Slippery ebay seller

After the first listing expired with no bids, I emailed the seller to explain that his 51 Flighter LL pencil had the wrong cap and included a link to Ernesto's pencil page.  The seller replied:  "Thanks for writing. Yes, you are correct. In 1955 the only pens PARKER called Flighter had the gold clip and band. They offered a steel with chrome trim version a few years later and named it the Jet Flighter but this pencil doesn't quite warrant that name either. I'll revise the listing accordingly."

First listing:  http://www.ebay.com/itm/131574201689

Offered for your consideration is a PARKER “51” Liquid Lead or LL pencil, USA-made in 1955. The 51 LL was a companion to PARKER’s venerable “51” fountain pen and is not very common. It’s even rarer in the all-brushed metal “Flighter” variant.

Second listing:  http://www.ebay.com/itm/131600608327

Offered for your consideration is a PARKER “51” Liquid Lead or LL pencil, USA-made in 1955. The 51 LL was a companion to PARKER’s venerable “51” fountain pen and is not very common. It’s even rarer in the all-brushed metal with chrome clip variant (identical to the "Flighter" except for there's no gold trim on the cap).

What a load of crap.

yes, I saw that "rare" pencil too, good to see that it remains unsold and that buyers are not that easily fooled. We should be grateful for the many informative websites, such as that of Ernesto.

It is incredible how people invent their own versions of otherwise well documented histories.

A year back or so, I saw a Parker 51 Vacumatic with a Parker VS cap for sale and I politely informed the seller that the cap was wrong for that pen, referring him to Ernesto's Parker 51 and Parkercollector's Parker VS websites. I received an angry mail back in which the seller outlined, half a page long, that I had no proof for my statement that the P51 was never sold with a VS cap and that his pen was an early prototype. So what else could I do than to congratulate him with his prototype pen? Luckily, also that pen remained unsold, possibly because the starting price was ridiculously high.

Yes, the lister seems convinced he has some "rare" uncataloged variant that couldn't possibly be a marriage. LOL.

What's also interesting here is that the lister claims the LL pencil was made (implying--sold) from 1955-1962. My copy of the 1961 catalog shows no LL pencils offered at all. The only remnant of LL pencils is the refills (long and short). No pencils offered at all in this catalog. This may have been a misunderstanding on the researchers part. Tony Fischier states, on his website, that "Some say the cartridges were too small and expensive, and the Liquid Lead was eventually phased out around 1962."

I buy in to the notion that Liquid Lead REFILLS were offered until about 1962 (they are in the '61 catalog) but the pencils were likely NOT offered in '61 thereafter.

Don Fluckinger insists, on Richard Binder's website, that it was offered "well into the 60's". I would invite him to provide a resource confirming this. I'll have to check my Jotter book for this when I get back home.