Vintage Berol Prismacolor “Limited Edition” Set

 

Berol Limited Edition set of 48 Prismacolors

This Berol Prismacolor set in the gold foil “limited edition” box was taken off my wish list a while ago because I had acquired a used, incomplete one – a good “user” set that I am, in fact, using. But I have always had doubts about whether it was in its original state. Some pencils had different logos on them, as if they had been replaced by a previous owner. (Although I know that manufacturers sometimes mix production lines when a design is in transition, surely this wouldn’t be the case with a “special” set like this.) The back of the box offers no information at all about which colors the set is supposed to contain. When I matched the colors to currently available colors, almost all are still available, so it’s not as if the color selection was “limited” in production. In what way, then, was the set “limited”? For example, how different is it from the “standard” set of 48 Prismacolors from the same era?

The second gold set I found (for a decent price – seems like the vintage Prismacolor secondary market is getting a bit softer lately) was unsealed but complete, and all pencils were unsharpened. The Berol logo and other branding are identical on all pencils. I feel confident that this set is in the same state as when it was new.

Complete, unsharpened set

The back of the box, with a 1996 trademark date, identifies Sanford (“a Newell Company”) of Bellwood, Illinois, as the maker, which is typical of Prismacolors from this era. (Berol was acquired by Empire in 1987, and Sanford acquired Empire-Berol in 1995.) Otherwise, the shiny, gold packaging is totally uninformative – no marketing information about the pencils, no color swatches, names or numbers – nothing. It’s obviously intended for “collectors” and not for general consumers.

The back of the gold box is particularly uninformative.

I also have a 1997 set of Berol-branded Prismacolors (also made by Sanford) in the standard packaging of that era. Although the back of the box does include some typical product and marketing information, its list of included colors is a very non-functional table of swatches with no color names or numbers! I compared the branding on the pencils from the two sets and also matched the colors one-to-one (this was the relaxing activity I was occupied with the other day): All the pencils and colors are identical.

Standard Berol Prismacolor set of 48

Back of standard Berol Prismacolor box

Extremely uninformative swatches with no color names or numbers.

So the answer is that nothing at all is “limited” about the set except the shiny, gold box. So if Prismacolor fans of the mid-‘90s had missed out on the 1996 “limited edition,” they only had to wait a year for an identical, standard set to be released, missing out only on the gold box. I guess that’s fair; I’ve certainly purchased contemporary sets from Caran d’Ache, for example, containing standard products that had been repackagedin some way. I wonder how consumers of that era felt about that?

The problem with being a vintage pencil collector is that even if the Internet had existed when the pencils were originally released, certainly blogging and YouTube hadn’t yet been invented. There’s no place to go to hear a buyer ranting about how all 48 of the “limited edition” colors were the same as the regular edition. We can only speculate that some were annoyed while others (like me) were thrilled to have the gold box.

Come to think of it, without blogs, YouTube and other social media for consumers to rant or rave about a “limited edition,” how did people even find out about them? And if they did happen to stumble upon them in a store, there’d be no way to excitedly “unbox” them for followers to drool over. If a box of Prismacolors falls in a forest, and there’s no one to notice that it’s a limited edition, does it make a sound?

Perhaps falling silently. . . but ahhh -- so relaxing!

Edited 1/19/24: A blog reader requested the names of the colors in this set, so I have happily obliged (what else is a colored pencil geek for except to provide public services such as this?). Amazingly, except for just two or three, all were in numerical order in the box! While I was at it, I checked the colors against Blick's current open stock listing. The only color that is no longer available is Lilac (956), which was discontinued about a year ago.

901 Indigo Blue
902 Ultramarine
903 True Blue
904 Light Cerulean Blue
905 Aquamarine
908 Dark Green
909 Grass Green
910 True Green
911 Olive Green
912 Apple Green
913 Spring Green
914 Cream
916 Canary Yellow
918 Orange
921 Pale Vermillion
992 Poppy Red
924 Crimson Red
926 Carmine Red
927 Light Peach
928 Blush Pink
929 Pink
930 Magenta
932 Violet
933 Violet Blue
935 Black
937 Tuscan Red
938 White
939 Peach
941 Light Umber
942 Yellow Ochre
943 Burnt Ochre
945 Sienna Brown
946 Dark Brown
947 Dark Umber
949 Metallic Silver
950 Metallic Gold
956 Lilac (discontinued)
989 Chartreuse
992 Light Aqua
994 Process Red
995 Mulberry
1002 Yellowed Orange
1003 Spanish Orange
1005 Limepeel
1008 Parma Violet
1011 Deco Yellow
1027 Peacock Blue
1034 Goldenrod

Edited 1/20/24: The plot thickens! My reader who was interested in the set’s colors reported that she has a set of Berol “limited edition” Prismacolors in a box that looks nearly identical to mine – with a key difference: It does not have the 1996 trademark year; in fact, it has no date at all, but was purchased in 1994 or 1995. Even more significant – her set has several colors that mine doesn’t, and mine has others that hers doesn’t! Whaaaat!? All this time I had thought this edition had been in circulation for a relatively short time, but it sounds like mine is a younger version. This makes sense in terms of the identical 1997 standard set I noted above. After taking the “limited” set off the market, Prismacolor simply transitioned the colors to the standard set of 48.

For the record, these are the colors in my reader’s set that are not in mine (there may be others, as she is missing a few):

993 Hot Pink
1007 Imperial Violet
1009 Dahlia Purple
1015 Deco Blue (discontinued)
1022 Mediterranean Blue

All of the above colors are still available except Deco Blue.

These are the colors in my set that her set does not include:

929 Pink
932 Violet
994 Process Red

1002 Yellowed Orange

I knew this set wasn’t rare, as it appears on eBay often enough. But I had no idea it had been in circulation long enough to have different selections of colors. No wonder the color names do not appear on the packaging! Was that, in fact, what made it a “limited edition” – the consumer would not know which colors they were getting? A mystery set?!

Another possibility also occurred to me: Perhaps a previous owner or the eBay seller had simply put all the pencils from a standard set of 48 and put them into the gold “limited edition” box. But that’s highly unlikely because my previous (incomplete) gold set has all the same colors as my newer set except the two it was missing (white and black).  

If any readers have related info, please comment below!

Can you see the gleam in my geeky eye?