Pencils #0041

The collector: Steve, Washington, USA.

The collection: Pencils.

The story behind the collection...

Collecting has always been a passion of mine. As a child I actively collected baseball cards, pennies, stamps and pencils, spending thousands of hours of my childhood collecting, organizing, sorting, and displaying this things. I also collected some other things like rocks and shells, although more passively. As I grew up I found less time and resources to allocate to collecting and only in the last 10 years have I found collecting again as a hobby.

As my wife and I started picking up pencils as souvenirs from places that we'd visit my passion for collecting was rekindled. Pencils are the perfect thing to collect. They are inexpensive, there is an incredible variety, you can find them anywhere, and they have a rich and long history.

My collection is very diverse. There are other collectors who focus only on specific specialties like advertising pencils, name brand pencils, golf pencils, carpenter pencils, mechanical pencils, bullet pencils, cartoon pencils, or any of many other types. While I don't collect mechanical pencils or bullet pencils (except square ones), I allow my focus to sway back and forth between the other specialties depending on the mood and what I find interesting on any given day.

I don't know for sure how many pencils I have, probably between 3 and 4 thousand. I group them into some of the various categories listed above as well as several others. A small percentage of my collection is pictured on my Flickr photostream.

I don't really have a favorite type of pencil because that changes periodically. I would say that my favorite group of pencils are the ones I collected as a child and still have.

While I enjoy collecting, organizing, and displaying my pencils, very few of my friends and family know that I do it, so I am excited to be able to share my pencil collection with others through Obsessionistas.

All images used with Steve's kind permission.

Links

 Pencil Talk

Brand name pencils

Fred's Pencils

Pencil Collector