Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 410

Happy August! Today we're featuring a vintage fountain pen acquired by Christopher a while ago, but we haven't featured it on our club's website before so.....without further ado, we'll turn it over to Christopher!

He writes: "In February of 2016 my wife Chris and I attended the big Portland antique expo, which at the time was the largest show of its kind on the West Coast. The pickings were good and doing my cursory once through, I spotted an impressive Waterman of the old black hard chased rubber kind, sitting on its own on one of the dealers' tables. On closer inspection, I saw that it was in fact, the 54 size (which is bigger that the standard 52 Waterman, both in overall dimension and in nib size). While the Standard size of this Waterman pen line sports a 14K sold gold No.2 nib, the 54 outsizes it with a big No.4. What kind of "Wow!" was going through my mind but I thought, still there is the rest of the show to go through."

 (photo courtesy of Christopher ~ please click on image to enlarge)

"Well, I sort of forgot about this lovely as the day wore on and ended up blowing my money on vintage toy soldiers, an original Roy Rogers sheriff’s tin toy badge and various other items that were everything but pens! Then, as we were leaving the show, we passed by the table with the Waterman 54. But I will have to admit that my wallet was empty. So I turned to Chris to spot me on buying this beauty, but she blatantly refused: "My goodness Christopher, you have bought half the show out and really don’t need anything more!”

So off to our car, when Chris politely excused herself, assuring me that she needed to use the facilities and would only be but a minute. The next day, we drove back to Vancouver and for at least half of the way home, I moaned about that pen I had missed. Turn the clock forward to July 29 and there I was opening my birthday present from Chris. With the paper eagerly torn off, there was that Waterman 54 in all of its glory.

Over the years, I have grown to love this pen, and more recently when I resacked it, all the memories of its history with me came back. It is definitely a high point in my collection, and yesthe nib has lots of wonderful flex."

Thank you, Christopher, for sharing your wonderful story and this great vintage pen --actually, it's technically an "antique" as well, since it's over 100 years old-- with us :)