Caran d'Ache 888 Infinite - an Affordable Swiss Mechanical Pencil - from Bleistift

A guest post from Matthias of the wonderfully geeky pencil blog Bleistift.

It's time to celebrate Mechanical Pencil Day again!

Last year I tried to focus on unusual mechanical pencils. For this year's mechanical pencil day, I want to take a closer look at affordable mechanical pencils that don't get the attention they deserve. A lot of pencil fans love most Rotrings, the Graphgear, the Promecha and more. This pencil love is great, but it sometimes feels as if a few mechanical pencils are hogging all the attention, especially when there are a lot of sub £5 and sub £10 pencils that go unnoticed - undeservedly.

The mechanical pencil in this group that I want to look at today is the Caran d'Ache 888 Infinite. For less than £5 you get a reliable workhorse that's made in Switzerland. That's not something you can say about a lot of affordable mechanical pencils.

The 888 Infinite came out just over ten years ago and is available in a wide range of friendly colours. It's your standard push button pencil. The diameter is slightly bigger than usual as you can see in the chart below. In my opinion, the grip diameter is comfortable to hold and yet not too large. The coloured main body is made from one piece of plastic which gives this pencil a happy, uncomplicated and unpretentious feel. If there's one thing I would change about this pencil it's the lead diameter. I wish it was also available in 0.5 mm, but for most people's writing 0.7 mm is a good choice.