We had these fellas listed as ‘Lost Arrows’ originally, mainly because the big one is very similar to a Chouinard Lost Arrow, which you’ll find elsewhere in the collection. There’s a multitude of different pitons around and a host of different names to go with them. It gets more complicated when different folk use different names for the same piton. Pitons themselves are sometimes called pegs, pins and nails!

Anyway, we reckon these guys should be called ‘Leafs’ for now and we’d be pleased to hear from anyone with other names. We do know that they were all made in the Cassin factory in Italy, the progenitor being the famous mountaineer Ricardo Cassin. They are all in, pretty much, mint condition, one having the Base Camp tag of 2/9d (roughly 15p), which dates it, and probably his pals, prior to decimalisation in February 1971.