Why so few vintage Cross pens in the collector marketplace?

[Chrontius]

I know this does not qualify for this topic but I bought a Classic Century in like new condition at an antique shop for $12.00! I am not really sure why there is such an indifference for Cross pens! Next to it was an old beat to death no name FP for $30.00!

 

That 1930 Cross is absolutely amazing!

 

Picked up one on eBay for $15 plus shipping. Seems that it was sent with a rollerball cap, because it leaked like a sieve when capped. A $10 repair trip, and it came back with a silver dot inset on the cap, and working as new. It's a fairly broad 'fine' with a nice, juicy nib with just a bit of flex - this may be the best-behaved pocket pen I've run across. Just need to figure out what kind of converter it needs.

[Lsarios]

It uses the same converter as the Townsend.

[Lsarios]

And I could not agree more. The Classic Century is the easiest pen to carry all day! You don't even notice that you have it and it writes beautifully every time. I am using MBRB ink and the pen loves it!

[Garageboy]

Wait, so there were no other Cross FPs between the 30s and the 80s?

[Jerome Tarshis]

As one who lived through the Parker 51 era, I disagree that the large number of Cross fountain pens sold as gifts has discouraged collectors. If number of units sold is the measure, then the Parker 51 should be even less interesting to collectors than Cross FPs. Instead, one of the things 51 enthusiasts tell each other is that the pen sold more units than any other fountain pen. Best selling pen of all time. But far from deterring today's collector, that seems to be an argument in favor of the pen.

 

Number of units aside, there are other differences. The Cross Century FP introduced in 1982 to the world market and in 1984 to the United States market was never thought of as terrifically desirable. Somewhat desirable, yes. Fashionable, yes. But Parker advertised the 51 as the world's most wanted pen, people believed it was, and although there was a time near the end of the 51's original run when it wasn't very wanted at all, the fact is that its technical excellence combined with Parker's marketing made it more salable than any Cross fountain pen ever was.

 

I would add, parenthetically, that there were years, possibly many years, when the Sheaffer Snorkel outsold the Parker 51 in the United States though not in the entire world. Both pens were interesting, and although I enjoy writing with my Cross FP, I can't make much of a case that it's interesting in the same way as the 51 and the Snorkel were. What can be said for Cross pens, at least in the past, is that they were well manufactured. That is very different from being interesting as objects.

 

Yet another point is that Cross pens are somewhat less a big-box product in foreign countries than in the country of their origin. FPN members outside the United States are, I think, more likely to perceive a Cross fountain pen as potentially an upper-middle-class object than Americans are. At first Cross did try to position the pen that way in the United States, but those efforts subsided. As slogans go, "smart indulgence" isn't in the same universe as "the world's most wanted pen." Cross marketing was never really there in the way that marketing was there for the Vacumatic and the 51 and the 75. And various Sheaffer pens, too.

 

For whatever reasons, Waterman as well as Cross pens have been offered in large quantities in big-box office supplies retailers without, it seems, degrading the image of the Waterman brand.

 

For me it isn't only one thing that accounts for the Cross brand's lack of glamour when it comes to fountain pens. It is several things, not least the changed market for fountain pens in general. By the 1980s glamour attached itself to fountain pens that weren't sold in mass-market quantities, and Cross found itself somewhat between two stools there.

 

They were committed to moving a large number of units at a time when perceptions of fountain pens differed from what they had been during the 1940a and earlier. In the early 1980s it wasn't at all easy to get up to speed as a new fountain-pen manufacturer selling large quantities at premium prices. The Boss family has been doing the best it knows how, but mechanical pencils and ballpoint pens were the markets the company could dominate, not fountain pens.

Edited October 20, 2010 by Jerome Tarshis

[doodlebug]

Because some of us are still using them!

 

In the mid 80's I was gifted a Cross Century fountain pen with my name engraved on the cap. It is my desk pen and I have been writing with it every day for the past 25 years. It is a lovely smooth writer and it never fails me.

[Johnny Appleseed]

Wait, so there were no other Cross FPs between the 30s and the 80s?

 

I believe that is the gist of it. Cross was not a big player in the pen market from 1900 to 1980. They seem to have had a few models that come up, but they really didn't make a lot of pens. It was not until the 1980s that they dove deep and developed the market share in the pen world that they have today.

 

John

[Gundalow]

I have a 14 CT gold fountain pen marked CROSS on the cap and MABIE TODD & CO New York at the base of the barrel. The nib is Waterman's Ideal Account 14 KT. Not sure why the names of 2 different manufacturers of fountain pens are stamped on the same pen.

[Hanoi]

I find it interesting that for a company synonymous with gifting there is so little of Cross pens outside the United States. Parker and Sheaffer had manufacturing plants in Europe and Latin America so that explained these pens´ appearance around the world but what about Cross? It´s interesting to see auctions of Parker pens from Croatia and Jordan and Sheaffer pens from Uruguay and Thailand but I have yet to see a Cross from these parts of the world. Occasionally, some Cross fountain pens popped up from Canada. Indeed, there was an auction for a bunch of Sterling silver Cross fountain pens from Canada that I missed out. The price was so cheap I thought they were fake. In any case, fountain pens from America seem to be prestige products throughout much of the second half of the 20th century. They were expensive, made from the finest materials, and were technologically sophisticated for their times.

[Matlock]

I have found this thread very interesting. Here in the UK, very few Cross pens (or pencils) come up at antique sales and when they do they are usually thrown in a shoe box with an assortment of BICs, broken Parker Jotters and the like. I have managed to obtain some great Cross writing instruments for very little money this way. I recently bought a Cross Sterling Silver Century fountain pen for a very good price. It was an Irish pen in it's box with an unused converter and a box on cartridges of which one had been used and was in the pen and very dried out. The pen was almost black with tarnish and the nib unit was caked with ink. It had initials engraved on the cap (I'm not too worried about that and I could always change my name I suppose ). I gave the pen a gentle clean, the worse thing with silver is to over polish, which revealed a set of crisp Irish hallmarks. I soaked the nib unit and now have a great pen from, I would say, the early 1980s. I would think the pen had been received as a gift, used a few times and then put away in a drawer. Very sad really.

[MsBehavingHarmony]

I could use help identifying the model of this pen. My boyfriend found in the trash at work (hes a garbage man) and I'm looking to see if it's worth selling. I know it was made in the usa and was made sometime after 1967 when the toll free number was first used (see photo of user guide). The information I've seen online says there should be a copyright date on the user guide to date the pen with but for some reason I cant seem to find the date on mine.

[inkstainedruth]

I have a couple of Cross Solos (at least one of which is marked "Made in Japan").  One I bought from the estate of a friend a few years ago but had to do research first as to what style converter (push-in vs. screw-in) to know what to look for.  I liked it so much that I bought a second one, in a different color and with a different nib width at the OPS a few years ago (some guy in the hallway just before the corner had a bunch at his table, and the one I bought (bright blue with a B nib) turned out to have a converter already installed.

I also have a Cross Verve, that I bought at a thrift store for a buck.  I gather that the model was released with great fanfare (the release party was at some jazz club in NYC, IIRC) but the model tanked.  The guy who runs the mailing list for Steel City Nibs looked the model up on his tablet at a pen club meeting right after I bought it, and said that there was one on eBay for IIRC over $350 US (!) at the time in "titanium" (not sure if that was the actual barrel material or just what they called the color), and then I found one like mine but with a different nib on Montgomery Stationery's eBay store for something like $185.  But honestly?  It's got a serious design flaw -- the "two piece" nib means that it's REALLY easy to get ink all over your hands because of the gaps on either side of the feed (I keep meaning to pull it out again and try practicing holding it further up on the section to see if that works better without being awkward to write with).  So, I'm happy I ONLY paid a buck (the Solos I paid around $20 apiece for, and I would happily buy another one of those -- they came in a bunch of bright cheery colors).

Hmmm.  I should put one of them back into rotation again -- maybe the blue one... (they're lightweight and a good size for my hand -- as opposed to the Verve which was short and fat and an awkward size and shape).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

R

[Jerome Tarshis]

On 6/13/2022 at 7:50 AM, MsBehavingHarmony said:

I could use help identifying the model of this pen.

 

 

 

It is a Cross Century fountain pen. I own a handful of them. I couldn't find a copyright date on the user guide, either. 

 

The pen was introduced in the early 1980s. To be specific, introduced 1982 in foreign markets, I suppose to test the waters, and introduced 1984 in the American domestic market. Continued in manufacture at least into the early 1990s. Century II meant to replace it.

 

For me this is a very good pen. It is slimmer than the Century II, and one of the reasons why Cross brought out the Century II was that people complained that the original Century was too thin.

[Twotracker2]

On 6/13/2022 at 10:28 AM, inkstainedruth said:

I have a couple of Cross Solos (at least one of which is marked "Made in Japan").  One I bought from the estate of a friend a few years ago but had to do research first as to what style converter (push-in vs. screw-in) to know what to look for.  I liked it so much that I bought a second one, in a different color and with a different nib width at the OPS a few years ago (some guy in the hallway just before the corner had a bunch at his table, and the one I bought (bright blue with a B nib) turned out to have a converter already installed.

I also have a Cross Verve, that I bought at a thrift store for a buck.  I gather that the model was released with great fanfare (the release party was at some jazz club in NYC, IIRC) but the model tanked.  The guy who runs the mailing list for Steel City Nibs looked the model up on his tablet at a pen club meeting right after I bought it, and said that there was one on eBay for IIRC over $350 US (!) at the time in "titanium" (not sure if that was the actual barrel material or just what they called the color), and then I found one like mine but with a different nib on Montgomery Stationery's eBay store for something like $185.  But honestly?  It's got a serious design flaw -- the "two piece" nib means that it's REALLY easy to get ink all over your hands because of the gaps on either side of the feed (I keep meaning to pull it out again and try practicing holding it further up on the section to see if that works better without being awkward to write with).  So, I'm happy I ONLY paid a buck (the Solos I paid around $20 apiece for, and I would happily buy another one of those -- they came in a bunch of bright cheery colors).

Hmmm.  I should put one of them back into rotation again -- maybe the blue one... (they're lightweight and a good size for my hand -- as opposed to the Verve which was short and fat and an awkward size and shape).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

R

 

I have a trayful of Cross Solos (fountain pens, pencils, and ballpoints) and they have been the most dependable fountain pens I've ever owned. Never a bad nib, never a glitch. I might be tempted to trade over half the 50 or more fountain pens rolling around my house -- priced high and low -- right now for a few more. It must have been about 1980 or earlier when I adopted them as my standard, but I can't swear to that because I've reached the age where I can't even remember all that I've forgotten. This post reminds me how much I loved their simple, art-deco presence. It's reminded me  that they need to come back into rotation to give the great, good, bad, and downright abherent nibware I've accumulated since then, all the Pelikans, Pilots, Conklins, Waterman's, Waterfords (yes, there is a Waterford brand and we have three sets here at home, all outstanding), Auroras, Faber-Castells, Eversharps, all but useless Parker Sonnets (I call them my "Neverwrites"), Lamys, TWSBIs, JinHaos, or most refreshingly excellent Hong Dians some well-deserved rest.

 

I've a selection of the various iterations of the Cross Century models, too, and like them almost as much as the Solos. They always seemed a bit pretentious to this Midwesterner, but they all write well. I really do need to ink those pens and exercise them on a regular basis. Thanks for the reminder!