American Pencil Collectors Society
Early this year I joined the American Pencil Collectors Society (APCS). It took a bit of effort, as it’s a solidly analog affair, just like the hobby behind it. Membership dues must be paid by cheque, which in my case meant paying for a USD cashier’s cheque at my bank. The membership application required a few months to process, and once part of the club, all member communications happen exclusively in their bimonthly newsletter.
A tradition in the club is to have an order of customized pencils made with your member number on them for sharing and trading with other members. Upon becoming a member, I received my membership card with member number and promptly placed an order for my own such custom pencils. In the first newsletter published after joining, my address and member profile appeared, along with other members who had joined since the last newsletter.
The custom pencils I chose were from Viking, of whose lovely designs I’ve never made my enjoyment a secret. I chose a line I had not previously ordered - the Unikum Black. These pencils are produced with dyed black wood, something not unusual in the industry today. What makes Unikum Black, uhm, unique, is its use of a translucent stain rather than opaque varnish for the colouring of each pencil. There was a limited character count permitted on the pencil, so I included only this web site’s URL and reference to my APCS member number. Honestly, I think they look fantastic.
Before I’d even received my custom Vikings, I started getting free pencils in the mail. Members (well, two of them) who were interested in trading wasted no time in sending me their custom pencils and asking if I could return the favour. Once I received mine from Viking, I did so, as well as sending out care packages to all the other members whose addresses had been in the newsletters I’d received.
One member with whom I’ve continued to correspond indicates that trading and activity among members isn’t what it used to be, and that she very rarely receives responses to her preemptive pencil packs. Likely this has to do with the exclusively analog nature of its activities whilst the average age of pencil collectors moves into the digital age. Online pencil trading communities have sprung up spontaneously on various social media to fill in the space left vacant by APCS’s ongoing shunning of online organizing. It’s an interesting strategy for the club, but I feel it will eventually render it completely obsolete. Nonetheless, it’s a fun thing to be a part of whilst it’s still around…
