amk

I'd never realised the Osmia logo changed - presumably a redesign over the years? It would be interesting to track down exactly when it changed - I'm assuming the simple lozenge without a border was the earliest, and the other two are later?

It was a beauty - I was very tempted, but I've bought too many nice pens recently and had to let it go.

The Valentine story intrigues me. It seems very similar to what Parker tried to do with Osmia and Olsen - though in the case of Osmia the venture was a failure - I wonder why?.(Was it Parker who walked or Osmia which ended the relationship?)

I particularly like the Valentine candystripe pens - stunning celluloids. Unfortunately they usually sell beyond my ebay budget. I'm hoping to catch one in the wild some time like I did my first year P51.

Are there other examples of Parker taking stakes in existing pen makers, in other countries? or licence arrangements?

Reviving an old thread, but there's a Kaolo pen on ebay.fr at the moment with its original papers - featuring a prominent palm tree and claiming it as 'Le stylo des pays chauds", the hot-countries' pen. It's a safety pen (à plume rentrante) and is marketed as not leaking 'even in an aeroplane'. It also boasts of being made entirely of ebonite, which together with the typography suggests a date considerably later than the heyday of the ebonite pen and indeed the safety pen. It's obviously an export product.

There seem to be two different senses of the word 'vintage', as used (1) by fountain pen users and collectors, and (2) by ebay sellers.

(1) We're having an interesting debate here. I wonder if most of us haven't defined the word to ourselves, but we still have opinions on what is and isn't 'vintage'? For instance I feel that Parker 51 is vintage and Parker 45 isn't. Or Waterman... no, the Laureat isn't vintage. In the latter case because I remember buying the Laureat new, but I'm not sure why I have that feeling about Parkers.

(2) 'Vintage' means 'I don't know how I came to have this strange pen I know nothing about, but I'd like a lot of money for it.' cf 'rare'.