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Fake Sonnets On The Internet


PeterR-C

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There is a further issue that sellers may be using genuine Parkers in their ad, the pen that arrives may be different altogether.

 

It is foolish mentality, if the seller creates a plain clip and without Parker branding they could have a very good looking and saleable pen at close to Jinhao money.

Kaigelu make a very nice Sonnet look alike ball pen. It is clearly marked Kaigelu, made in China so is not pretending to be something it is not (they also make a Duofold look alike). Good pens at a very reasonable price and not trying to deceive. Sadly there are many who are not so honest.

Peter

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A friend at our pen club gave me a Baoer 388 that looks very much like my Sonnet, except for a smaller cap jewel and a narrower band. Even the nib is engraved Baoer and so is the converter. No attempt to deceive. Writes pretty nicely too.

 

Thanks for the clarifications.

Baptiste knew how to make a short job long

For love of it. And yet not waste time either.

Robert Frost

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This is all really interesting. thx1138, the pen you post photos of is out of stock - because it is the very one I bought!! I should have looked at the photos more closely. Next time... As you say, all the other sonnets this vendor shows also appear to be dodgy. Also the Australian ballpoint with the *glowing* reviews is definitely wrong. I have ordered a Baoer 388 for £5.99 for "educational purposes" to have a look at it alongside my sonnets. It hasn't arrived yet, but in the photo the feather appear to be pretty close to the real thing. If, as you point out, a different pen is used in the photo, then maybe the Baoer isn't that close. I've ordered the one that mimics the 1997-2003 deep red laque, which I have a genuine one of (I hope...).

 

I'll post photos of the Baoer cap when it arrives.

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On a recent Facebook thread, someone claimed some fakes were authentic because China was licenced to make Parker pens. I thought this was just bunk but not educated about the topic enough to make a reasonable reply. I am aware that Luxor in India makes Parker's but I thought China had never been on the list. I am aware of the Parker/Hero attempt on 45s.

Edited by cabbie

fpn_1543178351__apc_logo_bw_square-02__7

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Actually the Newhaven factory closed in 2010 and the last pens were made in 2009. But, of course, the Sonnet was never made in Newhaven.

Wikipedia has it as 2011.

 

So it goes.

Cheers,

Effrafax.

 

"It is a well known and much lamented fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it"

Douglas Adams ("The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The Original Radio Scripts").

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Wikipedia has it as 2011.

 

So it goes.

 

Never believe everything you read in Wikipedia as they rely on input from the public which is often in error.

Peter

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Are you sure this is a fake as that seller appears to be an authorised Parker dealer?

from the image i can confirm that it is fake

 

furthermore the model is not Tartan, but Sonnet 07 "Silver Lustre" shown with wrong nib and both tartan and silver lustre is (i believe) rhodium nickel/palladium over brass instead of sterling

 

found old image:

http:////www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/uploads/imgs/fpn_1502970677__sonnet.jpg

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Finally the Baoer has arrived. Here are photos of the whole pen, clearly marked Baoer, alongside the Sonnet deep red laque, and also the caps. The sonnet feathers are very thin, taper towards each end, and give the appearance of having been incised. The Baoer feathers look as if they were stamped, although with pointier ends than the usual sonnet fakes, and after tat dipped in whatever gives it the glitzy shiny gold appearance.

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  • 2 months later...

Hello Forum.

 

I have enjoyed reading this thread, and I appreciate the insights shared.

 

Inspired by others on FPN and partly out of curiosity I bought a red Chinese Sonnet. Looked nice, and so I wondered if it might perform okay as an everyday, take me with you anywhere pen. When the pen arrived I discovered that the nib was defective... more than a little. Specifically, the capillary channel was very wide all the way to the tip of the nib. If I held the nib up, ink would run out of the nib back to the frontpiece. It was hard to start because the very tip of the nib had a V shaped end, an order of magnitude worse than what our fellow Forum Members call "baby butt." See letter "a." in sketch below.

 

Letter "b." is a better representation of what I was hoping for but did not get.

 

Thinking "Well, I just got a lemon" I ordered one more, this time in black. Same problem with the wide capillary channel to the end. But this pen had one tine significantly longer than the other. See letter "c." in sketch below.

 

It took a considerable amount of coaxing, grinding, and polishing to get these pens to work. They are both serviceable, but I am sure that anyone who does not know anything about tuning nibs would be very, very unhappy with what I received. I am now wondering if there is a source for replacement nibs that could be fitted to Chinese fake Sonnets (other than Parker's real gold nibs). I haven't found any.

 

Finally, like some others, I came to this conclusion: If one wants an affordable Chinese pen which was inspired by the Parker Sonnet, he/she should consider the Baoer 388. It's under USD $3. It looks great. It works well. Its standard No. 5 nibs are easily found and replaced. It takes a universal cartridge or converter. It's not a shameless fake. For the meantime the 388 is my take me with you anywhere pen. It's the horizontal pen in the photo.

IMG_7753b.jpg

Edited by hankosaurus

 

Henry

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  • 1 month later...

Hello again, Fellow Inklings.

 

Well, curious being and glutton for punishment such as I am, I decided to try one more Chinese Sonnet, ordered August 24, 2020. This time a cobalt blue one. Arrived yesterday. At a glance it is very attractive.

 

I had hoped that I might "get lucky" and receive one sample with an okay nib. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. Thought you might like to get a close-up look at the problem which makes it so difficult to write and flow properly. All three of my Chinese Sonnets have this same defect.

 

Too bad I cannot find a source of replacement nibs that will fit the Sonnets. Their form factor is evidently proprietary and uncommon. If anyone knows of a source of affordable replacement nibs that will fit a Chinese Sonnet, I would be very grateful to learn about it.

 

Please ignore the dark color in the picture. The reflection from my dark clothing made the gold colored nib look unnatural and gray. The point is to illustrate how it is that the capillary channel is too wide and how it does not converge at the tip. Incidentally, in this unkind lighting, one can also see how that the finish, plating, and engraving of the nib are a bit rough too.

 

DSC_7224b.jpg

Edited by hankosaurus

 

Henry

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I had hoped that I might "get lucky" and receive one sample with an okay nib. Unfortunately, it didn't happen. Thought you might like to get a close-up look at the problem which makes it so difficult to write and flow properly. All three of my Chinese Sonnets have this same defect.

 

 

I bought 4 of these fakes and they were all good, smooth writers. No flow problems, no issues with the alignment or the finish on the pens. As school pens they are great. The nibs are marked B on the underside but the nibs are fine-medium.

 

The trouble is with the plating and lacquer on these pens. They wear of quickly. The solution is to order a plain metal finish with a silver nib.

 

They are also problematic for people looking for genuine sonnets on the used market because the precision of the manufacturing process is so good the only way to tell from a picture you are looking at a fake is to basically guess. The best tip is in the price. Also, look at the nibs, if the gold plating is damaged the pen is a fake.

 

The good news is that this model is not particularly expensive to buy brand new, last i checked a basic Sonnet sells for around $100. Not a bad price, i personally would not bother paying more simply because they are not as exciting as say, a 75 or a premier. Last but not least, Baoer 388s are so good once you get one one you kinda forget ever needing a sonnet.

 

Sorry for discussing fake pens on the forum, but it is what it is. In the end, nothing beats the original, no matter how good the clones are the original is always a bit better. In a sense they don`t even compete on the same market, the replicas are disposable pens, whereas the original is a quality product that can be passed on to future generations, just like all parker fountain pens made before them.

Edited by rochester21
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Hello rochester21.

 

Thanks for sharing your experience and insight. Glad you have had good luck with your pens. Could you tell me the source of your Chinese Sonnets? We must be getting different pens from different places. The probability of your getting four, all good, and me getting three, all bad with the same nib fault, seems to beg for the reason why.

 

Happy Day.

 

Henry

 

Henry

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I have a question about this, because I really don’t ‘get’ it.

Why would anyone want to buy a fake Sonnet?

 

I can understand why people would want to buy the ‘fake’ Sonnets that are made by legitimate Chinese companies such as Kaigelu and Baoer, that’s not what I mean.

What I don’t understand is why anyone would order a ‘Sonnet’ that they know to be a fake.
What the vorsprung durch technik is the ‘appeal’ of buying what one knows to be actual fake pens that are being sold by criminals?
i.e. knock-offs whose vendors are engaged in the business of trying to sucker people in to paying over good legitimate money under the illusion that they will get ‘bargain’ Sonnets.

I mean, if one is buying an actual fake Sonnet, one is, by definition, trading with a fraudster.
When the pen you have paid them for either doesn’t arrive, or turns out to be a piece of nasty, fragile, possibly-toxic junk, what are you going to do? Ask for a refund? From a fraudster?

N.b. Please don’t think that I’m trying to criticise anyone who does choose to try to buy a knock-off Sonnet from a fraudster - I’m not doing that. What you do with your money is your own choice - I just want to know why you would want to give money to people who you know to be engaged in fraud, in exchange for their ‘promise’ that they will send to you a cheaply-thrown-together item that may superficially-resemble a fountain pen.

Edited by Mercian

Foul in clear conditions, but handsome in the fog.

mini-postcard-exc.png

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A fair question. And reasonable, too.

Edited by corgicoupe

Baptiste knew how to make a short job long

For love of it. And yet not waste time either.

Robert Frost

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A fair question. And reasonable, too.

 

 

I bought a fake Sonnet knowing it to be fake from a fraudster in order that I could advise others on FPN about the differences between the real and the fake.

 

I then went back to the fraudster, and to eBay, and told him to either stop what he was doing or change the descriptions of his pens so that buyers were in no doubt about what they were buying. The alternative was that I would the involve the Police. Parker were not interested when i contacted them.

 

He gave me my money back, I destroyed the fake pen and he changed his descriptions. I am assuming he had some stock because he continued to trade for a month or so and then stopped or changed his username

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I bought a fake Sonnet knowing it to be fake from a fraudster in order that I could advise others on FPN about the differences between the real and the fake.

 

That is a laudable motivation :thumbup:

 

I ought to have expressed myself correctly in my first post - I am puzzled by people whose motivation to buy one is their hope of getting a usable fountain pen.

And especially by hankosaurus apparently wanting to buy one to try to use it, getting his fingers burned more than once, by differing failure-modes at that, and yet still wanting to go back for more.

 

If I were him, I’d consider my experiences to have proven that buying fake Sonnets is only a waste of money, and so I would stop giving my money to the criminals, and just enjoy using my Baoer 388.

 

A few years ago, as part of my own quest for ‘budget’ writing, I bought an inexpensive own-branded fountain pen from a High Street chain store here.

The pen fits nicely in my hand, is made of metal yet is still light in weight, takes ‘Short International’ cartridges, and I thought that it would make a good ‘every day carry’ pen that I could use without worrying about dings, scratches, or loss.

 

The one that I bought had a problem with its feed starving its nib, but another FPN member had found his example of the same pen to be reliable. I thought “ok, mine was just a dud” and decided that I would get another one. It was only a few £, so I was prepared to risk buying another one.

When my second example of the pen proved to suffer from the same problem as the first, I decided to try to futz with the nib/feed to try to fix the flow problem. I found that I could not disassemble the pen without destroying the grip-section and feed, and damaging its ‘Iridium Point Germany’ nib beyond repair.

Another ‘mark against it’ that I have only just recalled was that, when I put my Pelikan converter in to the pen, its barrel would not screw down fully-closed, but the last few mm of travel got blocked by the end of the converter. Which was as unexpected as it was annoying, because one could load one SIC in to the pen and also carry a spare inside the barrel. Worse though was the fact that the pen’s feed nipple widened the opening on the converter, meaning that it would no longer seal around the feed nipples of other pens, and therefore rendered it useless :angry:

 

I did consider buying another one of these pens in the hope of getting a ‘good’ one - but then I thought again.

By that point I would have sunk the price of three new (on eBay) Parker Vectors - or one-and-a-half LAMY Safaris - in to trying to get just one working example of that model of pen. When I already knew the model to not have the utility of either of those other ‘EDC’ pens.

The model remained on sale for a few years, and a very similar-looking one is still sold. Perhaps I was just ‘unlucky’, and happened to get two bad ones? And the pen was a legitimate ‘genuine’ product that was being sold by a well-known bricks-and-mortar High Street store (as opposed to a fake being sold over the internet by fraudsters). But I decided that my experiences with the first two had proven to me that trying to buy another just wasn’t worth it.

Foul in clear conditions, but handsome in the fog.

mini-postcard-exc.png

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I was talking to someone else about this subject, Parkers being copied, he remembers when the Hero 616 could be bought for 1p plus a little for postage and he bought 10 at a time expecting 6/10 to be duds. The quality of the pen was poor when compared to the Parker 51 but the idea of having a pen that looked like a Parker was irresistable to many and appraently FPN was full of comparisons between the two.

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Mercian said:

I ought to have expressed myself correctly in my first post - I am puzzled by people whose motivation to buy one is their hope of getting a usable fountain pen. ... And especially by hankosaurus apparently wanting to buy one to try to use it, getting his fingers burned more than once, by differing failure-modes at that, and yet still wanting to go back for more.

 

Hello Forum.

 

I guess that since I have been mentioned by a fellow Member above, a clarifying response may prove helpful. It appears that my motivations were misunderstood.

 

My amusement with the fake Sonnets has nothing to to with an actual need for a good, serviceable pen. I suspect that I may not be the only one here who has far more good pens than he/she will ever need for writing purposes. Amongst those which I do have are two nice Parker 75's. I don't need a Sonnet, real or otherwise.

 

My curiosity about the Sonnet.cn pens was stimulated by Members sharing their various experiences within this thread, and by my knowledge that a perfectly decent "Sonnet inspired" Baoer 388 cost me but USD $2.40 delivered to my doorstep.

 

I have discovered a number of reasons why one might want to get a Baoer 388 and forego the Sonnet replicas. I decided to share my observations with fellow Members of this Forum because that, for me, is a fun and affordable amusement.

 

I found only one failure mode, specifically, the gap and shape of the nibs being defective in all three samples. I learned also that replacement nibs are seemingly unavailable, as they are not universal ones like in many other pens. The cartridges and converters are the same as for my Parker 75 pens. The trim, engraving, and finish are "so-so" at best.

 

I also learned that if one complains to the eBay vendor about the malfunction, one will get a refund or a re-ship! So, then, this amusement I have enjoyed has not burned my fingers at all. My fingers were last burned when I bought a premium European pen, only to discover that it leaked, and that its flow was all wrong. Chinese pens are two orders of magnitude cheaper.

 

I have a Wing Sung 601 which I like very much. It is frighteningly like a Parker 51. Shameless replication of Parker features. Should I be on a guilt trip for that? Not me. Notwithstanding, I would never, ever go into an important business meeting wearing a fake Rolex or a fake Sonnet. One runs the risk of being perceived as a fake person in so doing. That might affect one's business or career. I doubt if such fakes have much real impact on the market for authentic products.

 

It is fairly common knowledge that the Chinese copy nearly everything with impunity. So, buyers beware. Those who are curious enough to experiment with fake products for the fun of it are, in my estimation, a resource to those who just want to know more about them.

Edited by hankosaurus

 

Henry

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  • 5 months later...
  1. HELLO MY FRIENDS  I HAVE A LOT OF INTEREST IN PARKER SONNET  AND ALSO I HAVE MY YOUTUBE CHANNEL         PENLIST21  ON WHICH I HAD PUT A LOT OF STUFF ON CHANNEL PLEASE BE KIND TO CHECK IT OUT . NOW LETS COME TO MY BEST POINT TO SPOT PEN IS FAKE OR NOT  PENS MADE BEFORE 2012 DOES HAVE FULL SLIT ON NIB THROUNG BREATHER HOLE BUT FROM 2012 NEW MODEL IS INTRODUCED  IN WHICH NIB SLIT DOES NOT TOUCH BREATHER HOLE AND THEIR IS A GAP  AND ALSO 2012 MODEL  IS RENEWED AND IN 2017 NEW MODEL INTRODUCED  WHICH ALSO HAVE SLIT BUT DO NOT TOUCH THE NIB BREATHER HOLE . I LL SHOW SOME PICTURES. Image 1 and 2 is recent model nubs which is genuine  also in picture 3 is also real but it is old model of sonnet but in pic 4 wheir fake is written nib slit goes upto breather hole and written 18 k gold nib that means this nib as due to high gold nib parker do not make slit to breather hole as to make it usefull otherwise  due to high content of gold it may de align easily. Those who got some knowledge  Subscribe my channel.

parker-sonnet-brown-rubber-lacquer-gold-nib-1.jpg

parker-sonnet-sterling-silver-cisele-gold-nib.jpg

1316x1500.JPG

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