Several years ago I attended an estate sale and found an abundance of older office supplies and it was half price day. I purchased an assortment of items such as a cast iron 1940s tape dispenser made by Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing. I sold it for $40. A round rubber stamp holder with stamps, sold for $35. Several unopened boxes of 1950s double ended stenographer writing tools, they flew out the door for $20 a box of six. Boxes of onion skin typing paper, never opened, with the cellophane intact, which sold for $25 each.

The real prizes were the two typewriters I brought home. First is the Hermes 3000 and an Adler Tippa from the 1960s. Get this, the type is in cursive. I am very partial to the Hermes typewriters as this is the brand that we had in typing class when I was in high school. The Hermes 3000, manufactured by Paillard-Bolex, was introduced in 1958 and was the preferred typewriter of several authors of note.

Typical high school typing class from the 1950s. (image courtesy of dunkirk.yearbookhigh.com)

In the majority of states, the kids are back in school. This year feels like it has passed in warp speed.

My “kids” are adults now but I began thinking about some of the supplies I used in school and even those that go back decades and how desirable they are today. The same applies to vintage office items. Several years ago I purchased a portable manual typewriter with the full intention of giving it to my grandchild until I began researching it and found out what I could sell it for. I currently have another one that is for sale.

I always enjoyed shopping for school supplies even when I was shopping for supplies for my daughters. Before technology became the norm in schools my daughters and I could spend more than an hour at the office supply store browsing all of the ink pens, markers, cool spiral notebooks, binders, and tape. Yes, tape. Have you recently looked at the variety of colors of adhesive and duct tape? I can still spend an hour at the office supply store looking for unique items. I primarily write with an ink pen, the style that takes a cartridge and I adore my quill “pen” which requires a bottle of ink to dip the pen tip in.

A box of Binney & Smith crayons. (Images courtesy of the author)

Most of us learned to write with a pencil, ye olde #2. Nicolas-Jacques Conté is considered to be the grandfather of the pencil. During the French Revolution there was a shortage of graphite, Conté was tasked with coming up with a substitute. He eventually created a rectangular shaped writing tool by roasting a mixture of water, clay, and graphite in a kiln. He then shaped the mixture dependent on where they would be used, for example carpenters needed a pencil that would not roll. His innovation became known as Crayons Conté. The style is still being made and the composition has not deviated much from the original recipe. Finding an original square Crayons Conté would not be an easy task. If you happen to come across one in an old desk it would need to be carbon dated and if proven to date from Conté’s time I suspect that interest in it would be great and the auction price would top six digits.

The inventors of the #2 pencil were the author Henry David Thoreau and his dad. In the 1820s they erected a pencil factory in New Hampshire. It was in this factory that they created a graphite pencil that was less brittle and did not smear when used on parchment. They laid new groundwork by offering several pencils from #1 being the softest to #4 which is the hardest. Despite all of the technology available to us today the #2 pencil is the gold standard in classrooms all over the country.

Stay tuned for part II of this column next month, in which we will explore more antique school supplies.