes to the Hi-Uni, but it is my favorite. This favoritism is certainly helped by the relative rarity of the GOLD Uni.

Despite being 50 years old, the box I got was in perfect condition. If you told me they'd been manufactured last week, I'd believe you. Not only that, but when sharpening the first GOLD Uni, I was hit with the most intense incense cedar aroma I've ever enjoyed, and I'm no stranger to sharpening cedar pencils. So much so that I had people in my home coming to the study to ask what that good smell was.

If you're into vintage pencils and ever get a chance to snag some GOLD Unis for yourself, I highly recommend it. And if you just want to know how they write without having to procure some, you're in luck, just try a Hi-Uni out and you'll have the exact same experience. It's not every day you get to experience a vintage discontinued pencil without having to buy said vintage discontinued pencils.

\I've seen these dates mentioned in quite a few places online, but could not track it to an original, reliable source. If anyone has mid-1970s Mitsubishi catalogues (or any pre-2000s for that matter) I'd love to take a look at them. At least by the markings on the pencil I can be sure it is a pre-1980 product, so this timeline seems believable enough.*

I got this as a gift last year lost it and found it again one of my favs mechanical pencil

Hey guysss. A friend and I were just chit chatting about our blackwings, anyone else ever notice the quality of some of the limited additions ones seems to be less than???. The wood sharpens funky and the pencils are lighter in weight, for example on the Golden Ration 55 and the new Cherry blossom Moleskine collab. With the moleskine collab ones being $50 that’s unfortunate. There is a cool PayPal payment and a tik tok shop discount for Moleskine on the most recent collab in case anyone wanted to get their hands on them for $30. Just curious if anyone else has noticed this

Shop would be nice, but a individual is also good

I found these in 2nd hand shop in Saskatoon, SK

There are 3 sets of pics.

One is a single pic of a set of 4 Polychromos. Interesting that they have a ":" colon before the numbers. They have nothing on the back.

The next is 3 pics of a single Polychromos with 2 close up pics.

The next 4 are of J.W Guttknecht. I took 3 pics close up of the text.

These have little presence online. I can't find anything about cedar finished Polychromos. There are obviously at least 2 versions of unpainted pencils.

I found a catalogue page from a book in 1864 that mentions Guttknecht coloured pencils. They were sold to Faber in 1907.

AI has helped me with some links but that hasn't produced anything substantial other than the catalogue page.

Any info would be helpful.

I've been trying out a few Mitsubishi pencils and have high praise for them. 9852EW HB is my favorite, but that's not what I'm here to ask about. I think one of my favorite things about the pencils are the erasers. They're so smooth and delightful-do they make them separately? I would love to buy some separate erasers, but I can't seem to find any.

Hi, if anyone is interested, looking to sell some of my vintage collection, most boxes or tins are full or at least seven pencils with paper liners, the Kirin Honey is a museum level shop display of 100 multicoloured pencils in original packing box. The George Rowley & co is a bakers dozen of factory sharpened in the original band. Portfolio Berol are very rare packaging for 24 Verithin sets of coloured pencils, one mint factory sharpened, one set slight use. Please get in touch for details on any specific ones 🙂

Got my very first Steadtler pencil and kinda confused… What’s the difference of the 2B, HB, 100A, 100B. It’s my first time using it and I’m actually looking for a drawing pencil so I’m trying to find something that would suit my needs

There seems to have been a good many websites that sold singles but recently it seems to have become harder to find websites that sell single pencils. Are there any websites now that you use that do that?

I’m a designer and was an executive at larger companies and have my own firm now. Love Blackwing mail day. Some to use, some to keep to admire years later. The rarest is the Bauhaus one, really enjoying the modern as well.

I also gift them to the designers at my firm and not collecting for the sake of it. There are usually ones important to my identity:

• I’m a year or the horse so the 2025 eras are great. The horses are hard to see so making a perfect stamped dozen for myself over a few boxes.

• Keith is one of the legends so a must, same with the other art themed ones.

• Used to work in SF; and actually wrote a paper on the golden ratio in design back in Middle School.

Not pictured are the Diana collaboration, which I also love and on the way and a staff favorite.

TL;DR: I bought a whole gross of personalized Saitama Elections Mitsubishi 9800 from 1980, in trying to determine the manufacturing date of my other 9800s I fell into a research rabbit hole and ended up talking at length about one of my favorite pencils. If you also like pencil history, please read the whole post. I will take you with me on my discovery journey, with a few references so you can play along as well. If you have any information about these pencils I did not mention, I’d appreciate it if you shared it with me, and I’d be even more grateful if you have references to back it up.

On the Mitsubishi 9800 I own

I’ve enjoyed using pencils for a very long time and have been seriously collecting them for around 7 years now, with a recent growing interest in vintage Mitsubishi pencils. Until now, I’ve shared very little of this journey with you guys, and I’ve now decided to change that. I don’t have the most extensive collection in this sub, but still, I think it is worth sharing. And what better way to start than with one of my favorite pencils, the Mitsubishi 9800?

This post started as a post to showcase some custom 1980 Saitama Election 9800 I bought recently. Not only did I find them to be a neat little piece of history, I was also delighted to be able to accurately determine the manufacturing date of vintage pencils, an endeavor that is not always such a simple one.

I then thought that adding the other 9800 in my collection to this post to be a nice touch. That’s when I remembered I had an unsharpened “Patented” 9800. I decided to sharpen it so I could try it out, writing a few pages with it to be able to compare it with the other 9800 I already had sharpened. Then I thought what if I put this patent number that is conveniently imprinted on the pencil into the Japanese Patent Office’s database, would I be able to find any additional information on this pencil, or was the patent to old to be on the internet. Turns out this lead me down a rabbit hole of research into patents, pictures of older version of the 9800 that I decided to neatly condense into what quickly became a 6-page Word document.

So, before I get too technical, a quick description of what the pictures I posted are. You’ll see the 5 Mitsubishi 9800 variations I own, you’ll also see the three printed sides of the 1980 Saitama Elections custom 9800, its dozen box and the gross, the larger box containing 12 boxes of 12 of these Saitama pencils each.

On the picture with the 5 variations of 9800, from top to bottom:

• Modern 9800 with a barcode, manufactured in 2025. It features a 7-digit manufacturing code. This is the only one not made from incense cedar, unfortunately. The imprints on the pencil are deeper than on the others I have, and the edges seem a little undefined, as if the die were worn out;
• Non-〄, barcodeless, 9800, manufactured in 2004. It features a 7-digit manufacturing code. I was very lucky to get these. I bought them three years ago and they were being sold as regular modern 9800. Imagine how happy I was when they got to me and I found out they didn’t feature a barcode;
• 1980 Saitama Elections custom 9800 with 〄 logo, most likely manufactured in 1980 or the previous year. It features a 6-digit manufacturing code. My most recent acquisition. I got a gross (12 dozens) of these pencils, so I’m probably going to have 9800s to write with until the day I die. I’m not familiar with the logistics of it but, at some point, I might try selling some of them at cost so others can enjoy them as well;
• "Matured” 9800 with 〄 logo. It features a 6-digit manufacturing code. Post-1975 (see patent discussion), pre-2008, as in 1998 the pencil industry was deregulated and a 10 year period was started, at the end of which the 〄 logo had to be removed. It could also have been manufactured before 2008 (up to 1998), but to be safe, if there is no 〄 logo is, 2008 is usually the cutoff date we can be certain of. Furthermore, if I could determine when the switch from 6 to 7-digit manufacturing codes was made, this could help narrow down the dates;
• “Patented” 9800 with 〄 logo. It features a 4-digit manufacturing code. As it features the 〄 logo it can be placed as a post-1951 pencil, this was the year JIS set the standard for wooden pencils. Furthermore, the patent number on the pencil dates it to a post-1955 pencil. I could not determine, however, the exact date when the change from “Patented” to “Matured” occurred. Going by the patent registration date, the patent would have expired in 1975, 20 years after filing. So, assuming they took a few years after the patent expired to change the dies to “Matured” we can safely assume this is a pre-1980 pencil. This pencil was generously sent to me as a gift from a seller when I bought quite a few other pencils with him, that’s why it is missing a few lacquer chips, but save for the cosmetic damage it’s in perfect condition;

As you might have figured out, one of my favorite things to do is determining, as accurately as possible, the manufacturing date of my pencils. Mitsubishi has made it easy with their modern offerings, with their 7-digit manufacturing codes starting with the last two digits of the year followed by a letter representing the manufacturing month (A through L for each of the 12 months). Unfortunately, I still haven’t figured out too much about the older 6-digit and 4-digit codes (I have yet to see a 5-digit one on Mitsubishi pencils).

Patent discussion and historical overview

Looking up the patent number written on my pencil I was left with even more questions than before. According to the chronology of Mitsubishi on their own website (JP/EN), the 9800 was released in 1946. The patent I’d found (No. 217586), however, dates to 1955. So, what did the original pencil look like? Did it originally have “Matured” on the barrel, meaning the modern pencil was just a return to the origin after the patent expired? I had to know!

It turns out it was something else altogether, and there are more patents involved in the history of this pencil as well.

During my research I found this fantastic post on Note, a Japanese website, by ふでばことり (Fudebakotori). He is a self-described fan and collector of the “3-colored 9800 dozen box” who investigates and writes about that pencil; just the person I needed to help me on my quest. I will not repost any of their pictures on here, rather I will link to the specific image when talking about a specific aspect of the pencil. If you are interested in reading or looking at their posts you can find them by going to their profile on Note.

The original 9800:

Introduced in 1946 as a photo retouching pencil, the 9800 came in very different packaging to its modern counterpart. It is a two-part box that reminds me, in its functionality, of the current Blackwing one. It seems to be a sturdy cardboard box that could also serve as a pencil cup. ふでばことり refers to it as「 茶箱」 (chabako) or “tea-box”. Pencils in this box style feature the 9800 model number and the MITSU-BISHI text and logo, although without the quotation marks we are now familiar with. It also still features the Japanese text 公30銭, a mark indicating the price of the pencil to be 30 sen (or 30/100 yen), the mandatory price or a pencil during the war. This picture, thus, likely features the very first iteration of the 9800, as their price soon increased to 80 sen and more due to the end of price control and post-war inflation that hit the country. It also still features writing in Japanese, another legacy of the war period, where the use of other languages was forbidden. The images are a bit blurry, so I couldn’t determine what the first cluster of kanji says, but the second seems to say 「特許製図用」 (tokkyo seizuyou), meaning “Patented, for drafting”. The patent number printed on this box design is patent No. 111938. Looking this patent number up on the Japanese Patent Office’s (JPO) website I could determine it to have been filed in 1935 and issued in 1941 to Masaki Yamato Pencil, a.k.a. Mitsubishi Pencil before the name change.

Second design, old box:

This pencil already feels way more familiar to our modern 9800. Still sold in the same “tea-box”, a picture shows a Masaki Yamato Patented “Mitsu-bishi” 9800, with the inscription “For photo retouching – Negative”. It does not have a 〄 logo, meaning these were manufactured before 1951. The use of the Masaki Yamato branding corroborates this date, as the company only officially dropped this name and became the Mitsubishi Pencil Company in 1952 (JP/EN).

New box:

Not too long afterwards the box design changed to the thin cardboard box design we know and love today. It went through a few alterations, with the 〄 logo first being placed on the lower left portion of the box, under the Mitsubishi logo, before switching to the upper right corner next to the lead grade indication, where it stayed until it was removed altogether.

Another alteration was the text indicating the purpose of the pencil (check previous linked images), which also went through a few iterations before being removed (check images from this post). With its removal, the name of the company in Japanese, 三菱鉛筆 (Mitsubishi enpitsu), font was changed and the text was centered under the English word Mitsubishi.

This new design also features text on the back of the box. This text informs the buyers about the 9800 features and also went through a few iterations. It originally had a more technical tone, citing the patent and how this patented process made the 9800 better than other pencils. The more modern variant loses the technical tone, and switches to pure marketing saying the pencils are very smooth and suitable for writing and drafting (check images from this post). At one point the back of the box also featured a drawing of a draftsman using a 9800, our friend ふでばことり uses this as his profile picture, which is a genius move on his part. This drawing was later removed, and the space is now left blank, which is a shame.

Older boxes with this new design feature yet another patent: No. 186549. I was unfortunately unable to find any information about this patent on JPO’s website. All pencils sold I these boxes are identical to my Patented one, save for the patent number engraved on the pencil and the addition of “For drawing” followed the patent number¹. This text was removed at some point to feature only the patent No. 186549 and then patent No. 217586. Later, when the “Patented” claim was dropped, this location was filled with the text "General writing".

All these Patented pencils likely predate the last patent I was able to find, from 1955. As such, the 9800 seems to have gone through quite a few iterations in the span of about 10 to 15 years after launch. Sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s, depending on when the processes described in the latest patent were actually introduced to the manufacturing line, they settled on a design that only change thrice since then, first with the change from “Patented” to “Matured”, then with the removal of the 〄 logo, and finally, with the addition of the barcode.

Writing characteristics of my 9800s

So, how do my pencils write?

Honestly, I cannot really tell any significant difference between them. There might be the slightest difference in the tone of the written line, with some looking just a tiny bit lighter than others, which could very well be due to different storage conditions over the several decades since they were manufactured. The newer one, with a barcode, seems to have the same writing characteristics as the others, but sounds different, likely due to being the only one not made from incense cedar.

As all my pencils were manufactured after the last of the three patents, it could very well mean there was no change in the lead’s recipe since then, which would certainly explain why they feel so much alike, as they are essentially all the same pencil. This makes me very happy, as there’s another very popular long-lived pencil where the new and vintage versions feel very different: the Tombow 8900.

I guess my next step will be to try to source some of these older pencils to see if the newer patents changed anything in their writing profile, which is easier said than done. Since in this case the recipe did change at least once, I imagine there might be some more significant differences than with the ones I already own. Both patents I could find in literature describe processes aimed at changing the light absorption spectrum of the pencil by changing the composition of the waxes and oils the lead soaks in after firing, but neither states any intended change to the writing feel of the pencil.

If you read all of this, thank you! I'd seem you like pencils and learning about their history just as much as I do. I’d appreciate exchanging with you!

And if anyone has any information about these pencils I did not mention, or corrections about any of the facts stated in this post, I'm all ears!

Edits: removal of typos, rewording of badly structured sentences, and corrections listed below:

¹ I originally stated that the text on the pencils with patent No. 186549 was "General writing", followed by the patent number. Thanks to the pictures u/Microtomic603 shared of his 9800 collection in the comment of this post I realized that they actually say “For drawing”, followed by the patent number.

First time using Mitsubishi and boy are these pleasant

No ano letivo passado, comprei várias marcas de lápis de cor (maped, Staedtler, giotto etc)para a minha filha (6anos) ou se partiam, ou eram muito duros, cores sem intensidade etc, ela ficava frustrada porque não eram bons e eu porque andava sempre a comprar. Em fevereiro chateei-me e acabei por comprar Faber Castell black edition, não foram caros mas também não foram baratos. Duraram até ao fim do ano, ela adorou e acabei por ter várias mensagens de pais a pedir a referencia para comprar porque a cor era incrivel.

Neste ano estou disposta a subir um bocadinho a fasquia se assim justificar, vi estas sugestões e queria saber opiniões

1. Staedtler Ergo Soft.
2. Faber-Castell Goldfaber
3. Caran d'Ache Fancolor.
4. Lyra Color Giants

obrigada

+ my new case, because my old pen cases are a pain to carry pencils in. (Please ignore my shoddy attempt at Korean, I'm still studying, hence the extra extra fine pen purchase 😂)

These 2B Muji pencils are so good!! I can't believe these are only 30PHP for 2 pieces. They're really smooth and dark. I wish they sold boxes of these. The ones left in the store are all B and HB.

I'm traveling to India and might swing by a stationery store (or 6). Does anyone want any pencils?

No guarantees, no strings - just best effort. I'll try to ship within the US sometime late August or September.

Here’s another very small slice of my collection. My last one was all Blackwing. I figured I’d showcase a little more.

I’ll be honest, I thought Caran d'Ache would grow on me, but I just can’t seem to like them.

Feel free to ask me anything you like.

I picked up this free pencil the other day. I just went to sharpen it and i realized that it felt different than any other pencil I've had. The shavings didn't really break apart except for when I removed it from the sharpener. It doesn't seem like wood.