Every once in a blue moon, something that ordinarily gets thrown away survives by some quirk of fate. I found a stack of case sizing lube tins like the one on the left, wrapped in glassine paper and glued together with oozed-out lube; certainly some of the stickiest stuff ever made. And I should know, having cut my teeth on the good old stamp pad technique where you rolled your cases to coat them (and your hand) with lube before sizing.

I feel sad for any sunburned penguins under the alleged hole in the Ozone Layer over Antarctica, but unless civilization collapses and I have to dig out the jar of case lube I cleaned off the tins, I will go on using the spray-on case-sizing lubes.

In any case, I've never seen an ad for Lyman Size-Ezy Cartridge Sizing Lubricant, or mention of it in the Lyman Handbooks I have. I would guess from the name that it came out around the same time as the Lyman Ezy-Loader. The tins I found probably were never used up because nobody wanted to go through the sticky job of separating and cleaning them.

The other piece of ephemera is an example of the box that Lyman used to send out a handful of bullets to prospective customers. They would try these, and, if happy with them, would order the mould of that design. I found it, and the stack of lube tins, at a Gun Show where somebody was selling off an old gunsmith's odds and ends. The box, the nice, solid two piece telescoping type, had a few springs and some anonymous bits and pieces in it. I paid a dollar, mainly to get the box. Just to have it.

I can't imagine that many of them survived, although trying out bullet designs in this manner was as standard back then as making inquiries to the Internet about bullet designs is now. Unfortunately, the penciled notation of what bullets were in the box has faded out.

Attachment 202595