Artist's pencils not made in China

[steve]

I'm seeing more and more junk from China littering Amazon, and clueless amateurs giving them rave reviews. The latest category I've noticed is artist pencils.

To most non-artists, a pencil is a pencil. To a real artist, everything from lead quality to weight to wood quality to grading accuracy matters. But Amazon is starting that trend where it'll see rave reviews from amateurs and start ranking the cheap no-name products above the true professional ones. What's even sadder is that the cheap ones aren't even that much cheaper than professional ones, but as long as reviewers are spamming the reviews, Amazon doesn't know the difference.

Here is a definitive list of artist's pencils that are NOT made in China:

Faber-Castell 9000 - made in Germany
https://amzn.to/4ndywF8

Staedtler Mars Lumograph - made in Germany
https://amzn.to/4lRjl3f

Derwent Pastel Colour Pencil Sets - Made in the UK
https://amzn.to/3HRzDeL

Tombow 51523 MONO Drawing Pencil Set - Made in Vietnam
https://amzn.to/41DT6pY

Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils - Made in Mexico
https://amzn.to/3VuQ7MP

If you're artist or shopping for an aspiring artist, don't settle for imitations. These are the real deal.

[w8just1min]

Thanks for this list steve, I spent a lot of time looking through these last year for Christmas gifts. Emailed a few companies to get the details about where pencils were made, each time to be disappointed it was China.