The Palomino Golden Bear is my second review of the pencils.com Palomino pencil pack pencils. The Golden Bear pencils (GB) are in the mid-range grouping of the pack. The are available in blue and orange. Like all of the Palomino pencils the finish is crisp and perfect. the ferrule is brass with an orange stripe in the middle, on both colors of pencil. It is fitted to the pencil sturdily and without any wiggle, even after repeated use of the eraser. The blue eraser is fitted with an orange eraser and the orange pencil has a blue eraser. The erasers are okay, but not great. For sketching one will need a block or stick eraser to do a job. For just writing, the included eraser is just fine.

The GB is made of cedar and as a result sharpens easily and smells great. Using any of my sharpeners, like the KUM long point or wedge. the lead itself holds a point well. The lead is an HB so it’s a good balance of soft and hard for writing. It won’t need to be sharpened every 5 seconds of writing and drawing. The lead is a nice dark shade, but won’t give you deep darks as you draw. It gives a decent range of shades for an HB but to get true dark shades you’ll need to switch to another pencil.

This is a completely enjoyable pencil that looks great and is great to use. A 12-pack on pencils.com is about $3. Not a bad price for a pencil that performs as well as this one. The pencil was made in this US.

I purchased the pencil pack for my own use and was not compensated for this review.