I like a mystery. Where pens are concerned, a personalisation or some oddity of manufacture can make all the difference for me. It stops being just another Swan or Parker and becomes a pen with a personality. This particular pen has personality in spades! I assume that it started life as a rather spectacular lapis lazuli Duofold, but then something happened. It inherited a cap and blind cap that, though they fit perfectly, are clearly not Duofold parts.

Enquiries in Fountain Pen Geeks led to the conclusion that the parts were from a thrift-time pen, a Challenger perhaps, or something like that. A correspondent confidently asserted that he knew the pattern but couldn’t quite recall which model it came from. Here the mystery deepens. I’ve been through every thrift-time Parker on the web and I can’t find that pattern. There’s one that is close but no coconut. Also, it surprises me that parts from a thrift-time Parker would fit a Duofold. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. It would obviously be cheaper to use the same tooling for several pens.

How did this pen in its present state come about? Did a worker in the Parker factory put some parts together to make a unique pen? Or was it done some time later, when a pen repairer dug some parts out of his spares box to complete an otherwise useless pen? Possible, I suppose, but surely such a bizarre pen would be almost unsaleable?

Once I saw some photos of this pen I knew I had to have it. It’s the perfect oddity for me. No one else will have such a pen. It has a nice fine nib with a hint of flex – my kind of writing instrument! It has been named Jacob because of its many colours.

I expect some of you will have seen this pen before in the FPG discussion. Many thanks to Paul L.