Where Would You Buy A Fountain Pen In The 30's And 40's

[TheRealMikeDr]

Curious - I'm interested in pens that were used during the WWII era. I'm wondering where the average person would go to purchase a pen in the 30's or 40's.

 

Thanks!

[OCArt]

Although I wasn't around yet I would think that most stationary stores, jewelry stores, and large department stores would've sold fountain pens. Sears and Montgomery Wards also offered them in their catalogs.

[pajaro]

Five and Dime store, drug store. For a bit better pens, office supply or a stationery store. Staples and Office Depot killed the latter. The Woolworth's and S.S. Kresge five and ten cent stores seemed to be gone by the seventies.

[alfredop]

Amazon or eBay?

 

:-)

 

Alfredo

[jar]

Most everywhere. Any clothing store or department store, almost any drug store, pen specific shops, hardware stores, feed & seed in the country. But they were also sold through Sears and Montgomery Ward and Spiegel and Eddie Bauer and J.C. Penny as well as in the ads in the back of almost every magazine and newspaper.

 

They were ubiquitous.

[Sasha Royale]

In the 1930's and 1940's and 1950's, "pen" meant "fountain pen". The stationery department at any store would carry "pens". Sears Roebuck had a nice selection. There would be "low-end" pens sold at the cash register of a drugstore. In 1968, there were lovely fountain pens, beyond my budget, in the stationer's department of Selfridge's, London, England. (before the "snooty" people changed it to "UK". )

 

I was shown a photograph of a Campbell's soup can, sitting next to a cash register. It was filled with Arnold fountain pens. There was an invoice, dated 1950, for "H.J. Epstein Co, One gross of Arnold pens. $21.50."

 

For such "pens", in year 2016, I search Ebay.

[MarcShiman]

From the Mabie Todd forum

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/296510-how-londoners-shopped-for-mabie-todd-pens/

[estie1948]

I wasn't buying any fountain pens yet, but my parents, grandparents, and relatives were and urban change occurred at a much slower rate at least into the later 1950's so that stores didn't suddenly disappear as they do today. Places that I bought pens in in the 1950's were pretty much the places my relatives bought pens and ink in at least the late 1930's and all of the 1940's. Pretty much any place that sold an envelope or post card sold pens (most gas stations sold post cards but only a few sold pens in my experience). All the five-and-dime stores (S.S. Kresge, S.H. Kress, F.W. Woolworth's and McClellan's were the ones in our city) sold pens as well as all the non-chain department stores. All the grocery stores and all the drug stores sold pens. Montgomery Ward's (jokingly called Monkey Ward's) and Sears and Roebuck (jokingly called Sears and Rareback) sold many different brands of pens as well as pens made for them by Parker and Sheaffer (Parker made pens for one of them and Sheaffer made pens for the other, I don't remember which though). The many stationary stores and all book stores sold pens as did the office supply stores. Even the men's clothing stores and ladies' stores sold pens if they sold cologne and perfume and jewelry. And yes, the jewelry stores all sold pens.

 

I don't believe you could buy a pen at any of our lumber yards, shoe stores, paint stores, veterinary supply houses, pet stores, package stores (what became liquor stores), either of the ice houses, at the theaters, cafes, diners, restaurants, butcher shops, and parts houses (what became auto supply stores). Just about any other place that sold some sort of object sold pens. It was easier in the late 1940's and the 1950's to find a new fountain pen for sale than it is today to find any kind of writing instrument including crayons. I never really thought about it before this post, but I really believe it is the truth.

 

-David (Estie).

[AL01]

From my knowledge stores like Daly's Pen Shop would be the places someone would go to buy an expensive fountain pen. Specialty stores were more common many years ago... But were there any department pen stores? (IE: Sheaffer only.)

[MKeith]

Not exactly the same dates but you get the idea. Fun to look at anyway.

 

 

http://www.shorpy.com/node/6676

 

http://www.shorpy.com/node/8277

 

http://www.shorpy.com/node/1546

 

http://www.shorpy.com/node/15204

 

http://www.shorpy.com/node/19730

[rwilsonedn]

I wonder about corner stores. Back before the Waltons realized they could become absurdly rich by destroying both small retail and light manufacturing in the USA, there were neighborhood stores scattered through residential neighborhoods all over towns. They sold groceries, hard goods that a homeowner might need on the spur of the moment, candy, and, if they were strategically placed across from a school, school supplies (and a lot more candy). I wonder if in the '30s and '40s they would have had a display of Wearevers or something of the sort, since every student would have needed a pen.

ron

[Jerome Tarshis]

Such familiar terms as "drugstore" and "stationery shop" and "office supplies shop" may require some translation for today's reader. They were far more dignified places in my childhood, in the 1940s, than they have since become, their dignity successfully attacked by chain discounting. Today's America is in some ways richer than the one I was born into, and in other ways far poorer.

 

We had some low-priced drugstores, but commonly a drugstore was a place that sold a range of merchandise, some of it rather upmarket. Fine pens were sold in drugstores, as were fine perfumes, at upmarket prices. With upmarket service, too. A pharmacist was a man of some dignity and stature in his community, who employed clerks who were themselves pretty solid people.

 

A good stationers' or a good office-supply shop or for that matter a good toy shop bore almost no resemblance to today's Walgreen's or Safeway or Costco. They sold, with much individual service, merchandise from the bottom to the top of the price range.

 

So, yes, fountain pens were sold by many kinds of retailer, but those kinds were themselves different from what we see in today's retail marketplace.

[rwilsonedn]

It's very hard to make comparisons, isn't it? Not that long ago, middle-class implied owning a home, a car, a reliable job, and perhaps a small farm or business. Those things today in many parts of the US would amount to a net worth of several millions of dollars. Today, middle-class seems to mean big college loans, gig work with little hope of a steady job, and sharing a city apartment with three or four other people. The frog never noticed the water growing warmer.

ron

[estie1948]

Such familiar terms as "drugstore" and "stationery shop" and "office supplies shop" may require some translation for today's reader. They were far more dignified places in my childhood, in the 1940s, than they have since become, their dignity successfully attacked by chain discounting. Today's America is in some ways richer than the one I was born into, and in other ways far poorer.

 

We had some low-priced drugstores, but commonly a drugstore was a place that sold a range of merchandise, some of it rather upmarket. Fine pens were sold in drugstores, as were fine perfumes, at upmarket prices. With upmarket service, too. A pharmacist was a man of some dignity and stature in his community, who employed clerks who were themselves pretty solid people.

 

A good stationers' or a good office-supply shop or for that matter a good toy shop bore almost no resemblance to today's Walgreen's or Safeway or Costco. They sold, with much individual service, merchandise from the bottom to the top of the price range.

 

So, yes, fountain pens were sold by many kinds of retailer, but those kinds were themselves different from what we see in today's retail marketplace.

Amen! Amen! And it is not a matter of looking back through rose-colored glasses, either!

 

 

It's very hard to make comparisons, isn't it? Not that long ago, middle-class implied owning a home, a car, a reliable job, and perhaps a small farm or business. Those things today in many parts of the US would amount to a net worth of several millions of dollars. Today, middle-class seems to mean big college loans, gig work with little hope of a steady job, and sharing a city apartment with three or four other people. The frog never noticed the water growing warmer.

ron

Again: Amen! Amen! Young people today with education and drive would really go places in a great way if they could only live in a time like that.

 

You are so right about the silly frog. To top it all off, as the water neared the boiling point, some slick talkers managed to convince all of us silly frogs we were better off! Such are humans . . .

 

-David (Estie).

[virgilio]

Exactly, tho this thread is verging on politics, I am afraid... and they tell me that is a no-no...

 

Here in the rural South we never really had it that good. My sisters had to work in the fields for a long, long time, just to afford a cheap dime store fountain pen, which wsa required in high chool, and only a few of the upper-class gentry in town could afford not to have a garden. Back then in South Carolina, everything had to be imported from up North at union wages. A car only cost $500 in the early fifties, but my father only made $11 a week at his job in a lumberyard. He paid for a new car every 15 years or so, out of his truck-patching money.

 

My mother never used a fountain pen in her life, after her old school broke. She made do with pencils. My father was illiterate, and never wrote much more than his name, using a borrowed pen.

 

However, people were not unhappy with their lot. No one starved, except the mill people in the 30s. When the mill shut down, they starved, or lived on hand-outs from their kinfolk.

 

When the Singers moved one of their machine-tool plants here, people began for the first time to experience what it meant for, to example, go to a supermarket for most of your food. But our new-found prosperity began to vanish when the plant was abroad, to get even cheaper wages. Today, without retirees bringing in cash, Pickens would be ghost town.

[inkstainedruth]

I was shown a photograph of a Campbell's soup can, sitting next to a cash register. It was filled with Arnold fountain pens. There was an invoice, dated 1950, for "H.J. Epstein Co, One gross of Arnold pens. $21.50."

 

Interesting. I found an inflation calculator website, and plugged in that number, and in 2016 that $21.50 would be the equivalent buying power of $215.38. Dividing 144 (a gross) into the amount on the invoice meant that the wholesale price of those pens would be approximately 15¢ each, or about a dollar and a half per pen if sold today.

I have *clearly* overpaid for the three Arnold pens I got a couple of years ago on eBay....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[penrivers]

You forget Selecciones del Readers Digest, you didn't have money, but you could see in its pages the best photos of fountain pens in the world.

[virgilio]

Uh, not to be nit-picky, but... the inflation site you mention must be using the official US gov statistics, which are known to be greatly understated.

 

For instance, in 1955 my Daddy in South Carolina bought a Ford coupe for a grand total of $550. Granted he was a good bargainer, and prices in the South were probably lower, but where today can you buy a Ford coupe for just ten times that, or $5500? The price would be more like $30,000, at least.

 

So in industrial goods the dollar in 1950 was worth at least 50 of our dollars. On the other hand, food was relatively much MORE expensive back then than it is now. A loaf of bread was around 15¢, or perhaps 1/15 to 1/20 what it is now. Overall then, the 1950 dollar was worth perhaps 30 to 40 of our dollars, not 10.

 

For example, the Sheaffer cartridge pens at $1.75 back then seemed like around $55 dollars today, and the Skripsert, their mid-range pen at $2.95, would have NOT seemed cheap to the people back then; in our money it was something like $100, and the people had to scrmp and save quite a while to buy one of them.

 

It was even worse in the US South, where wages were at most a quarter of Yankee wages. Here to afford one of those Sheaffer pens took months of careful saving and a lot of hard work.

[Parker51]

I won't Go into the political economics of the Southern U.S., but I will confirm that the phenomenon of small market towns common to the rest of the U.S. were lacking in much of the South. Thus location is important when discussing were a Fountain Pen, and which market segment that pen was sold to as well. Pens were important tools and could be status symbols. Pens were typically single items, not multiples, even in a family. My grandfather had a Parker Vacumatic with his initials on it which he rarely took out of the house, to church was about it, and my grandmother used it as well as him for correspondence, writing checks and signing Christmas cards. Otherwise, he used a pencil until the advent of cheap and reliable ball points. This was despite his actually having several Fountain Pens, including a Gold Filled Parker Lucky Curve, all of which he had been given as "Presents" for helping out a local Publisher that he didn't work for. She also I am told gave him some other "Presents". I however did not receive from him those, or the ones from his other business "friends". So, one other place to get Fountain Pens was from those that owed you a debt of gratitude. And another was to win one. Good Fountain pens sometimes were prizes both for the then ubiquitous gambling in many a bar as well as for Raffles to raise money for one cause or another.

Edited November 18, 2016 by Parker51

[TheRealMikeDr]

Thanks to everyone for their response!

 

I recently bought a Parker Challenger from 1938. A little research shows the pen was marketed as a "school pen" and retailed at $2.75. It seems to me that spending $2.75 during the depression would have been quite a luxury for a student!