Parker Classic with USA writing and IP date code - 1997?

[Liuna]

Greetings. I acquired a Parker (75) Classic flighter ballpoint pen, which says Made in,USA and has date code IP (possibly 3rd quarter year of 1997).

 

According to this site, that kind of coding came after the 90s:

https://parkerpens.net/codekey.html

 

What I'm unsure about is about until when were Classics made in the US? Could they have been still made while the UK ones' production has already begun, like an overlap?

 

 

Could it have been made in 1997?

 

According to

 

https://parkerpens.net/classic.html

 

"In 1994 only the Matte black and the Desk pen was offered as fountain pens.

The Classic line was not featured in the 1995 product catalogue, nor the 1998.

 

According to Jim Mahmoulian the Classic surfaced again as a ballpoint and pencils in the 2001 catalogue. In 2003 it was gone again. This could however be discreapancies between the US and European markets."

 

 

Thank you in advance. 

 

Editing is due to that I may have mixed 75 (discontinued in 1994) and Classic up. 

 

 

Edited October 17 by Liuna

[Mercian]

5 hours ago, Liuna said:

Could it have been made in 1997?

 

The date code 'IP' (without a '.' between the 'quarter' code stamp and the 'year' code stamp) has (to-date) only been used for 1997 Q3.

So I think it safe to assume that 1997 Q3 is the date of manufacture of your pen.

 

The fact that this date appears to coincide with a period of time during which the model was not listed as being available in official catalogues might be explainable as follows:

 

Given that the 'Classic' BP does apparently appear in the catalogue for 2001 indicates either that Parker had not disposed of the tooling necessary to manufacture these pens after 1994, or that it still had a fairly large stock of previously-unsold 'Classic' pens, which it decided to release for sale in 2001/2.

The fact that your pen has some kind of Corporate logo stamped on the upper portion of its body suggests to me that it might have been produced in 1997 as part of a specific (large-ish volume) order for commemorative pens that was commissioned by that particular company in that year.

 

That said, do please bear in mind that all of that is only a Totally-Uninformed Guess!

 

Slàinte,
M.

[Liuna]

22 hours ago, Mercian said:

 

The date code 'IP' (without a '.' between the 'quarter' code stamp and the 'year' code stamp) has (to-date) only been used for 1997 Q3.

So I think it safe to assume that 1997 Q3 is the date of manufacture of your pen.

 

The fact that this date appears to coincide with a period of time during which the model was not listed as being available in official catalogues might be explainable as follows:

 

Given that the 'Classic' BP does apparently appear in the catalogue for 2001 indicates either that Parker had not disposed of the tooling necessary to manufacture these pens after 1994, or that it still had a fairly large stock of previously-unsold 'Classic' pens, which it decided to release for sale in 2001/2.

The fact that your pen has some kind of Corporate logo stamped on the upper portion of its body suggests to me that it might have been produced in 1997 as part of a specific (large-ish volume) order for commemorative pens that was commissioned by that particular company in that year.

 

That said, do please bear in mind that all of that is only a Totally-Uninformed Guess!

 

Slàinte,
M.

Thank you. So you suggest they could have been manufactured because of that ordering or they could have had them in stock anyway, right?

 

The corporation if which it has logo engraved on it is Chemsearch. 

[Mercian]

2 hours ago, Liuna said:

So you suggest they could have been manufactured because of that ordering or they could have had them in stock anyway, right?

 

Yes

But you must remember that those options are only my totally-uninformed guesses!
 

Parker might have continued to produce 'Classic' models for Corporate orders for a few years after discontinuing production for 'ordinary retail' - after all, if anyone is still willing to pay you to produce any particular product, why would you go to the expense of scrapping the production-line?

[Liuna]

11 hours ago, Mercian said:

 

Yes

But you must remember that those options are only my totally-uninformed guesses!
 

Parker might have continued to produce 'Classic' models for Corporate orders for a few years after discontinuing production for 'ordinary retail' - after all, if anyone is still willing to pay you to produce any particular product, why would you go to the expense of scrapping the production-line?

True, athough I did find at https://parkerpens.net/classic.html that Classic was still in 2001 catalogue too.

 

I used to have a previous Classic with England and no date code, a person assumed to be from between 1970 and 1980  (which is correct) and also assumed it was produced until 1994, but according to above website, Parker 75 was made until 1994 (as far as I know, it was also called 75 Classic). That's why I felt like there was a contradiction.

 

Someone in a Facebook group told me 75 and Classic weren't the same nd parkerpens.net has different, seperate information pages of them as well.

[Sheptonian]

On 10/17/2025 at 11:29 PM, Mercian said:

 

The date code 'IP' (without a '.' between the 'quarter' code stamp and the 'year' code stamp) has (to-date) only been used for 1997 Q3.

So I think it safe to assume that 1997 Q3 is the date of manufacture of your pen.

 

The fact that this date appears to coincide with a period of time during which the model was not listed as being available in official catalogues might be explainable as follows:

 

Given that the 'Classic' BP does apparently appear in the catalogue for 2001 indicates either that Parker had not disposed of the tooling necessary to manufacture these pens after 1994, or that it still had a fairly large stock of previously-unsold 'Classic' pens, which it decided to release for sale in 2001/2.

The fact that your pen has some kind of Corporate logo stamped on the upper portion of its body suggests to me that it might have been produced in 1997 as part of a specific (large-ish volume) order for commemorative pens that was commissioned by that particular company in that year.

 

That said, do please bear in mind that all of that is only a Totally-Uninformed Guess!

 

Slàinte,
M.

 

I agree with Mercian except for their final sentence. I have never considered Mercian to be uninformed, and their conclusion is likely based on sound understanding that amongst other things  Parker is known to have continued to sell discontinued models from other ranges for some time after they disappeared from catalogues (to clear out end-of-line stock positions, etc.).

 

That apparently the Classic line was in the 2001 catalogue is most interesting. Certainly it wasn't in the 1998 or 2002 editions in the USA that I have seen (I have not had sight of the equivalents for 1999-2001). This would, I think, tend to support the hypothesis that Parker were still clearing old stock several years after the Classic ballpoint line was discontinued (from the retail market, at least). 

 

 

[Sheptonian]

I was surprised the other day to see among a job lot of boxed Parker ballpoints on that inlet auction site a Classic Stainless Steel GT in post-2000 packaging. My interest piqued, I thought I'd best have a look.

 

Here it is, dated Q3 2001:

 

 

 

 

 

[Liuna]

On 10/30/2025 at 8:29 PM, Sheptonian said:

I was surprised the other day to see among a job lot of boxed Parker ballpoints on that inlet auction site a Classic Stainless Steel GT in post-2000 packaging. My interest piqued, I thought I'd best have a look.

 

Here it is, dated Q3 2001:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting indeed... Maybe some less numbers of them were made in UK at those times. What I akso know Luxor (in India) might be making newer ones of the? Saw those at ebay.