Found - Pelikan 120 With Box And Instructions

January 28, 2020

I bought this old model Gunther Wagner Pelikan 120 awhile back. It came with box and instructions. It appears to have been used very little. I did find the remains of a very stubborn ink in the feed. The window is pretty clean.

Unfortunately this pen had one of those clear plastic collars on the nib/feed unit and it was visibly deteriorated inside the pen. Even with heat and soaking, the collar would not move. The nib and feed came right out of the collar, but the cracked collar remained glued into the pen with that very stubborn ink. I ultimately used soaking, heat, and a dental pick to latch onto the collar and spin it out of the pen. The collar came out in about 3 pieces. One of the pictures below shows the broken remains of the old collar.

I checked the piston seal and barrel for more of this nasty ink, but it does not appear to have been actually filled with the ink. The seal turned out to be perfectly good still and a little silicon grease smoothed that piston movement.

I went online and a pen supply shop in Britain is selling replacement collars made of a modern, black plastic. I ordered a couple to see how it would turn out. The collars arrived today and were a tight, but perfectly reasonable fit on the nib and feed unit. Installation was not difficult.

The feed required extended soaking and guitar string to clean. The crud came out looking like dried paint. And indeed it may have been a paint of some sort - the nib would not clean up with water. I used acetone on the nib, and the "ink" behaved like paint being stripped off. So perhaps someone dipped a barely-used Pelikan 120 in artist's ink or a paint of some sort and that clogged it up, so back into the box the pen went.

So this pen is back on track with a new collar and having been cleaned. I'm thankful the "ink"/paint did not end up in the barrel, and it was enough of a chore to clean the feed and nib.

But you can't argue with the final product. It's a really clean pen with its box and instructions still. The instructions discuss use of the pen in an airplane and "mountaineering" at low pressures. I doubt this old 120 will see many mountains these days though - but perhaps plenty of time at my office.

Edited January 28, 2020 by Ray-Vigo

January 28, 2020

Congratulations. Well done!

January 28, 2020

Congrats, you stumbled on one of the dreaded polystyrene collars that typically crack inside the pen due to age, sort of unusual as I've seen them on gold nibs (typically on the 400NN) but not on the 120 steel nibs.

The 120 is a great pen! I learned to write on this pen. It has nothing to envy from the 140 or 400s, and I just love the springy steel nibs (the only steel nib I have tried which has more springyness - I would even say flex - is a vintage Osmia steel nib.)

Your set with box and papers is really fantastic.