72 Color Chalk Pastel Pencils in Tin Box — 2-Layer Blister Tray

At 72 colors you are no longer selling a set, you are selling a studio case, and the buyers who order them — art material distributors, art school procurement, premium gift retail — judge the format on two things: whether the full range is visible when the lid opens, and whether every pencil arrives unbroken. Both are packaging problems before they are pigment problems, and this set is built around that.

A 72-color range removes substitution. The extended palette carries the pale tints, warm and cool grays, earth tones, and skin-tone steps that a 24 or 36 set forces the artist to approximate by blending, and chalk pastel work depends on those in-between tones more than any other dry medium because the pigment goes down broad and unmixed. The set is arranged across two layers of 36 so the range stays navigable instead of becoming a wall of color: the lower layer sits under the upper like a stack of trays, and each layer reads as a working row while the tin is open.

The tray is the engineering that matters most here. Every pencil sits in its own molded cavity in a two-layer blister — 36 pencils per layer — so the set cannot shift inside the tin in transit. A soft 4mm chalk pastel core is the most breakage-prone core in a wooden pencil, and at 72 count a few millimeters of movement during shipping turns into a returned set. Separating the pencils also keeps them from rubbing against each other, so barrels and color dips arrive clean rather than scuffed. The tin is the rigid outer shell over that tray: crush resistance for pallet freight, and a case the end user keeps on the desk.

The barrels are natural-finish cedar, chosen for the sharpening behavior a soft core demands — cedar cuts cleanly and holds a point without tearing the pastel — with an end dip in the matching color so each pencil is identifiable from either layer of the tray. Cedar is the traditional premium pencil wood and typically costs two to three times basswood, which places this set in artist, gift, and institutional programs rather than school volume; the species comparison is in our basswood vs poplar vs cedar guide. Barrels are kiln-dried to 8–12% moisture content and cut to 17.6cm with a 7.5mm diameter to keep the 4mm core centered through climate changes in storage.

Documentation matches what art retail and institutional buyers have to file: FSC Chain-of-Custody (Chain-of-Custody code ESTS-COC-251233, verifiable at info.fsc.org) covering the wood sourcing, CE marking with EN71-3 heavy-metal testing, REACH SVHC screening, and ISO 9001:2015 quality management. MOQ is a 2,000-set minimum, and production lead time is 30–35 days. OEM customization covers tin print, tray layout, color sequence, and palette selection. For wider category guidance, see sourcing color pencils for European retail.

Samples of the 72-color set and its tray are available for retail review and freight testing. Send your target market, retail price point, and required color count for a quotation.