Can You Help Identify This Cross Pen ?

[kavanagh]

Dear Colleagues,

 

Can you help identify this specific model of Cross Century.

1) Does anyone have experience of this nib in regards to smoothness and wetness?

2) It's 14K medium nib, does this put down quite a thick line or only slightly thicker than a Fine nib ?.

( not sure if made in USA or Europe / Far East - is there a difference in the nib/ materials ? )

Pictures of the links are below.

Thank you

 

https://imgur.com/ENQJyck

 

https://imgur.com/OJZOWRm

Edited January 30, 2020 by kavanagh

[Jerome Tarshis]

I own half a dozen of those pens. The model is Cross Century. It was introduced outside the United States in 1982 and in the United States in 1984, according to a hard-to-find page on the Cross Web site.

 

The medium nibs write a substantially wider line than the fine nibs for the same model. I and other users think of the fine nibs as perhaps extra-fine. That will appeal to some people more than a medium nib would. The fine nib is entirely usable but it does give a rather thin line.

 

Both nibs are commendably smooth in their different ways: the generalization is that medium nibs will seem smoother than fine nibs, other things being equal.

 

The pens were made in the United States, or at least so marked, and later also made in Ireland for a while. So far as I am aware, they are the same pens and nibs. However, there will be differences between individual nibs marked with the same letter, so not all medium nibs will write exactly the same line.

 

And none of this has any particular correspondence with the fine and medium nibs of other pens. Very little is standard in pen manufacture.

Edited January 30, 2020 by Jerome Tarshis