As enthusiastic as I am about working through my backlog of Thai pencils and vintage thrift-store finds, I understand that reviews of exotic products mean little if we haven’t looked closely at a few more mundane benchmarks to rate them against. So today I want to take a look at a pencil that checks all of the boxes when you think “classic pencil”: the General’s Supreme 550.

A little backstory on where I found these guys. As you know, I’m always on the lookout for new types of pencil to test out, and keep brainstorming for new places to look. A campus bookstore seemed like a reasonable enough place, and the other day I happened to be in the U-Med District for some personal business with a little time to kill (funny side-story: I misread my watch and left work, drove across town, paid for hourly parking, and sat in the waiting room for my therapy appointment without realizing that I was an hour early), so I swung by the University of Alaska Anchorage bookstore.

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