Inherited A Batch Of Pens......

[claudewick]

 

I'm retired....so a lot of spare time I have, but thanks for offering to take them off my hands!

 

Lucky you're retired, it's going to give you a lot of work.

 

A few years ago a guy came to talk to me, his father passed away and left a whole room of scale models (serously it was like 20 or 25 m³ of boxes, from the ground to the roof), books and magazines, all about scale modeling. He came to me because I was the president of a scale modelers association at that time. He was trying to sell those things for years and only got disapointment because of people trying to steal from him and so on.

 

I offered to help him the way I could. I helped him to list every item and it's status, announce in the internet and intermediate all the deals. In return I received 10%. All the items remained with him and every week, on friday, I sent him a list of what's sold. On saturday he delivered the sold itens at my house. The sundays were used to pack everything to ship on monday morning.

 

He had more than 1500 scale models and hundreds of books (I don't remember exactly) and it took almost one year to sell everything. I almost got crazy.

 

I can't say I regret because that money came in a very good moment, my wife (ex-wife now) was unemployed and she helped me packing and shipping all that boxes, but I'm not sure if I'd have energy to do something like that again...

 

Remeber to keep at least one pen to honor the memory of your friend.

 

Good luck

[SteveE]

Where are you located? (What major metro area?)

 

Maybe somebody local can help.

[Luke warm]

I'm in Chicago, or a suburb of.

There's an up coming pen convention that I'm going to attend. I'm going to keep most of the items I've been blessed with, but I can't keep them all.

[JDV]

I'll do the research work for you for 65% of the money you raise by their sale..

 

You know, you're really asking for an impossible task. My advice is get a partner who knows something about pens, work out an arrangement, and go to the pen show. Anything else would leave you to rely on the kindness of strangers.

[JotterAddict62]

Going to the Chicago Show will help you get information that you will need. Just talk to the dealers they will get you started in the right direction.

 

Ken

[SteveE]

Or. . . visit the show, learn all you can, then after the excitement of the show calms down, look up user Roger W. Roger is one of the organizers of the Chicago Pen Show, and is the point man for the Chicago Pen Club. The club meets monthly out in Hillside, and IIRC Roger posts the meeting info on the board here.

[Sailor Kenshin]

700 pens? Sounds like an awful lot of work and stress. You should just give them all to me.

 

Ya beat me to it.

 

Seriously, though, WHAT a collection! We're all kinda fanning ourselves at this point.

[strictlyobiter]

I wouldn't do anything with them until I knew more about them and their provenance etc. Some of the pens you've pictures are Grail pens for many users and for that reason alone your lack of knowledge could lead you down a bad path. The FP bug just isn't something you can force upon yourself in my experience so I'd take time and research what I had.

 

Anecdotal evidence: one of my professors inherited a collection of Pelikan fountain pens a few years ago. Knowing I was in to pens he asked me about a few of them and I gave him all the info I could based on vague discriptions and bad pictures. Two weeks after he declared he was keeping them all for his son's inheritance he sold three M800s to one of our colleagues for

150 because the nibs were "only gold plated" in his opinion.

[Ghost Plane]

The pen show will be an excellent resource. Take your pictures with you and prepare to be amazed.

[fountainpenlady]

 

Yeah, no!!! None of what I have has been stolen, and if it was, not only would I have never accepted ANY of the items I have, but the perps would have been turned over to the authorities.

Only a knucklehead would post photos of stolen property on the internet, and a knucklehead I am not!!

 

 

Yeah, no!!! None of what I have has been stolen, and if it was, not only would I have never accepted ANY of the items I have, but the perps would have been turned over to the authorities.

Only a knucklehead would post photos of stolen property on the internet, and a knucklehead I am not!!

You would be surprised. The interest of fountain pens etc. does not denote definitive scholars or people possessing inherit common sense. I have run into several here who would post them, ask what they are exactly and how much should they ask when selling them to others. (really, read that one recently also). Not to mention the ones who get highly perturbed at a stranger for simply thinking this a community of like minds and worth civil respect; finding out quite the contrary. Plenty of knuckleheads. Don't know you, so if it does not apply, keep it moving and no insult intended. Good Luck with your inherited bounty.

Edited April 22, 2015 by fountainpenlady

[ethernautrix]

As others have suggested, do your homework and take your pens to the Chicago Pen Show. I'm sure folks can recommend reputable vendors who might take a look and offer you a reasonable price, either for all (except the ones you want to keep) or in lots or individually.

[Fabienne]

Wow, lucky you. I think you got some great ones there! With 700 you have your job cut out for you. As GhostPlane said, sort out the ballpoints and put them aside. And then refine the sorting.

 

I would put all of the pens from one company in one place. For instance, isolate all of your MontBlancs in one place, all your Parkers in another and so on. And you might want to sort by size as well, worth often accompanies size. Then the fun begins. You will start to become an expert in each brand, I am afraid that is where you are heading, not much escaping this. But it's all fun.

 

Now that you have brands sorted out (and please put them in good cases/boxes) go to that section of FPN and start hunting for images which match up to your pens. Then start reading. This is a marvelous resource.

[jar]

A few additional suggestions.

 

After you sort the pens by brand when possible, use the trip to the show to determine who specializes in each brand. Get names and contact information and later, contact several folk who might specialize in a given brand to begin determining stuff like detailed identification and rough valuation. Remember not everyone knows about everything, we all tend to know more about certain brands or certain periods or certain types of pens. The knowledge of who knows what right now is more important to you than specifics on any particular pen.

 

Take your time. There really is no rush and spend this time just building a general map of the territory.