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What Constitutes A "vintage" Pen?


NewPenMan

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I guess if you're 12 years old, something from the 1990's could seem vintage. On Craigslist, I get a chuckle at the "Vintage Typewriter" ads which turn out to be for electric machines, often Selectrics, or even memory card machines!

 

Maybe the Duofold is absolutely, clearly a vintage pen. Parker 75? Pens from the 60s? 70s? Up through the 19XX's?

 

What's the cutoff in the family of fountain pen lovers?

 

I personally don't care much about "collectibility" in terms of pens commanding several months' pay and being objects of investment. I like vintage/old-school because it's beautiful and because it often works as well or better than things made now.

Thank you for any thoughts on this. I suppose it's another eye of the beholder issue, as are so many things.

 

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Edited by NewPenMan

Franklin-Christoph Stabilis 66 and Pocket 40: both with Matsuyama CI | Karas Kustoms Aluminum, Daniel Smith CI | Italix Parson's Essential and Freshman's Notator | Pilot Prera | Pilot Metropolitan | Lamy Safari, 1.1mm italic | Muji "Round Aluminum Pen" | Waterman Phileas | Noodler's Konrad | Nemosine Singularity 0.6mm stub | ASA Nauka, acrylic and ebonite | Gama Hawk | Wality Airmail | Noodlers Ahab | TWSBI GO | Noodlers Charlie | Pilot Plumix |

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German pens I divide up by nib....semi-flex and 'flexi'/maxi-semi-flex '30's-50-65 = vintage. MB out to the '80's in a nice regular flex.....It took me a while to get a set of '50's-80's nibs in MB. Considering LOM, luck

 

I don't chase the '70's pens, too many spade nibs. I was not willing to risk nails. No one brags his, semi-flex spade nib.....even if I know some were....too much chance on a nail.

Why buy a vintage nail, when one can get a nice modern used nail? Cheap.

 

'70-80's-97 semi-vintage...nibs with nice 'true' regular flex nibs.

 

Modern...MB after '80 has 'springy' nibs...to now. Springy has good tine bend, but less tine spread.

 

Pelikan after '97 has blobby semi-nails outside the 200 nib which is as good as my semi-vintage '90's M400 and Celebry pens.

Edited by Bo Bo Olson

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Technically Vintage as a term to describe collectible items (such as pens) is incorrect usage. The only PROPER use for vintage is in describing a wine and must be used with a year. Such as 2001 vintage. The word has been hijacked by sellers of used/older items and as such has no real clear meaning or definition unlike antique which has a more specific meaning (usually over 25 years old for automobiles and over 100 for furniture.)

 

Short answer is vintage = old or used, but can mean whatever a seller wants it to. In terms of pens I tent to think of vintage as pre 70s. But YMMV.

Jim Couch

Portland, OR

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Some answers I've seen from other people:

 

  • Older than me.
  • Twenty-five years.
  • Fifty years.
  • Some other number of years.
  • The whole use of the term vintage is wrong. By analogy with its origin in showing the year in which a wine was produced, all pens are "vintage". A pen made this year would be "vintage 2015". If you want to talk about an old, no longer made pen, perhaps antique would be a better term.

There's no official answer. I wouldn't call my Waterman Kultur (early 2000s), Sheaffer School Pen (I have a 1990s model), or Montblanc Noblesse (late 1970s) vintage pens, but it would be hard to give a completely convincing reason why. Those models are all discontinued, but that's not enough. The pens in my collection that I generally think of as vintage are mostly 1950s or earlier, but I suppose something as recent as my Sheaffer IV Imperial TD filler has a vintage character for me even though I think it's from the early 1970s. Cartridge fillers just don't seem "vintage" to me, but they have been around since the 1960s at least, so it's hard to say that the older ones don't belong.

 

To me, an interesting vintage pen has a noticeably different character from a modern one; without that, I don't care whether it's vintage or not. The things that make a vintage pen interesting to me are old materials (vintage celluloid or BCHR), old filling systems, and nibs of a kind that are hard to find on affordable, everyday pens made today.

"So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do."

 

- Benjamin Franklin

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Hi !

 

No definitive answer, huh ? I came here with the same answer several years ago.

The answer that I choose to use is "A vintage fountain pen is one that is older than PAKMAN."

(formerly PAKMANPONY) I accept that it is true because he says so.

 

This is one of many subjective, quantitative terms, such as "good", "cheap", "sexy", etc.

 

I know. You would have liked a definitive answer. You will have to choose one

that you like, and make it yours. How about "Old and worth more than the original price"?

For me, the "cut-off" is >>> They stop makin' 'em, but I still want one.

 

 

Your obedient servant,

 

Sasha Royale Payne Ian Diaz

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Zum Augenblicke dürft ich sagen:
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actually, no..my world view is that "black and white" exists only in rhetoric. I'm not wanting to nail down that pens between these dates are vintage; else not.

 

"Older than me" works, and if you're 10 yrs old, 25, or 89 yrs old, "Older than me" harkens to a time before you walked the earth...

 

...which is why some people view the 1989 Memory Writer as "vintage," since they were born in 1997; to them, 1989 is Olden Tymes.

Edited by NewPenMan

Franklin-Christoph Stabilis 66 and Pocket 40: both with Matsuyama CI | Karas Kustoms Aluminum, Daniel Smith CI | Italix Parson's Essential and Freshman's Notator | Pilot Prera | Pilot Metropolitan | Lamy Safari, 1.1mm italic | Muji "Round Aluminum Pen" | Waterman Phileas | Noodler's Konrad | Nemosine Singularity 0.6mm stub | ASA Nauka, acrylic and ebonite | Gama Hawk | Wality Airmail | Noodlers Ahab | TWSBI GO | Noodlers Charlie | Pilot Plumix |

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This is a question best avoided, much like quantum physics.

 

BUT, I think it depends a lot on the pen. I rate a 1949 Parker "51" as a modern pen, but a 1948 still gets to be vintage because of its filler, while any model of 1951 Waterman is almost certainly vintage in its nature. Some of the high-end eyedropper confections from Japan I come very close to thinking of as vintage... except they're too young. A Waterman 52 is intensely vintage, regardless of when in that model's long career it was made. I don't know if a Sheaffer Targa can even get around to being vintage.

 

I get a little mystic sometimes....

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There is no right answer, but I'll go with a pen that is out of production and/or made before ball points took over.

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Some of people will restrict the "vintage" label to pens made before the ballpoint era, the Golden Age of fountain pens -- no later than the 1950s. I've sometimes referred to 1960s and 1970s pens as "semi-vintage".

 

Another way of looking at it might, if it's old enough for NOS pens to be effectively gone, then it's vintage.

 

As the years add up, it does begin to seem a bit odd for a 30 year old pen to not count as "vintage". When I got into fountain pens in the 1980s, people were already griping about how you couldn't get flexible nibs anymore. The gold nibs I got then were more flexible than the new ones I see today! The first new pens I bought were a Reform Czar and a US-made Sheaffer, both of which sound like ancient history now. Are they "vintage" yet? I dunno. :wacko:

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very interesting...many of the answers I am reading here seem "right," yet there is no single "right" answer.

Franklin-Christoph Stabilis 66 and Pocket 40: both with Matsuyama CI | Karas Kustoms Aluminum, Daniel Smith CI | Italix Parson's Essential and Freshman's Notator | Pilot Prera | Pilot Metropolitan | Lamy Safari, 1.1mm italic | Muji "Round Aluminum Pen" | Waterman Phileas | Noodler's Konrad | Nemosine Singularity 0.6mm stub | ASA Nauka, acrylic and ebonite | Gama Hawk | Wality Airmail | Noodlers Ahab | TWSBI GO | Noodlers Charlie | Pilot Plumix |

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There is no one right answer, as everyone else says. Personally, I lean towards the older than I am definition.

"Science fiction is an existential metaphor, that allows us to tell stories about the human condition. Isaac Asimov once said: 'Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

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Starting with Parker 51 and ending with Sheaffer Targa, they are modern classics. Before the P51 we`re talking vintage and after Targa they`re just contemporary pens.

Edited by rochester21
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I just purchased a Montblanc 146 from 1970. It's 45 years old. Is it vintage? It's still being made and other than a two tone nib, looks identical to the new ones. To me it's just a 45 year old pen that looks new and a bit of a boring writer. I'm not even amazed that it still works. I have no answer.

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I usually call a pen 'vintage' if it was made in the days before cheap ballpoints when the fountain pen was an item used by everybody rather than the luxury item it is advertised as in today's market. >1965ish

Parker 51 Aerometric (F), Sheaffer Snorkel Clipper (PdAg F), Sheaffer Snorkel Statesman (M), red striated Sheaffer Balance Jr. (XF), Sheaffer Snorkel Statesman desk set (M), Reform 1745 (F), Jinhao x450 (M), Parker Vector (F), Pilot 78g (F), Pilot Metropolitan (M), Esterbrook LJ (9555 F), Sheaffer No-Nonsense calligraphy set (F, M, B Italic), Sheaffer School Pen (M), Sheaffer Touchdown Cadet (M), Sheaffer Fineline (341 F), Baoer 388 (F), Wearever lever-filler (M).

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So, not strictly informed by year or timeline, but in relation to other things, which affect the perception of said item's "vintageness"

 

I can grok that..

Edited by NewPenMan

Franklin-Christoph Stabilis 66 and Pocket 40: both with Matsuyama CI | Karas Kustoms Aluminum, Daniel Smith CI | Italix Parson's Essential and Freshman's Notator | Pilot Prera | Pilot Metropolitan | Lamy Safari, 1.1mm italic | Muji "Round Aluminum Pen" | Waterman Phileas | Noodler's Konrad | Nemosine Singularity 0.6mm stub | ASA Nauka, acrylic and ebonite | Gama Hawk | Wality Airmail | Noodlers Ahab | TWSBI GO | Noodlers Charlie | Pilot Plumix |

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Starting with Parker 51 and ending with Sheaffer Targa, they are modern classics. Before the P51 we`re talking vintage and after Targa they`re just contemporary pens.

I'll go with that.

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I just purchased a Montblanc 146 from 1970. It's 45 years old. Is it vintage?

Not to me.

Edited by Charles Rice
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Hi,

 

Hmmm...

 

I use a rule of thumb that vintage pens are those made in the era prior to the general availability of cartridge/converter pens, and the popular use of ballpoint pens - as reflected in the uptake of the disposable consumer item, and the downturn of the extended [lifetime] warranty.

 

One friend thought that it was much more recent - when the major currencies were taken off the gold standard - making gold-nibbed pens more of a luxury item than previously. Using that as a guide, one can include the 'modern classics' such as the Parker 75 in the vintage category.

 

Bye,

S1

Edited by Sandy1

The only time you have too much fuel is when you're on fire.

 

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