Curious Desk Pen Stand

[linkoiram]

At the local antique store I found this pen set that says "retro 1951"on it and an esterbrook desk pen with a badly bent nib. I ended up removing it but it seems the sac will still work so I'll just get a new nib for it. I noticed the esterbrook looks very similar to another I picked up today but this pen looks to have a non removable nib (or at least very tough to remove).

 

It seems to me that this stand isn't intended to go with the pen, but the pen seals on it and the color matches perfectly. The black esterbrook seems to not want to seal on that pen stand, which is odd to me.

 

Is it a retro 51 reproduction of some sort?

[gweimer1]

Retro 51 is a brand name of a newer pen company. My guess is that they made a desk pen and stand at some point. You found only the stand with an Esterbrook in it.

The odd thing is that they made a desk pen set that is pretty much an exact image of the old Esterbrook stands.

 

http://www.retro51.com/fwi_desksets.html

Edited October 17, 2020 by gweimer1

[linkoiram]

Retro 51 is a brand name of a newer pen company. My guess is that they made a desk pen and stand at some point. You found only the stand with an Esterbrook in it.

The odd thing is that they made a desk pen set that is pretty much an exact image of the old Esterbrook stands.

 

http://www.retro51.com/fwi_desksets.html

It surprises me that it fits the esterbrook that it came with perfectly but not the other nearly identical model. Since there is a slight variation in width of the base of the section does that mean that the esterbrook "dipless" pen stands were not universal to all esterbrooks?

 

It seals well enough to keep the nib wet, I'll see over long term whether it will work

Edited October 17, 2020 by linkoiram

[5thhistorian]

Retro 51 sells a ballpoint desk set that looks a lot like the ball shaped fountain pen desk sets Esterbrook made. This looks like a different design but probably also made for their desk ballpoint. It might actually be more valuable than a vintage Esterbrook desk set because there seem to be a lot of Retro 51 collectors out there, and this might have been discontinued.