Winning bidder must be a lucky guy!

What a wonderful Omas; check out completed ebay item: 230264577786

I never seen one in this color before.





Cheers

Michael

My interpretation of this is that it's a Black & Bronze where the bronze component has lost its pearling effect.

Omas had a Blue & Bronze and a Green & Bronze. The Saffron Blue from the 1990s celluloid line was a recreation of the vintage Blue & Bronze. So it's plausible that they also made a Black & Bronze.

It's also plausible that what we're seeing is a damaged or discolored Blue. Can't really tell from the pictures.

In any event, the pen is a mid-size. An over-size would probably have passed hands in Italy and never seen itself pixelated on an online auction. It has an early nib so probably a mid-1930s pen.

Dear Jeff,


Many thanks for your interesting thoughts. Black & Bronze came to my mind as well after I discarded the idea of mottled hard rubber! But still Black & Bronze would be a rare color on this kind of Omas !? There is a Black & Bronze Minerva prototype on p. 99 in the Dolcini book but no Extra in this color.

Can celluloid loose its pearling effect? Never thought about that? The opaque + swirly charakter are really intersting.

Auction said that length is 130 mm (5.1 inch).

A friend of mine did bid on this pen but did not win, so chances to see this one in real life one day became very small...


Here are some additional images from the auction:








Unfortunately vintage Omas are rarely seen, even in Europe (I've never been to Italy to hunt for vintage pens - maybe I should do this one day).

Michael

Interesting question. After looking at the pics closely, I assume that this might be indeed a faded type of pearlescent celluloid. I know someone at omas and will email her about this. Maybe she's got an answer to this puzzling pen.

Oh, I wished I could afford to amass some vintage Omas pens. I dread, however, that I'll ruin myself financially. I put all my excess money away and into CDs so I won't be able to access any of it!

That is a great idea; please keep us updated.


Michael

So, if it's a mid-size pen, you have one of the "milord sized" celluloid I mentioned in another thread.

If you ever visit Madrid, check Julia Gusano's shop. She's one of the organizers of the Madrid Pen Shop, and I've seen some vintage lucens, extra lucens, and other rare birds.

http://www.tradeart.es/html/indexTradeart.html

Nevertheless, Omas are rare even in Europe.

Juan in Andalucía

I believe it was Parker that started the Pearling style. For Parker pens, they're inserts into the celluloid, extracts from fish scales. I'm not sure if all pearling is of the same technique. It's common to see faded pearling in US vintage pens. I'm not sure what the process would be that causes the fading.



In Omas nomenclature, the name Milord stems from a specific mid-size model from 1968 and isn't a catch-all term for any mid-size pen of any era. So this pen would not be a Milord. Common parlance is another matter. As long as we understand what the other is saying, it's OK.

I got an answer from a person at OMAS. I don't know if it'll be helpful though as her English seemed a bit unclear to me. Anyway, she said that this is an original Omas pen (which nobody here has doubted, I guess), and that the material has faded in the course of time. She found the price the pen achieved "interesting," whatever that was supposed to mean.