Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I've been using these for three days now, creating greeting card art, and have experienced many more problems with these colored pencils than any other brand I have ever used. Due to mobility issues, I am happy to have the chance to re-supply from home when my art supplies run low. However, this set has not been what I had expected at all and will force me to make an arduous trip to the local art shop to get another set from another vendor. While the colors are beautiful, and the quality of the wax pencil itself is pretty good, the delivery system is just awful. So far, seventeen (!) pencils have had such off-centered cores that they are absolutely impossible to sharpen and reach the color. They worked just fine until they needed to be sharpened. Another dozen have centers that break and fall out of the pencils as you use them! I have had a less severe problem with other brands after the pencils have had tough falls off of a high drafting table to a tile floor. These have not been dropped since I have had them, so I am displeased that they are breaking apart already. The metallics break no matter what I use to sharpen them. The least pressure causes the wax "lead" to break, requiring more sharpening. After only three days of work, I have less than half a pencil of each left to work with. I would have let this issue alone, without a caveat to other shoppers, as some flawed pencils in a group of 160 is not atypical, not a catastrophe...however, this morning every single purple pencil but three has crapped out on me! I have returned to the remnants of another brand of colored wax pencils that I still have on hand, and have had no trouble completing my current project with them. I just don't have the time to wrestle with damaged pencils again and again in the middle of a series of projects. Perhaps I just lucked into a bad batch of these, but I really have not had this issue to this extent with other brands purchased here on Amazon. I would recommend using another brand offered on Amazon.