Don’t Get Fooled by Fake Montblancs: Vermeil Solitaire

It sure looks like a legitimate Montblanc Classique Vermeil Solitaire.

This tale is, unfortunately, an all too familiar one. A friend was perusing the world’s most famous electronic auction site (rhymes with uPay) and discovered a deal too good to pass up. It was a Montblanc Classique Vermeil Solitaire ballpoint. This friend was an experienced Montblanc collector, and the photos from the listing were checking out as a legit pen. It looked like a $1,000 pen for only $150 or so. A master of finding many an obscure bargain on the auction site, this had just gone up and if he didn’t snatch it now, it would surely be gone soon. It was worth the risk to him.

This is a convincing hallmark for a Montblanc Classique Vermeil Solitaire.

To be fair, it looked great in real life, too! This pen was the right design, very well machined, the “seams” lined up well. It fit an authentic Montblanc refill perfectly. The serial number and hallmarks were all present. To any average person, this was a very legit Montblanc pen.

Experience and familiarity with Montblanc pays dividends, though. If you are new to collecting, “vermeil”, in the case of Montblanc and other luxury pens, is a solid sterling silver cap and barrel coated in gold. It has a certain weight to it. Obviously, a scale could be employed to definitively tell you it is the perfect weight. But, if you’ve held enough of these pens over the years, you become familiar with that proper heft.

The proper location for a Montblanc serial number…but a fake number.

The two things that gave this pen away for me were the heft (it felt too light) and a sound. One can legitimately complain about Montblanc manufacturing for several reasons. However, the company’s pens and pencils are always well fit between parts. This imposter pen jangled a little. If you placed this pen between two of your fingers and shook it back and forth, it rattled a bit and sounded tinny. Once my fake pen senses were tingling, I looked up the serial number on the clip band, and it was a commonly faked number. On closer inspection, the font used for “Germany” on the clip band also was wrong.

Also, all too common, the seller of this pen refused to take it back for a refund. In the end, the steal of a on a Montblanc Classique Vermeil Solitaire deal turned out to be fraud. Keep that in mind as you hunt for bargains on your Montblanc safari. You might pay a little more at a legitimate pen dealer, but the piece of mind with pens guaranteed to be authentic is worth it.

Another giveaway is that the font is not correct for the word “Germany” in the clip band. Montblanc’s font is less rounded and more stylized with the “Y”.