Good: acquired a pretty little gold "REDYPOINT" pencil (S Ward / De Witt-LaFrance).
Bad: all the inner moving parts fell out.
Good: found the patent for this design with parts diagrams that would let me put it all back together.
Bad: the one part that is still securely fixed inside the pencil *must* be out in order to reassemble the pencil, and there appears to be no means of removing it without destroying the pencil.