It’s a Parker button filler. It has an aluminium button like an AF. The cap is smooth steel with a tapered clip marked “Parker”. The nib is Canadian. The dark blue barrel has no imprint. The section is transparent.
Edit to add: Thanks for the help. It appears to be a Parker VS Mark II from the early part of 1948 before they changed to Aerometric fillers. The clear feed is from the earlier model.
Parker VS MkII.
Thank you Peter.
It also looks like a Parker VS to me. There is a short description here: http://parkerpens.net/parkervs.html. I’m not certain it’s a MKII though. As I read it, the MKII has an Aerometric filling system, while yours is a AL button filler, which would indicate it’s aMKI. I have a few of these with an AF filling system, but mine also have an aluminium part at the end of the barrel where the button fits, just like the later duofolds with AF filling system.
Hi Jan,
It’s a bit of a mixture. According to what I read, the Mark II no longer had the transparent feed which this pen has. However the filling system of the Mark II began as a button filler but changed to an Aerometric in the latter part of 1948. They changed from the aluminium button housing to plastic at some point as well.
I know what Parkerpens says but to fit in with Parker chronology the AF system would have been introduced in 1948 and the aerometric in 1951. As basically a parts pens I do not believe that Parker would have introduced a major change on the VS two years before its general adoption by the rest of the Parker range. I don’t have it to hand but I’m sure that I purchased a Canadian VS last year which had a vacumatic filling system (Mk I).
Rather than ‘Vacumatic Successor’ I suspect VS stood for ‘Vacumatic Special’, in the same way as the long Junior was called a Duofold Special. ‘Victory Successor’ doesn’t make any sense at all as they ran parallel for the life of the pen.
These are good points, Peter, but have a look at what Richard Binder says on the subject:
http://www.richardspens.com/ref/profiles/vs.htm
thanks to all – I would not have known the name of this pen. Seems it was produced for only about three years, so presumably not a pen to be found commonly, and apparently there are rare examples with g.f. caps.
Yes Deborah, looking back I am wrong. I must find the Canadian pen I bought, but fear that it will be lost for some time i.e. I have no idea which box it is in!
So yours is an early MkI which would make it 1947 (or 1946 according to Parkerpen) rather than 1948 as ‘this was changed to a more conventional black feed soon after launch’