Best Cheap Sketching Pencils

Question

What would you say is the best pack of different types of sketching pencils that is fairly cheap? (Under 15$ if possible)

Answer 1

Hi.  I've never bought them in a pack, only individually.  Pencils are graded according to hardness and softness.  "H" stands for hard, "B" stands for blackness, which you can think of as softness -- the softer the graphite, the blacker the color of the mark.  But they're also graded by numbers.  Here are the equivalents for some of the most commonly used pencils:

#1 --- B

#2 --- HB

#2½ --- F

#3 --- H

#4 --- 2H

So, "B" or "#1" is pretty soft and "H" or #3 is pretty hard.  "HB" and "F" (don't know what F stands for) are in between.  But in both hardness and softness you can go all the way to 9H (super hard) and 9B (super soft).

I've never had reason to go softer than 2 or 3B or 2 or 3H.  

For $15 you should be able to get a good number of pencils in this range.  You might also, for softer pencils, want to check out the ones that are solid graphite (no wood).  I love those.