Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 285 (part 2 of 4)

(Continuing Lawrence's unboxing/review of his new fountain pen, the Graf von Faber-Castell 'Fountain Pen of the Year 2008' - part 1 was posted here ... )

Lawrence: "So I kind of explored this over-the-top box to see if it's as "impractical" as I think it is...."

(all photos courtesy of Lawrence ~ please click on images to enlarge)

"So the "pen holder" is some sort of flimsy plastic. The other part with the 2008 thing is solid plastic (with the 2008 plaque made of some polymer). You can see that the top compartment can be potentially repurposed for other things.
I have no intention of using this box and I have promptly put it back to its double packaging and then back into the cabinet for safe-keeping.
Now on to the pen itself.....
The pen came in a smaller box that looks like this: "

"It is enough to protect the pen from shipping I guess. But we can see that the pen is definitely not meant to be sold in this box (like I mentioned before, I will take a guess and elaborate more later).
The pen, once taken out, is beautiful to behold."

"The wood inlays are apparently done by hand and very difficult to do, I can appreciate that. The inlays are made of Satinwood. There is a historical / sentimental choice for using this wood. The word satin visually describes the glowing effect on the barrel. The cap has the company coat of arms."

"The end cap (which unscrews to reveal the actual piston) has a gemstone on it, a citrine (my birthstone for November...I guess it updates...I remember it being topaz...anyway, this is a bonus as I did not know about citrine, only that I like the color)."

"The piston once the cap is off: "

"The pen uncapped:"

We'll continue with parts 3 & 4 of Lawrence's review on Wednesday (Nov. 17) !

Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 285 (part 1 of 4)

The year 2008 saw many exciting events -- the XXIX Summer Olympics in Beijing, Barack Obama winning the U.S. Presidential election...and the release of this gorgeous fountain pen, recently acquired by our fellow Vancouver Pen Club member, Lawrence! It's part of its manufacturer's Pen of the Year series (started in 2003), which features an annual release of a Limited Edition fountain pen of historical significance. 

Lawrence was kind enough to include photos of the actual unboxing of his beautiful new pen, so we'll break his review into four parts---parts 1 & 2 today and parts 3 & 4 on Wednesday.
So, without further ado, let's turn it over to Lawrence...

(all photos courtesy of Lawrence ~ please click on images to enlarge)

 Lawrence: "As promised, I'm sending the review / pictures of the POY (Pen of the Year). This will be in few parts as I have taken tons of photos for this.

Basically, I will start with the unboxing of the "box" (I opened it for the first time for this photoshoot so it's actually my first time seeing the box for the pen). Here goes....

So the box came in a box in another box (inception...) :"

Box 1

 

Box 2

The real box:

"The packaging seems rather ridiculous, but I think there may be a reason for this (which I will take a guess at later on). So it's a wooden box, with two compartments one for the pen: "

"And a smaller drawer for the pamphlet explaining how beautiful and awesome the pen is blah...blah..."

(Lawrence's review is continued in part 2 ...)

Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 284

Acquired a few weeks ago from a great seller on eBay -- the September 1960 issue of  'National Geographic', with this wonderful Sheaffer 'PFM' (Pen for Men) ad on the back cover:

(~all photos by Maja ~ please click on photos to enlarge~)

(To see super-sized images of photos: left-click on photo, then right-click & select "Open image in new tab" /"View image", then left-click on image in the newly-opened tab)

Look familiar? :)

For more information on Sheaffer's famous 'Pen for Men' fountain pen, check out Richard Binder's excellent write-up on it---Profile: Sheaffer’s PFM

Many thanks to eBayer 'gpickles04' (Gord) for his excellent customer service!
~Maja

Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 283

In honour of Remembrance Day, I took some photos of a recent acquisition - a vintage Sheaffer's doctors/nurses set - with my husband's grandfather's WWII medals and his grandfather's uncle's WWI memorial plaque:

(~ please click on images to enlarge~)

Large bronze memorial plaques like this one were given to the next-of-kin of all British Empire service personnel who died as a result of World War I. It is said that 1,355,000 of these plaques were issued. This plaque was given to the family of my husband's grandfather's uncle, who was in the Royal Navy and perished in 1917 at the age of 24.

These war medals were given to my husband's maternal grandfather, who enlisted in WWII at the tender age of eighteen. He served aboard several destroyers in the Royal Canadian Navy.

Now, let's take a little closer look at this nice vintage Sheaffer set (which I acquired from a seller in Nova Scotia, via eBay), which consists of a fountain pen and matching mechanical pencil...

I'm not sure if it's a vintage Sheaffer doctors set or a nurses set because it didn't come with its original packaging, but a doctors set in this particular model was mentioned on Penhero.com. The pen's filling mechanism is definitely Sheaffer's Touchdown-filling mechanism, and this one is the "Tip-Dip" version which doesn't require that the entire nib be submerged in the ink bottle (which, in turn, made for less-messy filling). The 'Tip-Dip' filling system was used in Sheaffer 'Cadet' and 'Craftsman' fountain pens from 1953 to around 1963.

Mine is a Sheaffer Touchdown 'Cadet' set made of white injection-molded plastic, but the pen's nib has an open Sheaffer 14K gold nib (marked 'Made in Canada" and "33") and 'Cadet' models only came with stainless steel nibs. Because of this, I suspect the pen is a 'Cadet' with an upgraded 14k nib. The Penhero article (link above) mentions that early 'Cadet' pens had black sections but later ones had matching sections, so mine appears to be one of the later versions. 

I haven't been able to find any advertising for Sheaffer doctor/nurse sets, but I came across a few photos of them online. Complete sets consisted of: a white fountain pen with matching white mechanical pencil, and a thermometer encased in what looks like the fountain pen body (also white).  

The pencil in my 'Cadet' set is very slim, but elegant, and uses a twist-action to propel and retract the lead inside. The fountain pen's nib-trim mismatch doesn't bother me at all--it's still a lovely pen...and it's part of a set that seems quite difficult to find--I've only found three similar sets/pens online (including fellow VPCer Christopher's Sheaffer 'Admiral' nurses fountain pen featured here on our blog). There's a bit of pitting to the pencil's clip, and the pen has a couple of very small cracks near its clip; otherwise, my set is in very good shape. All in all, a great find from Eastern Canada, and one I'm extremely pleased to have in my vintage Sheaffer collection.

(~ photos & review by Maja ~)

Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 282

First, the backstory to this one....

Back in the day, I owned a Taccia 'Doric' fountain pen. It was a lovely, large modern fountain pen made of a beautiful striated blue resin...but I had an issue with its grip section. With its intricate engravings, the section looked great, but it was made of a thick metal which made the pen a lot heavier than I liked... so I traded it away to a really nice guy on Pentrace (who, in turn, sent me a lovely fountain pen to add to my Think pen collection). I loved the Think pen I got in trade, but still thought about the Taccia once in a while, and wished that it had had a different section, because it was such a great pen otherwise...

Flash forward six and a half years later  --  I see a Taccia fountain pen for sale on Pentrace that looks like a Taccia 'Doric', but it has lacks the metal cap band and has a resin section....a matching resin section! Why I didn't jump on that sale right away, I'll never know (ok, it's because I really wanted to buy the seller's modern Parker 'Duofold' first ;) but a few months (!) later, I finally contacted the seller and asked if he still had the Taccia for sale. I didn't expect him to answer "Yes"...but he did! I quickly bought the pen from him and it arrived, safe and sound.

Meet my new Taccia 'Premier' "Swisher Pens" Special Edition fountain pen ...

(~please click on images to enlarge~)

It's a gorgeous flat-topped fountain pen in a creamy resin with coffee-coloured streaks, giving it a sort of woodgrain effect. At 14.5 cm capped, it's fairly large but uncapped, it's about 12.8 cm long, which I find is the perfect size to use unposted  (so I actually don't post this pen). If you do choose to post it, it comes in at a whopping 17.5 cm in length, but it's not heavy--according to my digital kitchen scale, it weighs 28 grams with no converter or cartridge in place. Its section diameter is 0.5 inches / 1.25 cm at its widest point, which makes for a comfy grip for my hand.

 
There was at least one other 'Premier'  Limited Edition made for Swisher Pens and it had olive/black/white stripes (called "Mint Green", I believe) with a matching section. I don't know the official name for the material my pen was made of but I love it! (and I love the matching section, a design feature I really, really like)

(above: the Swisher Pens imprint on the barrel)

Swisher Pens was a pen store (brick & mortar and online) located in Virginia Beach, VA that was known for its great selection, prices and customer service. Sadly, the business shut down in 2011. I'd bought several pens from Chuck Swisher over the years (starting from the earliest days of my pen-collecting hobby), but I never knew that he had Taccia special edition pens made for his pen shop until I saw this one for sale last year. The fact that I wound up acquiring a pen made for a pen seller I liked and respected makes this pen even more special to me.

Like the Taccia 'Doric', the Taccia 'Premier' has a clip jewel that you could spot a mile away :) The two Taccia models shared the same clip shape, but the 'Doric' clip is a ruthenium (dark grey) one, whereas the 'Premier' clip is polished chrome.

Its nib is an ordinary IPG (Iridium Point Germany) monotone steel nib in Medium that writes well, but I really wish it had the Taccia name engraved on it, especially with it being a special edition. I shouldn't complain too much, though, since I found this wonderful fountain pen purely by accident...and so many years after trading away its cousin. I love using it and am proud to have it in my pen collection.

Many thanks to Doug Vicary (who posts as "Doug" on Pentrace's famous "green board" , its sales board) for selling me this great fountain pen, and for his excellent customer service over the years. And a belated congratulations to Pentrace (the first pen community I ever joined) on its 21st birthday last month; I met a lot of good pen friends there, and it's still a great place to talk (and buy ;) pens.

(~ photos & review by Maja ~)

Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 281

 A few days ago, we featured a beautiful Benu fountain pen belonging to Jessica, and today we have more pen "eye candy" for you, also courtesy of Jessica! It's a lovely fountain pen made by a new pen company based in Italy and...well, let's let Jessica tell the story of how she came across it...

Jessica: "I first learned about the Gioia fountain pens through Stephen Brown’s YouTube channel, sbrebrown (Don’t you just love the intro to all his reviews?) The pen he showed was the Gioia Partenope. I pretty much fell in love with the Gioia brand immediately. Based in Naples, I believe they started producing commercially in 2020. Gioia means joy in Italian and boy do they ever bring it! 😄

Anyway, fast forward a few weeks after that fateful YouTube review, 😂 I found out that Gioia was launching the Alleria. Immediately, I got in touch with Kirk Speer and begged him to order it for me and put my favourite cursive italic grind on it. (Little teaser, I may have a new favourite grind now!)

After waiting a few more weeks for the pre-sale to be over, I promptly forgot about it. 😳 Then on a rainy Thursday afternoon, I received my pen. As soon as I saw that it was from Pen Realm, my heart skipped a beat and the package was ripped open...."

(all photos courtesy of Jessica ~ please click on images to enlarge)

"Behold, my beautiful Joy in all her glory. From the ruthenium hardware to the mesmerizing pearly blue resin (minus the glitter I might add!), I knew I had to ink it right away! Of course, two days prior, I had rearranged my bottles of ink and the perfect blue shade of Waterman Mysterious Blue was nowhere to be seen. I lost patience so I inked it with Noodler’s Squeteague Teal. 🤷🏻‍♀️ "

"The Alleria has a piston filling system and a steel nib. Mr. Speer from Pen Realm did a tremendous job on the cursive italic grind on the original broad nib."

"(And just look at that marvelous sunburst engraving!)"

  "I had no doubt the writing experience would be stellar "

"The barrel’s just the teensiest large in my hand. The widest point is about 15.6mm. I must say that a piston filling system normally wouldn’t be my first choice if the pen wasn’t a demonstrator, but when you’re in love, 🥰 you overlook certain little “imperfections.” 😆

"My pen seems to have been numbered. This isn’t a limited edition pen though so I’m not sure what the number on the barrel means. My photos are taken under artificial lighting so the colour appears to be a cool, deeper blue. In person it is a more muted medium blue with a warm undertone."

What a gorgeous pen...and what a great nib on it! Our thanks to Jessica for letting us shop vicariously for pens through her recent purchases! 😉

Fountain Pen Day 2021! (Friday November 5th)

Celebrating the 10th anniversary of Fountain Pen Day!

From the official website (now FountainPenDay.com) :

"Taking place on the first Friday in November each year, Fountain Pen Day is celebrated by enthusiasts worldwide as a time to embrace, promote, and share the use of fountain pens."

(Discounts, giveaways and promos listed here!)

Enjoy your fountain pens on this special day...and every day! 😀

Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 280

Happy Fountain Pen Day!

As mentioned in my little Hallowe'en blog post, I'm a huge fan of orange fountain pens...and here's the latest one I added to my collection:

(~please click on photos to enlarge~)

I got this Elliot Landes / Penmakers resin fountain pen on eBay after I stumbled across it completely by accident (while searching for orange fountain pens :D) I'd never heard of the manufacturer before, but I instantly fell in love with its orange and black swirly resin material. The pen had a very low opening bid and reasonable shipping rates from the U.S, so I placed a single low bid on it (the lone bid, it turned out) and won it.

The colour pattern of the material reminds of my beloved Monteverde 'Prima' fountain pen and ballpoint (although the latter have some white streaks in their resin). Being a medium-sized resin fountain pen, it's not heavy--the weight of the pen (without any cartridge/converter in it) is approximately 19 grams, only a couple of grams more than a Lamy 'Safari' fountain pen.

I found some photos of the rollerball version of my fountain pen (in the same material), but it had a different clip. Despite my extensive online searches, I haven't been able to find any other resin fountain pens or rollerballs made by this manufacturer (the company specialized in wooden writing instruments), so I'm wondering if my fountain pen and its rollerball cousin were prototypes ??

Initially, I couldn't find much information about their maker, either (aside from their old website and some info indicating the company was formed in 1975 and went out of business around 2011) as my pen didn't come with any packaging. I eventually found some online images of the pamphlet that came with their wooden pens, though, and it said: "Elliot Landes has been making writing instruments for 20 years. The Penmakers studio is located in Winters, California, a small town on the west edge of the Sacramento Valley. The business includes several craftspeople that share the design and craft work."

You can't see it from this angle, but the back of the section's trim ring has some wear/corrosion to it, something that's not uncommon in fountain pens with plated metal section trim rings (see these two threads on FPN and Reddit). The damage isn't visible while using the pen, of course, but I thought I'd mention it as some pen people I know steer clear of fountain pens with those type of trim rings.

Approximate measurements: the capped length of the pen is 14 cm / 5.5 inches, uncapped it's 12.5 cm / 5.95 inches and posted, it's 14.5 cm / 5.75 inches long. The cap is friction-fit and snaps on with an audible click. It posts well and deeply, so it's well-balanced when posted, and there's no fear of the cap coming off during normal use. The squiggly clip (best seen in the first photo*) is made of metal and painted black, like the cap ring.

(*Tip: to see even better close-ups of the photos, left-click on a photo to enlarge it, then right-click & select "Open image in new tab" (or "View image"), then left-click on the image in the newly-opened tab)

I fully expected the pen to come with an IPG (Iridium Plated Gold) nib, but the nib it came with was made by Reform, a German company! The Reform nib is a two-tone gold-plated steel nib and it writes well, with some feedback (which I like). Its nib width isn't marked, but it writes like a Medium-Fine.

All in all, a fortuitous eBay find of an unusual pen by a small pen manufacturer, and one I'm very happy with!

(~ photos & review by Maja~ )

Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 279

As promised, we're back to our regular (alternate-day) online "show & tell", and today we're shining a spotlight on a gorgeous modern fountain pen belonging to Jessica!

(all photos courtesy of Jessica ~ please click on images to enlarge)

Jessica writes: "Just sending you some photos of a somewhat new pen. It’s another Benu. It’s called the Bourbon in their Euphoria line."

"Previously they came out with one called Vodka on the rocks and this is the follow up. So if you know Benu, then you know they are mostly known for the glittered look. Well, with the Bourbon (and Vodka on the rocks previously), they definitely pushed the limit. But really, is there such a thing as “too much” glitter? 😉"

"So the inspiration behind this design is, you guessed it, a nice smooth glass of aged bourbon. It happens to be my favourite poison so naturally when I saw it, there was no doubt it would join my growing line up of glitter pens. 🤩"

"Benu uses Schmidt nibs and can we please just take a moment and appreciate that fact. Schmidt’s aren’t fancy but in my few short months of using the Schmidt nibs and fountain pens altogether, I find them delightful."

"All mine wrote right out of the box, western sized points and wet. (Amazing with sheening inks!) So I am grateful that Benu uses them, which in my opinion also keeps their prices reasonable to a certain degree."

"Sure, there are many more economical, excellent everyday writers but, come on..."

" ... just look at all that glitter!!! 😂"

Jessica adds: "The photos are mostly taken with artificial lighting and the shine is unfortunately hard to capture. Also, this pen is actually more amber in person but appears more golden in the photos interestingly enough." (note: the first two photos were taken in natural light, which, Jessica says, made them "a little more sparkly I think 😄")

This is the fourth Benu fountain pen we've featured in our online "show & tell" since we started it in April 2020, and I suspect it won't be the last :) Many thanks to Jessica for sharing her beautiful Benu with us!

The origin of the Rotring 700 product line

In lieu of a "Newest Acquisitions (Virtual 'Show & Tell')" blog post, I thought we'd kick off the month of November with this impressive, well-researched article about the origin of the Rotring '700' product line, courtesy of Vancouver Pen Club member Anthony. Many thanks to Anthony for sharing it with us!




We'll resume our online "show & tell" on Wednesday, so if any of our pen club members have any new pen-related acquisitions they'd like to share here on our club's blog, please send them in! (thanks in advance :)