The Wing Sung produced Sheaffer

[OldGriz]

It does have a breather tube, and I think it is fair to call a squeeze filler with a breather tube an aerometric.

John

 

NOPE, to be an aerometric it must not only have a breather tube, but the breather tube MUST have a small hole just below the section to equalize air pressure.

Lots of pens have breather tubes and are not aerometrics....

[HerosNSuch]

The simplest way to understand this is that the seller is misrepresenting the pens. They aren't Sheaffers, they are copies/imitations/knockoffs, the pen equivalent of the fake Rolex. Maybe somebody should report the seller to eBay.

 

The seller should be reported for stating that these were made through an agreement with Sheaffer. That is a blatent falsehood.

 

However, the pens themselves are imitations/knockoffs, but not fakes. They clearly have WingSung branding and do not claim to be Sheaffer's. They use the Triumph nib design, but the design patent expired on that in the late 1950s, so it is fair game.

 

The pen is inspired by the TM Triumph Sheaffer's model, but it is far away from the original design:

- has a snap cap

- has a plastic window

- is cartridge filler

(emphasis mine)

 

I believe they are actually filled by an integrated squeeze-filler. I have one of these in my "waiting to be inked" stash, but I have not tried it yet. I confess that I was really eyeing the marbelled versions of these that were for sale at Isellpens.com -but not for 33 euros.

 

While the design is an imitation of the vac-filler and touchdown era of Triumph-nibbed pens, Sheaffer produced other pens with Triumph nibs, including cartridge-filled variants. They produced a Cartridge Pen with a steel Triumph nib, as well as the 777 with a 14K Triumph and the LadySkripsert and Skripsert pens with Triumph nibs. I happen to have (in my pocket at the moment) a lovely chrome-plated, cart-filled Sheaffer with a steel Triumph nib that is somewhere in the quasi-imperial/skripsert era - not really sure what model Sheaffer called it.

 

John

 

Some have a cart piercer but the good(ish) ones have a squeeze filler permanently affixed.

 

[Johnny Appleseed]

It does have a breather tube, and I think it is fair to call a squeeze filler with a breather tube an aerometric.

John

 

NOPE, to be an aerometric it must not only have a breather tube, but the breather tube MUST have a small hole just below the section to equalize air pressure.

Lots of pens have breather tubes and are not aerometrics....

 

That is not a concensus view in the pen community. It is a position championed by Richard Binder, but far from concensus. It may be technically correct, and the community may come to accept that narrow a definition, but until that time it is fair for a seller to use the term as it has been used by pen collectors. I think David Nishimura's comments on the subject are worth some merit:

 

Richard Binder does have a point in attempting to restrict usage of "Aerometric" or "Aero-metric" to describe fillers with vented breather tubes only, inasmuch as we don't really have a handy alternative monicker for such filling systems. Aside from the fact that collectors have been referring to squeeze-fillers as Aerometrics for a long time, if we adopted Richard's usage we would still have to come up with a term to denote squeeze-fillers with breather tubes (or we'd just have to call them, "squeeze-fillers with breather tubes").

 

For my part, I'm inclined to use "squeeze-fillers" as the superclass, with "Aerometrics" as a subset denoting squeeze-fillers with breather tubes. Richard's narrowest definition of "Aerometric" has its merits, but is ultimately of very limited utility: the extra-hole refinement is peculiar to 51s of a certain era, and since all such pens have that feature, a special term is hardly needed -- at least in ordinary commerce and discourse.

from - Aerometric fillers.

 

John

 

 

 

[bob_hayden]

Wing Sung made many different models with this nib, many of which look nothing like any Sheaffer. AFAIK all these were made before Wing Sung folded in the 1990s. It is certainly possible that Wing Sung made some kind of agreement with Sheaffer to avoid legal tangles re the nib back then but I doubt any of these pens were sold as Sheaffers anywhere in the world (except eBay Italy[-) You can still find a few on eBay today, such as the Wing Sung 235. I owned several with this nib and did not like any of them. Certainly no match for the nibs on Sheaffer Dollar pens.

 

The Wing Sung factory is gone and replaced with housing. Hero bought out what was left of the company. The pen inventory went to the former workers and thence to eBay. "Wing Sung" pens of the last 20 years have been pens made by other companies and have no real connection with the original pens, much as the last Hudsons and Packards were really Nashes and Studebakers with a new label. I have "real" Wing Sungs I like and newer pens called "Wing Sungs" (or "WingS) that I like but the two families bear no resemblance.

[fabri00]

I do not think there are agreements among chinese pen manufacturers and others.

Simply as there is no IP right implemented in China, they can make copie sof what they want, from parker to sheaffer, lamy, and so on.

The quality of those "similar pens" manufactured in China is substantially lower then the original ones, therefore I do not think the production is made in China under license, or any other agreement.

They are just copies.

[bob_hayden]

You may well be right, but sometimes these stories do contain a grain of truth. Certainly in recent times it has not been unusual for a Chinese firm to start making things for a Western one, whether for sale in the West or only in the Asian market, and then begin manufacturing very similar products to sell under its own brand name. One example might be the Proton audio gear that looks a lot like the stuff the British firm NAD had made under license in Asia. Another is the Lenovo laptops that replaced IBM's. IBM had earlier outsourced production of their laptops to Lenovo, then sold that business to them. The current Lenovo laptops do not have anything like the reputation the old ones made under the supervision of IBM do. I am not saying they are bad -- just no longer the cut above the competition they once were.

 

But we may never know as it is hard even for those living in China to find out what is really going on there;-) From time to time people who do or have lived there share info here at FPN. Other than that, we can only speculate.

[fabri00]

Bob, for electronics is s different story, as all the western companies produces in China since at least 20 years.

And in fact you don't find a nad amplifier or a Lenovo pc sold for 50 euros.

I also agree that some western pen companies produce today in China.

My point is that all Chinese pens you find on market today for extremely low price and resembling or inspired to western pens, are not produced under license, but just counterfited

Or copied.