From the Palomino Blackwing landing page on pencils.com

I read it on the Palomino Blackwing Pencils.com page, and just now on Pencil Revolution, that California Cedar has 875 dozen of their new babies being shipped to their warehouse to sell!

Although I’m excited, I am a bit confused since it looks like CalCedar has been very careful researching, testing, and announcing before they actually start putting things intro production. They’ve been asking for feedback from Blackwing fans via Twitter, Facebook, and WoodChuck even reported some of the findings on his blog. He says,

We’ve had scores of e-mails from those ready to buy the product as is now regardless of future changes we may implement, the color of eraser, finish, etc. However, it’s clear from the feedback we are getting on our surveys, blogs and e-mails that many traditional Blackwing fans expect or have a strong preference essentially for almost an exact duplication of the original Blackwing down to the finest of details. [Link]

In one Facebook thread, they asked for ideas for a new slogan to replace the original Blackwing’s “Half the Pressure, Twice the Speed”, and a few commenters (including myself) said that if they were going to replicate the Blackwing as closely as possible, they should continue with that slogan.

I’m surprised that they have already completed a production run if they have as of late been inquiring about details.

Granted, 875 dozen (10,500) isn’t a lot in the long run, but it sounded from some of their posts that they’re not finished yet. Is this a first generation, maybe? Or maybe they aren’t completely finshed (they need to put on the foilstamp, produce erasers, etc.).

Nevertheless, be prepared to see these go on sale in the next couple of weeks or so. I’m going to try to get a couple dozen — a dozen to use, and a dozen to save.