A Trustworthy Place To Purchase A Parker Vector?

[ElderOrc]

I am new to the fountain pen community, and I have only purchased one pen before, the Jinhao x750. I bought this pen on gouletpens.com, seeing their YouTube videos and other people buying from them made me decide they were a trustworthy retailer. I am looking for a Parker Vector for my next pen. However, gouletpen.com does not carry Parker pens, I cannot find any Parker Vectors on the Parker website, and there are none at my local office supply stores. What is a trustworthy retailer I can buy the Parker Vector from?

[DigitalMedievalist]

I'd go with Amazon, personally.

[qvxb]

Try ipenstore.com

 

http://www.ipenstore.com/vector/

[inkstainedruth]

A lot of my Vectors are older ones, and I've gotten them on eBay. Nearly all of mine are UK made ones, except for one that was NOS, still in its original blister pack -- that one was made in the US.

I believe these days new Vectors are made in India for Parker by a company called Luxor, and the pens may also be now called the Beta model.

I don't know the size of a Jinhao x750, but you should know that Vectors are really skinny pens compared to some brands and models. That may affect your decision somewhat. I LOVE mine, but I would, for instance, not be using that slim a pen for writing the great American novel....

Parkers take proprietary cartridges. You will not be able to use the ones from your Jinhao (which take International Standard cartridges (I just checked). Also, I prefer the twist converters to the slide ones, because I think they're easier to use, but you have to make sure to get the slimmer model converter. Also, even with the slide converters, the ones with the coil inside the chamber are harder to flush out, IMO, but with the ones with the ball agitator the ball can block the hole while you're flushing the converter out.

Hope this helps.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

ETA: Don't remember who all I've bought Vectors from on eBay, but I've bought pens at least twice from a seller in the Netherlands, m9199, and had good experiences. Well, okay, I good experiences from the seller: eBay OTOH, not so much. They didn't quite grok the concept of buying multiple items from a listing in a 2nd Chance offer (the original auction winner didn't read the part where you were bidding on ONE pen, not all five); but there was no functional way to do a 2nd Chance (at my next-highest bid amount) when I wanted several of the colors. The seller had to pull the listing, and relist it as a BiN (at my price), after we spent most of the day messaging each other going "WTH is the matter with eBay's IT people? Why can't I get this to work? This really should NOT be this difficult!"

Edited October 3, 2017 by inkstainedruth

[mitto]

I have lately bought a few current production brand new 'Made In France' Vectors from local stationary stores for my nephews. But to be honest I don't remember what were the date codes on these pens.

 

Edited to add:

All the pens were stainless steel bodied (flighter version).

Edited October 3, 2017 by mitto

[Mike 59]

In the UK, our food supermarkets always seem to have Vectors for sale, and have done for as long as I can remember, as long as you like black or blue pens with a medium nib.

Late last year I bought a cobalt blue, medium nib version with the idea of sending it in to Parker to get a 'fine' nib exchange.

The pen was made in France, 2016. The nib exchange took about three weeks, the pen was returned with an extra blue cartridge plus a slide converter, made in UK. It writes well, the only fine nibbed Vector I own.

The Vector (and Jotter f.p.) have not been shown on the Parker website for a couple of years now.

Up until spring this year we had Staples office supplies, which always had the Vector in stock.

The stores have now been renamed 'Office Outlet' but the Vectors (and other Parkers) are still on sale there.

Edited October 4, 2017 by Mike 59