I am getting ready to post some pens and pen parts for sale on Ebay. I ran across this Lifetime Jadite pen with I think is a telephone dialer end - I had forgotten that I had it. I believe the pen is a desk pen but I can not find any information that Sheaffer put this end on desk pens. There isn't any threads to screw on a cap like Sheaffer provided on their fountain pens and its larger than the secretary's pen measuring just under 7". I have compared the end to another end of a desk pen that is the same vintage and the tapers are not even close to matching. If it had been a snapped end it would only be about 1/2 - 1/3 the size that it is and there isn't any indications that it had been tampered with.

What do you think - is it a desk pen , is that a telephone dialer and if it is is it fairly rare or common?

Thanks - Dennis

Definitely a pen that went with a desk set and from what I have seen and heard that is indeed a telephone dialer taper.

Desk pen. Amputated taper.

regards

d

Are you sure its an amputated taper? As it is now its length is fairly close to the other Sheaffer desk pens I have. If I follow the taper to a point it would add on another 2" making the pen about 9 1/4" in length which seems long for a desk pen.The longest desk pen I have in my collection now is about 7 3/4".

Did Sheaffer make different tapers for the same vintage pens? If Sheaffer made different tapers are there any useful purposes why the lengths would vary?

Dennis

I thought telephone dialers had a round ball on the end but I could not find a picture of one. One telephone dialer looked like it had an attatchment like a finger tip and I found this one which was id-ed as a phone dialer which is very much like yours but since it is a ring top, it is probably a lot shorter than yours and of course it has a threaded area for the cap.

The proportion of your taper to barrel looks to be about 1 to 1,5 while the one pictured below, I estimate is 1 to 2

Click to view attachment

I just measured the barrel and end of taper using a caliper. The ratio is actually 1 to 1.87 - leaning towards the 1:2 ratio. It appearts that the two different tapered ends have different lengths.The desk pen taper appears longer when you look at the proportions of the two tapers. If it is a telephone dialer on a desk pen, then I take it that its not very common and one that I should hold on to?

i can't answer your question. I don't know anything about dialers. I thought they were very different so I just did a search and found this one which is similar and thought I'd show you what I found.

Desk pen. Amputated taper.

regards

d

Your desk pen most certainly has a broken taper. Desk pens were never made as "dialers" (Sheaffer would say short quill as in the case of the J74TR shown by ANM - BTW this is the only documented model though, there are balance "dialers"). There are large desk pens and with a broken taper it would compare as similar in size to the shorter models which might lead you to believe this is some sort of "dialer" variant. However, this is simply not the case - merely a broken taper.

Roger W.

One of my longest Sheaffer desk pens is 8 3/8 and a shorter one would be 7 1/8 and these both have perfect tapers - so there is some variation in lengths. This was just from observation of a few specific pens and not measuring all of the 200+ Sheaffer desk pens on hand.