In the US in the 1960s there were desks with inkwell holes, but we used fat pencils and fat colored crayons for our early elementary school work. I don't remember having to purchase any of these things (writing implements, paper, classroom supplies). We used the blue mimeograph sheets for announcements and classwork through college in the 1970s. Ink pens, number 2 pencils, they were typical but you could go to the office supply store and buy fountain pens, pen nibs, and all sorts of old fashioned supplies.

I still use a dymo embossed tape label maker (it came from my Dad's house, and he died 20 years ago). Low tech compared to the print and sticky papers electronic ones out there now. When my son was a boy he was entranced by those things, so we gave him one for xmas. Lots of things in his room got labeled and when he went away to college I got all of his leftover label tape.

I still find old office supplies around the house, and a lot of them get listed on eBay with the beginning "Vintage . . . "

By the time my children started school in the mid-1990s extensive supply lists were sent home to parents that had to be sent to school for each child. Lined paper, colored construction paper, pencils, red pens (for the teacher), glue, paint, boxes of facial tissue (for the classroom), notebooks, binders with pockets (with or without fasteners). Some stores would get the lists and post them along with pre-filled bags; others simply had all of the supplies and posted the various lists so parents could refer to them. And the school's Parent Teacher Association (PTA) would offer bags for sale that raised money for their organization (and don't get me started on the PTA - big fish in a little pond who didn't have the best sense in what really helped a school and it's students and teachers.)

I drew maps for the Forest Service many years ago, and still have some of the straight edges and proportional scales around that I used back then. I used a digitizing planimeter on a light table looking through diazo copies of maps - and every time I rested my arm on the metal edge of the light table and touched the planimeter I got a small shock. The table was warm and the diazo copies gave off ammonia fumes, giving me sinus headaches. I don't miss that part of that old technology.

Old mechanical typewriters are all the rage these days. I suppose someone is still making the ribbons?