Yes, but on the other hand it's nice to have a shorter list of forums to browse... and the traffic is not yet that terrific to distract...

Well, finally after a week spent away for business I went home and found it.
I polished the cap and I must say it's a lovely pen.

Here are a couple of pics made yesterday evening after the TLC.





Ciao, Andrea

with all your parkers (not that they'd all fit here), this is what you need, david:

http://cgi.ebay.com/...2#ht_789wt_1033

5K$ is a fair price considering the included cat. Too bad it's pick up only.

Do you mean the line: "Fabric:Metal"?

That said, these are hard to find clean. The surface is fragile, and most show scratches or loss of plating.

Yes, that's what I am afraid of. The seller, answering a precise question on this matter, replyed: “The cap is, slightly, age blemished. What I mean, is that, it's not mint.” We will see when it arrives home. By the way the amount of money invested was reasonable (34£).

I have perhaps three more sitting about now during my pursuit of another 150-200 Parker 51's for what I hope to be a winter "round 2" offering of this venerable series.

When do you plan to release this new batch? It sounds promising, I mean: two hundred P51...

The reddish Burgundy is grossly more scarce than USA Burgundy (and, I'm not sure British Parker ever made conventional Burgundy)

I have an English burgundy that is dark like a cordovan brown. Of course sun tan can always be blamed but I think the answer is yes, British Parker made conventional Burgundy in addition to the "redder" Burgundy.

While David is no doubt correct about US v English production my guess is that the output from Newhaven would have been quiet high given that the market would have included a lot of English Commonwealth countries like Australia, New Zealand, India, South Africa as well as the Middle East and South East Asia and that Mabie Todd was out of the market during the war years ( and never recovered properly from it either)

I agree, the outout of P51 on ebay.co.uk is impressive...

Best, Andrea

Hello guys. Yesterday I won this P51 on ebay.





It is a common English teal blue aerometric. The distinguishing characteristic is the cap. Has the “R. Silver Made in England” engrave and it is made of rolled sliver with a GF clip. The Shepherd book claims that this is the most researched of all the English variants, but how scarce it is? Did you ever seen one?

Thank you and ciao, Andrea

I just received the pen from this eBay auction. The words Sheaffer, Balance, Autograph and OS do not appear in the auction title so I don't think it attracted as much attention as it would have if listed properly. It certainly didn't go unnoticed but I feel like I got it for a pretty fair price. Can anybody tell me what the standard price range is for one of these? Did I do OK?

The pen arrived in excellent condition as described and I was surprised to find that the vac-filler works perfectly. The only flaws to mention are some minor scratches on the cap, otherwise it is super clean. It was very cool to get the original papers with the pen which show it was purchased 11/26/35.

I tried to do a bit of research before I bought the pen but could not find any pictures of black Autograph Balances with the visualated barrel. I read somewhere that this was typical of the vac-fil pens but it is the first I have seen. How common are these pens?

Thanks,
Woody

Wow Woody, this is an exceptional find for the price, congrats!

The 1936 catalog list your pen with a 18$ price regardless of the filling mechanism. I think that the fact that now the Vac fill pens are more scarce than the lever fill of the same period is due to the higher reliability of the latter. Too bad because now new restoration techniques makes easier to repair and use them.

Ciao, Andrea

Hi Andrea,

I must agree on most of the points raised by you. Although for the sake of correctness the Snork dosen't have a breather tube, the delivery of the ink to the feed being similiar to an ordinary saced pen, the real difference is in the delivery of the ink from the tube to the tip.

I stand corrected, thank you Hugh. My mistake, too many tubes and gaskets in a single pen...

Andrea

I am afraid there are no good news for Nettuno pens.
After purchasing the brand from Firma in early 2007 Aurora did not come out with a single new pen. The website is closed ever since. The only "novelty" that was launched under the Aurora management for the Firma brand was a rebranded Barracuda (a former Nettuno model, now called Cube)...

I remain with the following claims:

1) No one has offered fresh evidence that Sheaffer's Snork (TD, etc) offers consistently drier and finer point than pens of other makes, which is the only thing that would give them better word count than other pens with equal sac size and still probably not better word count than pens with much larger sac size.

2) I have noted wet writing broad point Snorks and ultra fine dry writing "other bigger pens" and I have seen the opposite. I find it is the ink capacity of the pen and the particular-to-the-given-pen wetness and point width that drives word count, not the brand name.

3) I remain with difficulty figuring why the intrinsic "Snorkel-ness" of a pen would contribute to random specimens writing longer than random examples of pens with heftier sacs.

I think this thing has blown to mythic proportions due to Frank's emphatic nature back in the day. I want to hear some actual evidence about the pens.

regards

-d

Can’t you just wait for 25-something years till I’ll be retired?

I stand by your points as quoted above, with the exception of the third (which is the more vague btw). I’ll try to put down better my points to see if we could agree.

My claims are:

• When assessing the performance of a pen, it’s important to measure how long the fill last (i.e. the so call “word count”) and therefore it is interesting to make some speculation on what pen could write more based on its characteristics;
• The Word Count is influenced by several factors, some of them are controllable, like point grade and the amount of ink stored, and others are not controllable (more on those later). Therefore it is impossible to come up with a valid rule (true for any instance of similar pens), but it is possible to predict which set up is more “ink efficient” or to justify some (even non-scientific) test that came with some non-expected result (like Frank’s test, in defense of whom we must agree that 1) he was a fair and honest person, even if he has some preference for Snorks he tried to work with a set of equal test conditions (nib grade, regular ink flow, same ink, paper and user…), 2) he had a long experience in pens, so we must concede that he not only wanted but even was able to create those equal test conditions, with the obvious limit of the empiric experiment; 3) the Snork did not win the test);

Now, the following is the list of the above mentioned factors, with a reference (in brackets) to the Sheaffer’s Vac-Fill vs. P51/Snork argument.

• Inefficient ink delivery system. As Hugh pointed out before, the 40’s Sheaffer’s still relied on an old generation simple feeder. The “younger” pens all had breather tubes (51 and Snork), collectors (51), and sacs (51 Aero and Snork) which better compensate for the ink loss when writing ensuring an even flow during the writing experience;
• Open/hooded nib. As I said before, (in my opinion) an open nib is more prone to evaporation both during the long writing sessions and when the pen is left for a long time unused (even capped; my Sheaffer’s FT all require some work in the morning to work as expected). In this case I believe there must be considered that a Triumph nib is somewhat in between an Open nib and a full hooded nib. (No big difference between Snork and Vac Fill here but clear advantage for P51). P.S. David is speculating less than 2% my guess is higher but…
• Ink temperature. Ink is a fluid, the more heated the fluid is, the more flowing it will be. The more flowing the more wet it will result the point, increasing the amount of ink left on paper, and more ink will go to the feed, increasing the evaporation rate. Anyhow this is bad because the pen can be adjusted for optimal flow only at one given ink temperature at times. So if the pen is adjusted for the “cold” ink it will not work optimally when the ink is warm and if it is adjusted for a warm ink, it will not work optimally when the ink is cold. Now the celluloid piston fill pens are prone to increase the ink temperature in long writing session because of the direct contact between the warmth of the hand and the liquid, only mediated by the celluloid that is a good conductor of warmth and thinner (compared to the polymethyl methacrylate resin used in 51 Vacs);

Finally:

• Do all P51 will outlast all Sheaffer’s VacFill? No
• Do all P51 will outlast all Sheaffer’s VacFill once granted that the nib grade is the same and the ink flow is as expected (standard for the pen)? No
• Do some P51 will outlast some Sheaffer’s VacFill once granted that the nib grade is the same and the ink flow is as expected (standard for the pen)? Yes, it is possible
• Will I provide some evidence for this? Yes, in 25 years or something

Agreed?

Ciao, Andrea

I'm with Hugh here.

David is right when claiming that in a clean separated laboratory environment, when all others factors are the same, ink capacity is the key for the "word count" battle. I would even add that is an self-evident truth.

But Hugh is right in assessing that ink capacity is only one (albeit the most important and evident) of the factors that influence this particular performance (# of travels to the inkwell) of a pen. And this is even more true when considering the normal use of a pen in the real world, rather than an unlikely laboratory test.

I have one winning example that can be used: hooded nibs.

Assuming two identical pens (same ink capacity, same feed, same ink storage device) with the only difference being the nib, open in one case and hooded in the other case, and assuming same writing conditions (e.g. one person copying same text over same papers with same ink), then my speculation is that the hooded nibbed pen will write more words than the other simply because the share of the total ink used for writing on paper is higer. In the open nibbed pen the evaporation of the ink while on the feed will decrease the percentage of ink that will indeed write on paper.

I am so convinced by this speculation of mine that I am even ready to test it personally.... when I'll be retired!

Beautiful write up.


As a side note, I wonder if there was some new patent or innovation to show up in the filling mech...
It is a bit surprising that Sheaffer created a demo around 1947 for a level filler, a system that was well established for decades. They had at the same time the plunger fill that was more new and appealing for such a model (considering that the goal of the demonstrator was to show to customer how the inner mech works and not to be sold). The lever fill system was intended to appeal to a more conservative base of customers (e.g. in 1949 the lever fill is available for some models only in black) that I believe knew very well how a lever pen worked.

Ins't that strange?

Ciao Giuseppe. It does look promising here... happy to see another known face.

Very happy for this new Board! Greetings to everybody. Saluti a tutti, Giuseppe

Best of luck to all the people involved in this new adventure.
It's a nice sensation, I feel like I'm meeting old friends again.
I will read you diligently and I'll try to be as less noisy as I can.

Ciao, diplomat