Dating Montblanc 149s

[Keyless Works]

There is a 149 I am interested in. The seller has the date pegged at 1959. It is an 18C tri color nib with a round ebonite feed gooves face and shank and a threaded piston. Does this sound right? I can't quite tell from the two different charts I've seen.

[bunnspecial]

42 minutes ago, Keyless Works said:

There is a 149 I am interested in. The seller has the date pegged at 1959. It is an 18C tri color nib with a round ebonite feed gooves face and shank and a threaded piston. Does this sound right? I can't quite tell from the two different charts I've seen.

I was under the impression that 1959 would still be celluloid. It should also have the telescopic piston.

 

With that said, if it's resin and truly 1959 it will definitely be a very early resin pen and I'd expect it to look like one. That means a friction fit piston and also the lip at the end of the section should be thin.

 

If the piston is screw in but it's a 1-piece barrel which also has a thicker lip at the edge of the section. The 60s barrels are not the sturdiest around and I've seen more than a few 60s nibs transplanted into a screw-in piston body. I have one now that I bought for its nice soft 14C tri-tone nib and somehow I overlooked the later barrel when I looked at the photos. Aside from the end-of-section profile, if you look at screw in piston 149 the trim ring(where the piston goes into the body) has an almost perfectly straight profile and is more or less flush from the body up through the turning knob. This same ring is "rounded" under the knob on friction pistons.

[stoen]

3 minutes ago, bunnspecial said:

I was under the impression that 1959 would still be celluloid. It should also have the telescopic piston.

I’ve learned that MB manufactured celluloid pens until 1962. The telescopic pistons were discontinued with discontinuation of celluloid bodies.

I’ve seen no resin 149s rarlier than 1962. Earliest resin 149s had friction-fit mechanisms.

 

9 minutes ago, bunnspecial said:

That means a friction fit piston and also the lip at the end of the section should be thin.

The section lip in the 1962 “friction fit mechanism” 149s is not thinner than the section lip in the 1967-82 “screw-in mechanism” 149s.

 

1 hour ago, Keyless Works said:

round ebonite feed gooves face and shank

AFAIK, in 1959 MB still installed ski-slope feeds.

 

Further on, a 1959 149 should have “149” and nib grade written on the mechanism turning knob.

 

If this is what you see when you unscrew the turning knob, then your pen is most likely from late sixties, early seventies.

 

Hope this can help.

[Keyless Works]

Here are the pictures of it:

 

Based on this chart, it seems like it could be 1959-early 60s if this chart is correct and the details the seller gave me are correct.

I

 

[stoen]

According to the pictures, your pen looks like a first series of resin made 149 (please, also observe the clear striped ink window!), with friction fit mechanism, which existed on the first-hand market between 1962 and the early seventies.

 

Here’s what you can see if it has a friction fit mechanism:

 

Hope this can help.

[Keyless Works]

Thank you @stoen!

 

[Keyless Works]

I am guessing the pen I got is a 1970s French model? What do you guys think?

[stoen]

10 hours ago, Keyless Works said:

 

I am guessing the pen I got is a 1970s French model? What do you guys think?

 

The nib is most likely a sixties french nib, although I got a 149 with the same nib type in Austria, 46 years ago.

 

The feed version is also of late 60s - early seventies, although I know from experience, there were few timeline inconsistencies about dating the ebonite feed types.

 

The body is pre 1982 single-piece resin.

 

If the mechanism is friction fit, the pen version is 1962-> early seventies.

 

If the mechanism is screw in, the pen version is 1967-> late seventies, although there are sub-versions depending on the threaded part beneath the turning knob:

- plastic - earlier

- brass - later (1976->, AFAIK)

 

As both major versions coexisted in the market for a while during the early 70s, I think you can’t go wrong by dating your pen so. 

[Keyless Works]

6 hours ago, stoen said:

The nib is most likely a sixties french nib, although I got a 149 with the same nib type in Austria, 46 years ago.

 

The feed version is also of late 60s - early seventies, although I know from experience, there were few timeline inconsistencies about dating the ebonite feed types.

 

The body is pre 1982 single-piece resin.

 

If the mechanism is friction fit, the pen version is 1962-> early seventies.

 

If the mechanism is screw in, the pen version is 1967-> late seventies, although there are sub-versions depending on the threaded part beneath the turning knob:

- plastic - earlier

- brass - later (1976->, AFAIK)

 

As both major versions coexisted in the market for a while during the early 70s, I think you can’t go wrong by dating your pen so. 

I think it is the friction fit but I am not sure.

[stoen]

18 hours ago, Keyless Works said:

I think it is the friction fit but I am not sure.

To make sure, please take a photo with the mechanism slightly angled toward the camera, like the photos of my pens I posted previously, so one can see its construction.

[Keyless Works]

Here is it angled down:

 

 

[aurore]

Yes, rather a 60s French market model, not 70s. Yes, friction fit.

[Keyless Works]

Thank you all for your help!

It's a nice pen but it does not have the feed the seller said it had so I think it is going back.

[aurore]

Well, it is the appropriate sort of ebonite feed for the era

[Keyless Works]

4 minutes ago, aurore said:

Well, it is the appropriate sort of ebonite feed for the era

I was told 1959 with "round ebonite, grooves face and shank" and I was sent the chart from this thread by the seller. This pen is "round ebonite, grooves face".

 

[aurore]

6 minutes ago, Keyless Works said:

I was told 1959 with "round ebonite, grooves face and shank" and I was sent the chart from this thread by the seller. This pen is "round ebonite, grooves face".

 

 

Well, but considering the pen is not from 1959 but 60s, the feed is as it should be, any other would be incorrect.

[Keyless Works]

2 minutes ago, aurore said:

 

Well, but considering the pen is not from 1959 but 60s, the feed is as it should be, any other would be incorrect.

yes, I suspect everything is correct on the pen.

[stoen]

With the photographic evidence provided, it looks everybody agrees this is a 1962-> early resin french model, a catalogue example in every sense.

As for the feed, I’ve seen variations from what’s in the chart. A 149 I bought new back in 1974 has a feed which shouldn’t have existed by then at all, according to the chart. So it was bought one year before having officially been invented.

🙂

Thanks for sharing pictures. 

 

[Keyless Works]

5 hours ago, stoen said:

With the photographic evidence provided, it looks everybody agrees this is a 1962-> early resin french model, a catalogue example in every sense.

As for the feed, I’ve seen variations from what’s in the chart. A 149 I bought new back in 1974 has a feed which shouldn’t have existed by then at all by then, according to the chart.

🙂

Thanks for sharing pictures. 

 

I have a 1970s 149 with the wrong feed (and body) because I cracked the barrel and sent it to Montblanc for repair. It sadly is now back weighted like a modern 149 because of the metal threading. With old pens it is hard to know if a pen has the "wrong" parts because of a repair or because Montblanc released them that way.

 

The main issue I have is that I was specifically told that this pen has a certain feed and when the pen arrived, it did not have that feed.

 

Thank you all again for helping me pin down this 149.

 

 

[Matthew B]

Anyway to get a link to a high resolution version? Perhaps a pdf that can be zoomed in without degradation?

Edited September 2, 2022 by Matthew B
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