Month: December 2012

The Section And Nib Flushing Bulb

My last puzzle didn’t trouble anyone very much, though no-one guessed what I actually use it for, as opposed to what it was intended for. I might now and again blow the odd stray speck off the lens of my camera with it, but the real bane of my life is lint on dark pens and the little bellows makes a fine job of blowing that away.

DSCF8624

It somewhat resembles this thing, which is a very useful and time-saving tool. I don’t believe in knocking out nibs and feeds unless there’s a very good reason to do so. It’s never easy to re-seat a nib precisely as it should be, and some nibs – Parker Duofolds for instance, and some all-metals Wahls – can make your life quite a trial when you come to refit them. Best to leave them where they are except in cases of absolute necessity. After all, they were probably factory-fitted and those guys had the tools and the experience to do it right.

The cases of absolute necessity for me were where nib repair necessitates removal, where the nib and/or feed have become seriously displaced, or where old dried ink has totally clogged the feed. This little nib and feed flushing bulb removes the latter necessity in almost every case. A little gentle pumping gets the water moving through the feed and soon the assembly is as clean as a new pin.

Once you’ve done it a few times, knocking out a nib is an easy procedure, but as with any procedure with old pens, there’s a risk of damage, however small. Anything that minimises that risk is a bonus and it saves the time that would be spent resetting the nib too. It’s all good!

The Swan SM100/60 And The Persistence Of Black Hard Rubber

DSCF8437

The SM100/60 doesn’t stand out on the Swan range of the thirties but in its unassuming way it’s a milestone of the brand. It’s down at the bottom of the range, medium-sized, chrome plated and placed in the clerical and school area of pen sales. It’s just as well made as its more upmarket brethren, though, a sturdy and reliable pen that has lasted well through the decades, and was often fitted with exceptional nibs – flexible, stubs, broad and obliques.

DSCF8444

Though this pen has been moved from the traditional black hard rubber to celluloid, the cap and barrel are still machine-chased, perhaps the last Swan to be decorated in this way. Black hard rubber is still present in the lever, a feature unique to Swan, so far as I know. Did Swan employ BHR for the lever to use up stocks they had? Looking at the smooth outline of the barrel, I think it’s rather a carefully considered design element. Doubtless the BHR lever cost less that a chrome plated metal one but it can be argued that sitting flush with the barrel it looks better and is easier to grip than the usual filler lever.

DSCF8432

Mabie Todd Swan had a longer association with black hard rubber than any of the other British manufacturers. A decade before this pen was made, a large proportion of the range was made from this material, still holding its own among the brightly-patterned celluloid. A decade later it would be reintroduced at a time when most of the competition had given up black hard rubber, and it would sell very successfully.

The lever on this modest pen means that until the very end of production there was never a time when Swan didn’t use black hard rubber.

The Pricing Puzzle.

I’ve discussed the mystery of price in here before, but I’m going to ramble on about it again today. The reason that it’s a problem – and therefore interesting – is that there is nothing that even remotely resembles a market price for the kinds of pens I deal in. If I were to be in that part of the market that buys and sells the highest of high-cachet pens, I would have something approaching a market price to refer to for my solid gold Balances and Parker Red Giants. It would be fluid and changeable, to be sure, but provided I kept myself well informed, I’d have a ball-park figure for my sales items. For average-to-excellent run-of-the-mill Swans, Parkers, Conway Stewarts and the like, no such thing exists.

If you’re a classical economist (i.e. someone with graphs for everything and knowledge of nothing) you’ll say that the market will dictate the price. The nearest we have to a market for old pens is eBay. I’ve bought and sold in eBay for years and it doesn’t help much. The variation in price between two items as identical as seventy-year-old pens can be is enormous. Is a standard Waterman 52 with some fading and a semi-flexible nib worth £35.00 or £78.00? I don’t know, but I’ve sold those pens at both those prices in eBay this year.

This concern over prices arises from something that happened a few days ago. I’d been on the look-out for a Mentmore Supreme for a customer and I found one in eBay. Reading through the listing, I discovered that the pen, along with many others, was being sold by an online retailer of old pens. Someone like me, in fact. A little worrying, that! This retailer was selling off all his stock as he was taking down his sales website. So I went and had a look at the site, which was still up, and it didn’t take a lot of puzzling to work out why he’d gone out of business. His prices were almost beyond belief! What calculation makes a green marbled Dinkie 550 worth £100.00? Together with a pencil in a presentation box these things often fail to make £30.00 in eBay! A black Parker Moderne is worth £160.00? Fact is surely stranger than fiction, and this guy had actually been selling pens at these elevated prices. Not many, of course, probably not enough to justify his expenditure, but some.

Now I can’t tell you what a black Parker Moderne is worth (see above) but I could tell you what I’ve bought and sold them for and it’s a fraction of £160.00. In a way, it’s a worrying thing. It suggests that the commercial end of our hobby slides ever nearer to the practices of the antiques trade where dealers think of a number, double it, double it again for luck and write a price ticket. Most of the pens we deal in aren’t intrinsically valuable and you can’t make them so by wishing, hence this particular trader’s exit from the old pen marketplace. With the odd exception, they’re at the useful end of the pen spectrum, or at least that’s how many of my customers express their appreciation for pens they’ve bought.

So what’s fair? How do I determine a price? Essentially, it’s buying price plus a moderate profit to cover time, parts and fixed costs. Works for me and seems to work for my customers – long may it do so! All I’m saying, I suppose, is look around. Despite the great number of helpful and generous people there are in our hobby, these waters are not without the occasional triangular fin cutting the surface. Don’t buy the first example of the pen you want that you see. There might be a better deal around the corner.