I know Parker was into conserving materials during the war, as evidenced by their use of colored acrylics for collectors on the Vac "51"s, but I was under the impression that all of the collectors for the aeros were clear. Imagine my surpirse when I opened one of my aero "51"s for a good cleaning and found a BLACK collector! I thought maybe is was just more gunked than I thought, but sure enough, when the ink stopped flowing, and everytihng was good and dry, there it was, a black collector. Has anyone else seen this? This is a first for me, and I almost feel bad changing the pen around (I changed the hood and barrel color from black to Forest Green as the black bits needed some work, and I had some green laying around waiting on a good nib).

Opinions? Related stories?


[eidted for attrocious spelling errors]