My collection of Deco Bands, Pre- and Gold seals pens

[roberto v]

This is my collection of Wahl Eversharp pens, from the pre gold seal pens to the gold seals, passing through all the cataloged Oversize Deco Band pens.

 

Enjoy!

 

 

[artaddict]

Wow, that's a beautiful collection! I want it!

[mandragoru]

Very nice pens, astonishing colours. Congratulations!

[williamsmarks]

Hubba hubba! Nice set up and nice focus on the band and the colors...oh my, the colors are stunning!

[Darren]

This is my collection of Wahl Eversharp pens, from the pre gold seal pens to the gold seals, passing through all the cataloged Oversize Deco Band pens.

 

Enjoy!

 

Thanks, Roberto - they are stunning.

 

I had assumed that pre-Gold Seal pens had "Wahl Pen" and Gold Seal "Wahl Eversharp" on the clip - a number of your Gold Seal Deco Band pens had "Wahl Pen" only and I noticed that the Rosewood pencil had "Eversharp" only. I guess it makes sense when I think about the advertising I've seen noting a Wahl pen "matched" with an Eversharp pencil but I've never seen it before. Fascinating!

 

Thanks again - any chance of a shot showing the nibs, especially on the pre-Gold Seal pens?

 

 

[roberto v]

This is my collection of Wahl Eversharp pens, from the pre gold seal pens to the gold seals, passing through all the cataloged Oversize Deco Band pens.

 

Enjoy!

 

Thanks, Roberto - they are stunning.

 

I had assumed that pre-Gold Seal pens had "Wahl Pen" and Gold Seal "Wahl Eversharp" on the clip - a number of your Gold Seal Deco Band pens had "Wahl Pen" only and I noticed that the Rosewood pencil had "Eversharp" only. I guess it makes sense when I think about the advertising I've seen noting a Wahl pen "matched" with an Eversharp pencil but I've never seen it before. Fascinating!

 

Thanks again - any chance of a shot showing the nibs, especially on the pre-Gold Seal pens?

 

If I find a little spare time, I'll post a pic in the next days!

[Wahlnut]

All of the Gold Seal pens were made with "Wahl Eversharp" on the roller ball clips. All of the Gold Seal Pencils were made with "Wahl Eversharp" on the roller ball pocket clip. All The Pre-Gold Seal pens were made with "Wahl Pen" on the roller ball pocket clips. The Matching pre Gold Seal pencils however were made with "Eversharp" only on the roller ball pocket clip. And of course all pre and non-gold seal pencils had only Eversharp on the pocket clip. So it follows that some of the pens shown in this thread have some replacement clips aboard. They are easy enough to change and can be fitted with the proper clip without much to do down the road if one wanted to do so.

 

The short soldier clip Gold Seal pens are able to receive an Eversharp pencil pocket clip easily enough as the pocket clip on pencil and pen was a screw secured right angle clip. It is easy to tell some of the pens where replacement clips were made to do, because many of them are shorter than the clip they replace. The deco Band pen clips should all have the roller ball just touching the top thin gold band.

 

Hope this helps to sort out the question you posed.

 

Syd

[HLeopold]

This is my collection of Wahl Eversharp pens, from the pre gold seal pens to the gold seals, passing through all the cataloged Oversize Deco Band pens.

 

Enjoy!

 

I truly like the corals at the right, pretty!

[roberto v]

Pic of the nibs, sorry if it's not perfect.

 

About the clips, I'm afraid I have to disagree to what Syd writes. I have see so many deco bands pens with Wahl clips (some even mint in the box) that I'm convinced that a lot of them were born with these clips. Also several pens with the Deco band and the gold seal appear with Wahl#6 nib and I also have an English advertising with a drawing of the Deco band pen with the #6 Wahl nib.

 

Is seems not unreasonable that pens where assembled with what was in house - if they still had Wahl clips, they would put them on the pens instead of throwing them in the rubbish can!

 

Just my opinion, of course!

[Darren]

Pic of the nibs, sorry if it's not perfect.

 

About the clips, I'm afraid I have to disagree to what Syd writes. I have see so many deco bands pens with Wahl clips (some even mint in the box) that I'm convinced that a lot of them were born with these clips. Also several pens with the Deco band and the gold seal appear with Wahl#6 nib and I also have an English advertising with a drawing of the Deco band pen with the #6 Wahl nib.

 

Is seems not unreasonable that pens where assembled with what was in house - if they still had Wahl clips, they would put them on the pens instead of throwing them in the rubbish can!

 

Just my opinion, of course!

 

Thanks Roberto!

 

Apart from glistening, giant nibs I spied a Rosewood section too (haven't seen one of those before either!).

 

Do the Gold Seal pens with #6 or warranted nibs have Personal Point screw-out collars?

 

It's a great and enviable collection - thanks for sharing.

 

Darren.

[Rick Krantz]

no, I've seen too many deco bands and gold seal pens new in the box, with "Wahl Pen" on the clip to have to say that Roberto is correct. Even more so, I have seen a ton of Lapis with this clip versus the other clip, for some reason.

 

I got to think as well, whatever was in house got used, even old inventory of clips, just to get pens out the door. Say, on Wednesday afternoon, they ran out of the "Wahl Eversharp" roller clips, someone went to inventory, got a box of "Wahl Pen" clips, and they used them until the new supply from the local jobber arrived on Monday the next week, to make the pens as they were intended.

 

Unfortunately, fountain pen collecting is not an exact science because even the big pen companies failed to follow the rules. They were making pens, the pocket clip only had to keep the pen in the pocket.

 

Nice collection FWIW, real nice to see a range of them with clean colors.

 

My favorite, that early OS RHR signature pen. Had a few of them over the years, never that nice.

 

[Vintagepens]

About the clips, I'm afraid I have to disagree to what Syd writes. I have see so many deco bands pens with Wahl clips (some even mint in the box) that I'm convinced that a lot of them were born with these clips. Also several pens with the Deco band and the gold seal appear with Wahl#6 nib and I also have an English advertising with a drawing of the Deco band pen with the #6 Wahl nib.

 

Roberto, you are 100% correct.

The clips marked "Wahl-Eversharp" were introduced some time after the Gold Seal was introduced. In addition to the evidence already mentioned, it should be noted that these clips are longer than the clips just marked "Wahl Pen", and if you look again at the pens bearing the "Wahl Pen" clips, the clip hole is also placed differently. That is, if you put a longer "Wahl-Eversharp" clip on one of the earlier pens, the end of the clip would be too low, overlapping the cap bands. The same applies to the pencils, of course.

 

So Rick, these clips were not old stock, assembled to get rid of obsolete inventory. They were the standard Wahl clips at the time the Deco Band was introduced.

Edited October 7, 2008 by Vintagepens

[roberto v]

The Rosewood section is in a OS Signature pen, the one in the first picture with 2 gold ring at the cap.

 

The Gold Seal pens with #6 nibs have NOT Personal Point screw-out collars, which make sense!

 

The warranted #7 nib is on a Deco Band Gold Seal with the drilled seal, which means that the pen has his original nib broken and was sent to the factory for the repair. The nib is has is the one they were used to put on for these reapairs and drilling the gold seal meant that the warranty was avoided.

 

 

[Wahlnut]

Well there can be no argument if we have valid, new in box, never used specimens of Deco Band examples with the Wahl Pen clip on them. However, all of the Catalog information and the advertising material from day one on the introduction of the Deco Bands conform to the information I posted before. I have seen many replies to many topics where there is no documentation to support what we see in the wild. In the absence of factual information. it is all too easy to imagine and speculate on a work-room or a manufacturing plant where the workers simply use whatever they had at hand to complete their work, but in practice, branding and standardization was very important to the Wahl company. The idea that the company threw on whatever old parts were lying about from prior models is a bit hard to go with, but hey, anyone's opinion counts when there is no documentation. OTOH, my research and whatever documentation I can see including repair manuals and the earliest announcements never shows the Wahl Pen clip on a Deco Band pen.

 

The advent of the "Gold Seal" pen in 1928 was simultaneous with the major brand name shift to Wahl-Eversharp on all Personal Point models and the factory was meticulous about the Gold Seal and the pen it was on and the guarantee that went with it to the extent that no pen with a gold seal was made with anything other than gold seal accouterment. To do otherwise would void the guarantee. This applied to nibs as well. As for Wahl #6 Nibs, that is the only size that will fit properly in the original sections and collars, so it is only natural that if a nib needs to be replaced and the Gold Seal nib is not available that a Wahl #6 would find its way into the pen over the years since new. Are these new-in box,never used pens that are mentioned in the previous posts found with #6 nibs too? Of course the "drilled seal" non-guaranteed pens came with Warranted #7 nibs as a rule (Warranted #7 were the same size as Gold Seal #6)

 

I too have seen "so many" deco bands with variations in the clips but I have always attributed it to repaired/restored pens that acquired other than factory original equipment over the years. Does anyone have anything that would show otherwise? If so I need it for my archives.

 

I hope my prior post did not offend. Roberto has been a great poster to this forum. And I know how much effort he has put into acquiring fine examples. Just because there is no evidence that I can find that shows WAHL PEN clips belong on a Deco Band, does not mean it is impossible. So nothing about this "intellectual" area of discussion should be taken as a criticism of what is a truly fine collection.

 

One more thing. There is some admittedly unsettled yet more generally accepted speculation about the drilled gold seals that says that it was not the practice to void a guarantee when a pen was sent to the factory for repair. Rather that the drilled gold seals were done on discontinued pens still in stock when the factory no longer wanted to support the guarantee. The factory replaced gold seal nibs with gold seal nibs until the guarantee of those pens was voided. That is the guarantee was not voided upon repair. The pen was sold with a "lifetime guarantee for ever" so switching nibs on repairs was not in keeping with the guarantee terms.

 

 

 

Syd

Edited October 7, 2008 by Wahlnut

[LBpens]

I too have a number of mint pens with gold seals and Wahl Pen clips. This is why I think we have to be careful in using catalogs and ads as if they were rosetta stones for what happened when. Catalogs and ads were done by marketing departments that were often as divorced from design and development as we are today looking back 80 years. Also, it is obvious that the gold seal on the pens came before the gold seal nibs. I believe all of the bchr decobands I have seen (and I think there are only a dozen or so known) have gold seals, Wahl clips and Wahl nibs.

[Vintagepens]

The warranted #7 nib is on a Deco Band Gold Seal with the drilled seal, which means that the pen has his original nib broken and was sent to the factory for the repair. The nib is has is the one they were used to put on for these reapairs and drilling the gold seal meant that the warranty was avoided.

 

As Syd notes, all evidence is against this hypothesis. The Gold Seal guarantee was a lifetime guarantee -- not a one-time-only guarantee. Years ago, Cliff Lawrence published the ads Wahl-Eversharp sent out to dealers c. 1940 promoting their closeout of old models at deeply-discounted prices. There is no doubt that W-E made a concerted effort to clear out old model stock to make way for the Skyline, and this is really the only logical time for marketing pens deliberately downgraded by removal or defacement of all indicators of lifetime guarantee.

[Wahlnut]

I keep looking for any material I can find that would show the Deco Band pens in any of the WAHL PEN dress. Today I went into the archives and went through the "EVERSALES" Dealer newsletters that were the in-house publication published by Wahl-Eversharp exclusively for retail dealers. I went back to the July-August 1928 EVERSALES where the "Deco Band" Gold Seal was "announced" to dealers for the very first time. There is a cover shot, and a center-fold of all the Deco Bands and colors. All of the pens have the Gold Seal, The WAHL-EVERSHARP Gold Seal nibs and the WAHL-EVERSHARP clip. So, while this is by no means conclusive proof, it does show that at the very beginning of the entire Deco Band pen line (when it would have been a logical time for the Old WAHL PEN clips to be carried over to the earliest of the Deco Bands, they were not shown on any of these pens. This is presented here to at least partially put to rest the possible argument that there might have been an evolution from one pen line to another with a possible carry-over of hardware from one pen to the next. Interestingly, there is no mention of the Personal Point interchangeable nib system at this date. This EVERSALES issue came out between the 1928 catalog and the 1929 catalogs. At some point between August 1928 and March 1929 (The Wahl and Wahl Eversharp catalogs usually came out by March of the year) the Personal Point came to the Deco Band. So it is entirely understandable that there would be early Deco Bands without interchangeable Personal Point sections. But they would have GOLD SEAL nibs all the same. the Personal Point section and interchangeable nib was introduced and became an integral part of the Gold Seal Pens including the Deco Bands, of course by March 1929.

 

This of course in no way proves that there was not a way for the WAHL PEN Deco Bands with WAHL PEN nibs to have gotten out, but it is definitely an under the radar version from what we have here so far. Very interesting.

 

Now it is possible that the pens with the WAHL PEN bright work were sold elsewhere in the world as foreign sales items. Wahl Pens were assesmbled and sold in France, England and Canada (and maybe also Argentina?). I wonder if the GOLD SEAL Lifetime Guarantee was not available in those countries and that such pens were aoutitted with the WAHL PEn clip and Nib...but that would not explain them also bearing the Gold Seal on the cap. It is also possible that the company did use the old stock Wahl Pen hardware on foreign pens just to get rid of the old stock as was previously suggested by someone here.

 

Something of importance may also lie in the fact that Wahl-Eversharp dealers, and the Middletown Company (official repair centers) and their authorized service center dealers were all supplied with a repair kit if one was desired. The repair kit came with replacement nibs and clips and they were all WAHL PEN items. That could explain some of the pens getting different trim, but not the reportedly "Mint in box" pens of course...(but mint in box items still show up today and who nows about authenticity), but I do not doubt anyone who makes that claim here, especially LB, who should know as well or better than anyone what is and isn't Mint.

 

We may never know the whole answer but I think it is interesting from a "scholarship" standpoint to lay out what factual information we can get our hands on. But you be the judge. I like them all!

 

 

 

[Rick Krantz]

Syd, you definitely did the homework, I guess what it really comes down to is when we try to pinpoint an absolute in pen collecting, there seems to be some evidence to refute the point. I would have to agree that all the research you did, and materials point to a lot of conclusive fact, but the observable population of pens, and those that seen them, don't support what would be the easier conclusion to believe. I often think that if we had use of a time machine, we could go back and get the answers, but at best, we can only all collectively offer what we each know or research, or observe, and come up with the best map of what is likely the right answer. Not much of a Wahl collector, but this definitely has proven to be a great discussion to read, for sure.

[LBpens]

I think the answer to many of these mysteries lies in the fact that marketing departments (the source of catalogs and ads) were not out front in product design and development. In fact they were way behind the curve. We have to keep reminding ourselves that these were products being cranked out for the market and no-one was concerned about the possible confusion of future collectors. It stands to reason that many pens of new design would have been sent out in variations long before marketing ever got their hooks into it. There are just too many early deco bands with Wahl clips and nibs for me to think they are anything but factory. Short run and under the radar yes, but factory. Especially with the rare bchr where I don't think there is one with Eversharp trim. The truth is we'll never know for sure.

[Vintagepens]

This discussion is a good illustration of the need to use all available sources of information, to use them critically, and to be aware of their limitations and lacunae.

 

Taking company literature as gospel can, as we have seen, lead one into some nasty pitfalls. There are many Wahl models and variants that are unquestionably original, but which are totally unrecorded in surviving catalogs and advertisements.

 

Of course, one must not fall into the trap of assuming that every pen found in the wild must be factory-original. Nonetheless, the existence of multiple examples found mint and boxed is extremely strong evidence for correctness and authenticity.

 

Note, too, the difference between positive proof and negative. Proving a negative with absolute certainty is very difficult indeed. That something is not mentioned in the incomplete records available to us, falls fall short of establishing that it was not produced.