Current, Vintage, True Vintage and Antique

[pan101]

I have Montblanc 146 from the early 1990's, would you consider it to be a vintage pen or current Montblanc pen?

I've seen the following definition for Vintage/Antique terms, does this apply to fountain pens?

20 - 100 years old - Vintage

50 - 100 years old - True Vintage

over 100 years old - Antique 

 

[Claes]

I agree that over 100 years old = Antique, and 50 - 100 = semi-antique. (Unless you run an antiques shop, where everything older than last Thursday becomes an antique.)

 

However, "vintage" is normally denoting a period/year of origin or manufacture, like a "pen/wine/tea of 1992 vintage".

Ref: Merriam Webster.

 

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

 

[Mercian]

9 hours ago, pan101 said:

I have Montblanc 146 from the early 1990's, would you consider it to be a vintage pen or current Montblanc pen?

I've seen the following definition for Vintage/Antique terms, does this apply to fountain pens?

20 - 100 years old - Vintage

50 - 100 years old - True Vintage

over 100 years old - Antique 

 

Whenever this topic comes up it prompts replies from those of us who are saddened to learn that we must also now be considered ‘vintage’ or ‘antique’ 😁

 

In terms of buying/selling pens, I think that the ludicrous (& meretricious) attachment of the term ‘vintage’ to umpteen sales-listings on eBay has rendered the term just as semantically-empty as the term ‘collectable’ has become, thanks to the same behaviour 😠

 

With my kvetch now delivered, I can take off my ‘Grumpy Old Git’ hat, and address your specific question….
 

With respect to your early-1990s Montblanc 146:
as I understand it, Montblanc has changed several aspects of the construction of that model of pen since the early 1990s.

If I am correct about that, then I think that it is not appropriate to describe your pen as being ‘current’ -  because its earlier specifications mean that it isn’t the same as a current-production 146.

 

I recall reading that the 146 used to be made with a piston mechanism made of brass (rather than the current pens’ plastic pistons), and that the way that the nib/feed unit is inserted into the barrel has been changed down the years.

Whilst many of the changes down the years have been merely cosmetic - presumably intended to stay one step ahead of the criminal scumbags who make and sell fake Montblancs -  I have to add that it seems to me that some of those design/construction changes have been implemented by Montblanc solely to increase their profits, and that they have reduced the ‘value-offer’ for purchasers; and/or have been introduced solely to lock purchasers in to paying £££ to the company for ‘servicing’ when all that is necessary is a simple re-lubricration of the piston.
Which would make some of older versions of the pen more-attractive to me.

As such, if you are ever asked about it, and especially if you ever intend to sell it, if I were you I would describe it as a ‘146 [that was] produced in the early 1990s’.
If you know specific details about its construction - e.g. that it has the brass piston, or a nib/feed unit that unscrews easily - rather than one of the ones that were glued-in by Montblanc, or one of the ones that requires a specific bespoke tool to unscrew - I would add those details in the description in your sales listing.

That way, no potential ‘picky customer’ would be able to claim that they ‘didn’t know what they were getting’.

 

N.b. I personally have never even seen a 146 ‘in the flesh’, or handled one, let alone actually owned one, so I advise you to also ask this question on the Montblanc board here.

 

Slàinte,
M.

[Paul-in-SF]

For myself, I don't have any antique pens (by that or really any other definition). Any pen that I did not buy new is categorized in my database as either "vintage" or "modern used." The latter category is a bit fuzzy -- I use it, for example, for modern Parker Duofolds, or pretty much anything manufactured after 1970 or so. That's just my own quirky little system. As far as I am aware, there are no agreed-upon standards of nomenclature, and if there were, good luck making people stick to them. The trouble with "Current" as a category for labeling pens is that surely that's a moving target, and after 10 or 20 years you would probably need to go back over all of your "Current" pens and re-categorize them as something else. 

 

As for your 146, it would be "Modern Used" in my database. I expect to be long dead before that would have to change.

[dudleian]

Anything that's younger than me is current. This is current. YMMV

[inkstainedruth]

19 hours ago, Mercian said:

Whenever this topic comes up it prompts replies from those of us who are saddened to learn that we must also now be considered ‘vintage’ or ‘antique’ 😁

Sad but true.  

I was standing in line at an estate sale early this morning and the guy behind me was saying that when he was a kid, his mom like Elvis Presley.  Me?  I started listening to the radio during Beatlemania & "the British Invasion" and then the "Summer of Love".....  

I remember when I was about 7 or 8 (it had to be before we moved to where I grew up) thinking just how old I'd be when we hit the year 2000....  And THAT'S now nearly a quarter of a century ago.... 

Of course the worst jab was a number of years ago at the big camping event for the other hobby -- I got talking to some woman in one of the merchant areas and found out that her mother-in-law was the person I borrowed something to wear at my first event (and who was pregnant with her son about 3 years later, the first time I went to the big camping event).  And I have a photo of him in his mother's arms about a month after he was born (about 3 months after the camping event).  And was going, "NO!  Alex is MARRIED?!  I CAN'T POSSIBLY BE that old!  I have a photo of him still in swaddling, he was so young...."

And now I'm probably going to be earworming the old Sandy Denny song "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" for the rest of the day.... 

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Penguincollector]

    As pen companies disappear, and their proprietary cartridges with them, I had to rethink how I categorized pens by age. I pretty much refer to anything post 1925- pre 2000 as vintage in general, but geek out on details in order to set the scene, so to speak. I used to roughly think hard rubber eyedropper= antique; anything with a sac= vintage; cartridge/ converter= modern, but I have more than a few pens that I have to ration and reuse cartridges for that are 1960s-90s. I don’t feel like I can call them modern if I can’t readily find consumable parts for them. 
 

  Piston pens are pretty much all vintage or modern depending on the year they were manufactured, at least for another couple of years. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

[Bo Bo Olson]

On 8/16/2024 at 11:28 AM, pan101 said:

20 - 100 years old - Vintage.................way too wide a scope....

50 - 100 years old - True Vintage..............never heard of true vintage before.

over 100 years old - Antique 

Living  in Germany because of robbery at the US mail box, could only chase German pens so my dates are of them.

 

'30's to 1970, vintage. The end of factory stubbed semi-flex nibs. Nice clean line.

 1970-very late '90's semi-vintage. Springy regular flex  tear drop tipped nibs if lucky, Some nails and semi-nails in the '70's. Nice clean line.

 

'20's and older antique. I have an MB Safety pen with a Weak Kneed Wet Noodle, a term invented by the English nib grinder John Sorowka......my 1918-30's Waterman Gothic is a wet noodle as is my two BCHR 52's. Nice clean lines. An era where superflex nibs are easier to find....in the then lumpy nibs all fell apart leaving only the good ones.

Nib tipping was perfected in WW2. Before that the rare earth minerals "iridium" were often lumpy and bumpy with chunks falling out....those nibs ended up in gold bars of the '80's and now.

 

Late '90's to now Modern. Era of fat nibs. MB gets 1/2 a width or more wider, and Pelikan goes to the fat and blobby double ball, also 1/2 a width wider....no longer a nice clean line..out side the 200 which they only ruined only 5 years ago with the double ball.

 

[pan101]

Thanks all for the replies. I like the term 'modern' rather than 'current' to describe my 146. I can remember the 70's and find it hard to accept things from that era as being vintage.

[Bo Bo Olson]

I remember the '50's.....and if I didn't have great nibbed pens from the '50-60's I'd think so also.

Oddly, when I was in Germany as an Army Brat....I really didn't understand economics of cartidges.

I and most then didn't even know about cleaning out pens.

 

Being under American advertising and the TV and top mag ads for fountain pens around Christmas, knew the King of Pens was a Snorkel and the Prince was a P-51. something i had vowed to get as soon as I got a real job...........got the silver P-75 instead...took 50ears to get the P-51 or Snorkel. 40 years of that in the Ball Point Desert.

 

Didn't know a dammed thing about nibs either back then.. Pre-net.

I being a dumb American, thought if that piston crud was any good, we'd have piston pens made in the US...nor realizing that too expensive to use cartridges was keeping Parker and Shaffer's nose above water in the age where one still bought ball points.

 

OMG, one of them ugly cigar shaped 149's with just gold plating cost more than a Shaffer with rolled gold trim.....and that ugly Pelikan cost as much as the normal King of Pens.

In the American HS, there was the son of a Col, that had a MB....Probably spend in the near of $20 on it at 4 DM to $1.

There was a girl in 8th grade that had a Pelikan. The rest of us who were not officer brats with their Snorkel and P-51's; the Sgt's kids, had Esterbrooks or Wearevers....and once it took months and months of leaving it laying around before some pen collector grabbed that Venus before he knew what it was. That Venus was the last fountain pen I'd had, before Bic stormed the world.

 

Got 3, one vintage medium-large '48-59, and two semi-vintage @ '90 large 146's, a 149 also from @ '90, and some 35 Pelikans.....gave my Snorkel way to someone who needed it, and my P-51 is an unused nail.

So much for the King of Pens.

 

Actually back in the day, of 15 years ago, one could get a P-51 or a Snorkel  for $25-30 in the States, but it would have cost $15 to mail it across the Pond, and as a bottom feeder $15 was a world of money to mail an old pen.

[inkstainedruth]

@pan101 -- I have trouble wrapping my brain around the idea that the 1960s are "vintage", since I'm old enough to remember Beatlemania -- when it was happening....  I was a little kid, but I remember seeing the movie Help! on TV when I was about seven or eight.  It was one of the first movies I was allowed to stay up late to watch because it was a Saturday night (and the following weekend I saw the old Dave Clark Five movie Having a Wild Weekend).  I wasn't allowed to watch the final season Star Trek after it moved to 10 PM because it was a school night (although I did get to watch "The Trouble With Tribbles" when it originally aired because it was still on at 8 PM).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Bo Bo Olson]

I hated Elvis from when I was seven-eight, because he ruined a good western with his gyrations...I knew they didn't do in the old west.

When the Beatles came in, I started liking Elvis, he at least could sing.

Fabian could sing too...a guy who was better looking than Elvis...he too made a movie or two...one when he was slightly passe`. Didn't go see it, in I never cared for him.

..............

Star Trek only had a 15% viewing rating...there were that many more folks that were 'Monkey's fans. There was a major fight to with those who could read SF**, to get Star Trek to run the second year...but 15% didn't improve. Just think  what 15% viewing means today...and and seven hundred years of spaceships and space stations.

 

**Anti English teacher rant removed....in the years are long and some could have read a western or a SF book in the meanwhile.

God, David Copperfield was ever so boring...and a few other classics we had to read back in the day... They so took away from my time of reading popular trash; murder mysteries, westerns and every SF book I could lay my hands on.