I recently got a nice haul from cwpencils.com (view previous post). As it is rather difficult to come by most of the American brands here in Europe. I often buy pencils in the States. The cool thing about pencils and notebooks is that they don’t generate extra import taxes, so you just pay the pencils and the postage. If you buy more pencils in a go you logically pay less postage per pencil, so make sure to make it worthwhile. As a little service from me to you, dear reader, I’ll give you the links to my pencil-shops on the internet that I like most. Most of these will be old news for the seasoned pencil enthusiast.
There are four shops in the States that I’d like to share with you.
Jetpens is a big shop that specializes in bringing mostly Japanese writing and stationary goods to the western hemisphere. Logically that makes it also interesting for me as an European. Shopping on Japanese websites is difficult if you don’t speak Japanese. Jetpens offers a lot, their catalog is huge and as a first time visitor you will surely be overwhelmed. But they offer some handy guides in different categories to get you started. Every package I got was expertly packaged with bubble-wrap and always with a complementary eraser. Highly recommended!
A relatively young shop that opened in the wake of the success of the Erasable Podcast Facebook community (me thinks). Gary, the shop owner is an all-around nice guy, who is a pencil enthusiast through and through. The selection is not huge, but complete, with special sales items, like the sampler boxes. Packaging is outstanding, pencils come in very nice cardboard-boxes that have their uses afterwards! Highly recommended!
Another very young shop that opened in New York City, so this one also has a physical shop address. The selection is centered on pencils, new and old ones. Yes, you can get some vintage pencils here. And just look at that drool-worthy shop picture above. The pencils were also here nicely (eco-friendly) packaged with a complementary pencil and a handwritten thank-you note from the shop owner Caroline Weaver. I love it when people do this, makes everything so much more personal and loveable. Highly recommended!
http://www.brandnamepencils.com/trade/pencils-for-sale.shtml
And last but not least is Bob Truby’s vintage pencil shop, where he sells duplicates from his huge collection. Recommended!
So this are those I made business with and that I knew of. There can be others. If you know of some other addresses in the States for online pencil shopping be sure to keep me in the loop!
This series will be continued in another post with European shop addresses!
My pencils draw worlds 
Thanks for the post and for the links.
I am not sure about pencils and notebooks not generating extra import taxes.
I have ordered from Pencils.com and Jetpens.com and on all orders (except one) I ended up paying nearly as much at customs clearance than I had paid for the items I had ordered.
The thing about jetpens is that you either pay a lot extra for the priority shipping (with a track number for your order) or you go with the standard and cheaper shipping method, but then wait a long time for delivery and tracking is not an option 😦
Hm, maybe it is dependant on to which country it is sent? Maybe the tax offices of different countries handle things differently…?
I am very interested in pencils and have just found your site. It is very good, and I have really enjoyed reading it. I like your art work as well and think that you are very talented. As far as US retailers go, you might be interested in looking at http://www.nanamipaper.com. They sell some great papers, including Tomoe River products, and I’ve also bought some harder to find Japanese pencils from them such as the Mitsubishi 9800, the Hi-Tajima Carpenter pencil and the Tombow 8900. All were very reasonably priced. In case you are wondering, I do not work for the company, but think that it sells good products at reasonable prices. I hope this is useful, and keep up the great blog you have.
Thank you very much. I’ll compile all the suggestions from my readers into another post!
I looked into the page you suggested but it seems this shop is no longer active as everything is “Out of stock”… a pity, it really is a fine selection!
I think that they were on a business trip to Japan until 19th March. Check back again and it should all be working properly now
Hi. Would you know if any sites ship pencils to India? The thing is, we dont get many choices here and the local markets are just full off local brands and the occasional Staedtler’s.
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
I have no idea, you should ask them.