Page Text: DMP - Dave's Mechanical Pencils
My mechanical pencil collection and various related things, thoughts and musings about them, reviews of mechanical pencils and other items, and more. I'm not prejudiced - all forms of pencils and graphite are welcome here, even some ink sneaks in too. You can use the sidebar links to find mechanical pencil reviews and other stuff.
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My Top 5 Mechanical Pencils
My Top 5, or Top 10...well really it’s my Top Twenty-Five Mechanical Pencils, because it’s my top five from each of my five different price ranges. It was mighty hard to prune the Low Price Range list down to just five and there are some serious injustices, but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Obviously my choices will change over time, and every time I review a pencil I will now have to ask myself – Does this one make it into the Top Five? Each Top Five are listed in no particular order. Well that’s not totally true because they are generally in the order that they sprang to mind when I first wrote the list. Some of the Top Five didn’t get fantastic reviews, but they pass the most important criteria for getting into the Top Five – if I was starting from scratch and could only buy five pencils, would it be one of them?
Economy Price Range Mechanical Pencils (US $0 – 3)
Pentel Flex Fit II PW35 (Now there’s a surprise)
Notes:-
1: August 2009 - Pentel Sharp P205 removed and replaced by Pentel Smash Q1005. The P205 remains highly recommended.
Medium Price Range Mechanical Pencils (US $15 – 50)
Pentel Accugraph PG1505AD
Notes:-
1: November 2010 - Ohto Tasche removed and replaced by Rotring Side Knock. The Ohto Tasche remains highly recommended.
High Price Range Mechanical Pencils (US $50 – 150)
Link to List of All Reviews
SOME RULES: Only mechanical pencils that have featured on my blog are eligible for the Top Five. Featured means a review or short article. This will hopefully encourage me to review pencils that I like in the hope they will make the Top Five. Vintage and discontinued pencils are eligible, as are multi-pens that include a pencil. Of course price ranges may change over time, particularly if a pencil is discontinued or vintage – the price range listed is my estimate at the time of entry to the Top Five. Also this is a list of the Top Five for a collection, so I am giving some thought to including variety, to having a representative range of mechanical pencil types and styles. Its not the Top Five draughting pencils, or Top Five writing pencils, or...it's the Top Five in general trying to keep some sort of overall balance. But this doesn't mean that I'm deliberately including unworthy pencils just to be representative, just that its something I keep in mind. My Top Five draughting pencil list would absolutely be different to my Top Five writing pencils to my Top Five unusual designs to my Top Five....etc.
Finally, since there can be only ONE, and that’s the Pentel SG65 / Excalibur, it is excluded from the list.