This pencil by Eberhard Faber is another reminder that there must be hundreds (if not thousands) of great pencils that are lost to history.
The Public 2500 No. 2 is unfinished as far as I can tell, comes without a tip, and if its name is any indicator perhaps they were meant for general use.
Like some older No. 2 Mongol pencils, the lead seems closer to a modern No. 1 pencil. It writes very nicely and the barrel seems a bit thinner, similar to Faber-Castell’s Bonanza pencils.
I don’t have an exact date for these pencils, but based on the logo I would guess they are from the 1940s at the latest.
Pencils without an eraser tip could still be fitted with a removable eraser of course, such as the one featured in this 1921 stationery trade notice:
I don’t know if any of these erasers go back that far, but here is a selection of early Eberhard Faber eraser tips:
Contrapuntalism 
They look nice.
The print seems quite uneven among different pencils. I wonder whether that helps when guessing their age. I never heard of the 2500, but this version actually looks nicer than the yellow 2500 that seems to be around as well.
My first guess when reading Public was that they were made them for the government (public service), but general use seems to make more sense.
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Yes the printing is uneven, and I wonder if it might have to do with the fact that they are unfinished. As far as the name goes, I wonder how many people would be inclined to buy a pencil because of what it was called (as it relates to its use). This leads me to wonder if there was a concomitant “Private” pencil. 🙂
Wasn’t there a yellow Staedtler pencil called “Yellow Pencil” or something like that? Nothing quite like a self-referential/recursive pencil. 🙂
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These pencils look nice – I like their minimalistic design. Thank you for showing them!
Re Staedtler Yellow Pencil: Yes, there was (is?) one, namely the 134 (by the way, the ones I have are horrible).
Re self-referential/recursive pencil: My favourite is the Staedtler Noris Handwriting Pencil.
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Found a box of 6 dozen of these in the Estate of a retired teacher – consensus was they were school pencils.
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