I've picked up some interesting Sheaffer ephemera over the years. For years I didn't know what a Magic Lantern Slide was until Don Lavin ran across a few Sheaffer slides and turned me on to them. As I recall, he was at a show somewhere away from Chicago and called me to see if I would be interested in a few of them that were being offered at the show. Since I knew nothing about them, and had never seen one, I naturally said yes. My thanks to Don for all his help.
I then learned that these Magic Lantern Slides were shown using a Magic Lantern Projector and were generally used as advertising pieces for local retail merchants at intermissions during movies when reels were being changed. All the slides that I have are 3.25" x 4" framed glass. I've since picked up about 20 different slides for different Sheaffer products and different pen/pencil sellers who did the advertising. The last that I found was probably 8 years ago on Ebay in a collection of about 50 different slides for a wide variety of products. Attached is a photo of one of the slides.
I took some of the slides to the Raleigh show for a bit of show and tell. I'm going to have to pick David's and Don's brains for how best to take photos of these slides so they can be shown to a wider audience. I took this photo by just setting the slide on a window frame this afternoon and using an iPhone for the shot.
Best,
Pat