About a month ago I purchased several of the limited edition brown tortoise M400 sets in person at a Kaufhof Galeria store in Germany. Previously I read that these could no longer be found and that the prices have skyrocketted. As a precaution, I shipped a couple of sets back to the U.S. by mail in case my luggage got lost on the return. As soon as I got back from Europe I left on business for two weeks and just this evening had a chance to look at the pens. What I saw took me by surprise.

These pens do not look like the ones that are pictured on the Internet. They do not have the gold trim rings between the barrel and blind cap nor at the end of the section. The bottom of the cap has a single gold band instead of the dual band. Also the top of the cap is rounded without the gold ring and has the pelikan design in gold. The top of the cap is shaped like the German Telekom edition.

These look more like older 400s, not a smaller version of the M800 tortoise, except they are all brand new and were purchased from the source.

Another anomaly: I read that the sets came only with matching medium ballpoint pens. I was able to find one set with the matching pencil.

I had planned to keep a couple for myself and sell the others. They certainly are pretty cool, but I am not sure what's going on here.

I will try to post pictures this weekend.

Maybe someone can shed some light on this.

Bill

[edited for typo]

Based on your description, you may have purchased set of M200 pen instead of M400. If the pen nib is gold, the set is M250. I might be wrong but the dome cap should not come with single band at the bottom cap. The single cap band at the bottom cap should come with the black coloured crown cap (with silk screen pelikan logo instead of the engraved logo). Perhaps, some pelikan experts here can confirm on this.

p/s how much does it cost you for the set, btw?

It may very well be an older 400.
There has been a thread about this pen before.
I don't know exactly how old it is.
On mine the writing on the cap band says GERMANY, not W Germany, so it must have been made after German reunification.

see: http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...rt=#entry560266

It's hard to say what you have there without an image. As suggested, it could be M250s or the normal M400.

But I can confirm that the sets that I am offering are not at all widely available and were made only in limited numbers in 2004.

Hi,

Would be interested to see pictures, I know they also made a Tortoise version of the M200/M250 and it was the old style with the domed top, I didn't think they had made any of the 400 size with a domed top, but then I am a Pelikan user rather than an expert.

Andy

An image would definitely help resolve the matter but it sounds similar to the M250 version that Levenger used to carry.


Greg~

I've knocked out some quick and dirty photos. They show both versions. The top one was purchased online in December. The bottom one was purchased in Germany last month.

Please note that the nib on the top one is not the original. I've been using the pen and recently swapped the nib out for the M200 EF nib shown. The original nib is the typical two-toned 14K.

There is also a photo of part of the box markings. The sets were in the standard blue presentation boxes with blue outer box. I have yet to dig out the box from the set I bought in December to compare labeling with the ones I bought in person.

The original price of the sets as shown on the box markings as well as the store display tags was 320 Euro, but they were substantially discounted.

Bill

If it had a different cap, it could be the old style M400 (before 1997). But the cap looks like the cap of an M200 and indeed Pelikan produced an M200 which looked like your pen and this one has become rather rare. However, the nib of your pen does not look like the nib of an M200 but like the nib of an M400.

I don't know, but maybe yours could be an export model of the old-style M400, since there have been some export models which look different to the pens they sell in Germany. Sometimes Kaufhof sells such export models in Germany. But this is just a guess.

Hi,

From memory Martin who posts as twdpens has one of the Tortoise 200/250, I think he posted a picture of it once, but can't find it, maybe he will pick up on ths post and repost the picture, as I am pretty sure it looked like yours.

Found a link to a pic, not Martin's but a good close second

http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...c=42377&hl=

Andy

Edited to add link

That pic you refer to may be mine, here it is again, one of my three tortoise M2xx(two M200s, one M250). All have single cap bands and domed derbies. The Kaufhof Galeria set looks like a switcheroo where a 200 was substituted for the M400 but the two-tone nib was installed. Or possibly a cap swap. Weird, I'll admit. I never before heard of a 400 without a gold colored crown, sorry.

Here's one of mine, this one's got a bit of a twist!



--Doug

That thought crossed my mind. I can come up with all kinds of scenarios, such as these FPs were placed into the LE sets after the companion M400s were sold separately. Of course, that does not explain how they would have mint vintage pens in the first place. Or were they an unpublished run by Pelikan for KG? The research continues...

Bill

You are correct. My pen is the same as in DougS's picture and therefore the same as the second pen in Bill's shot. It is definitely an M200 as the box is stamped as such (although an M250 version may have been "officially" produced). Mine came as a M/K set from Regina. BTW, any M200 can be upgraded to M250 specification by changing the nib.

The pen at the top of Bill's picture is an early current style M400. These were featured on www.pelikan.de until around the turn of the century although it was difficult to find this colour.

Martin

The phrase turn of the century made it sound ancient, until I realized it was only a few years back, that's what happens when you were born in roughly the middle of the last century I suppose. At least my memory is reasonably intact about who owned the Tortoise 200.

Andy

In our local Galeria Kaufhof, I've seen them both in their displays (but haven't bought any). The upper, modern M400/K400 set was sold only during a short period of time for Euro 99 and never reappeared since then (was that 2 years ago? I'm unsure).
The lower "old style" version is available every now and then, currently for Euro 129, and is indeed a FP/MP combo of the same colour.
The blue "export only" M605 is also available there every now and then for Euro 99.