Parker
Pens and Ephemera

Do you wish your vintage grail pen came with a Japanese extra-fine nib? This 1939 Parker Vacumatic Maxima gets pretty close to Japanese extra-fine with the right paper. It is a beautiful silver pearl design with tolerable barrel clarity with ambering. No cracks, no scratches, no significant wear. It comes with a fresh diaphragm and a clean imprint and top and bottom silver pearl design jewels. There's monotone 14k gold nib. Click the headline for close-ups. Great aluminum speedline filler. Its only flaw seems to be the darkened metal trim around the blind-cap jewel. 13.6cm capped.

Parker VP meant Very Personal. The revolutionary developments for this pen included an ergonomic grip for the fountain pen and a nib and feed that could be rotated to better accommodate for the grip and getting the nib to write from any angle. These are rarer pens, as they only made VPs for a couple years. It led to the monumental success of the Parker 75. This teal colored vintage pen has a major problem in its barrel. Click the headline for a close-up to see the 1.5cm crack in the barrel where it threads into the section. Basically, the crack is bad and makes the pen unstable to write with...without making the crack worse. This is a shame, as the aerometric filler unit is in great condition. In most VPs, this is the rare part that is whole. Its 14k gold nib writes a very smooth broad line. 13.8cm capped.

You might think this Parker 51 Demi pencil looks black in the photo, but it is really a deep burgundy. It is difficult to see the difference until you set it next to a black pen or pencil. It has an early click-cap lead advance and comes loaded with a .9mm lead. The barrel is nice and clean, but the gold-filled cap has little specks in it that we couldn't quite polish out. An original, mostly hardened, eraser is under the tail cap. 12cm.

The greener side of teal looks fantastic on this Parker 21 pencil. It is New Old Stock with its original price sticker. Unfortunately, NOS doesn't mean it is flawless. There is a visible scratch on the steel cap in the photo. The base model for the Parker 21, this vintage pencil is in great working order. Its .9mm lead advances and retracts with a smooth twist of the tail cap. Under the tail cap is a perfect, hardened eraser and under it are spare leads. 12.6cm.

Parker first released its super famous Sonnet line in 1994. Among the first colors were two beautiful Chinese lacquers. This is one such first-run Parker Sonnet in the design pattern of "Chinese Laque Vision Foncé." It is an exquisite pen, much like a Japanese urushi design in black with amber-sparkle highlights. You can see a spot of wear on the wide, gold-plated cap band and lighter wear elsewhere on the pencil. Twist the tail cap to advance and retract .5mm leads. Under the cap, you will find a working but mostly worn down eraser and spare leads. 13.4cm

Perfection is difficult to achieve in vintage pens, but this 1940 Oversize Parker Vacumatic gets close. No cracks, only light wear and incredible barrel clarity with celluloid that is on the light orange-dark yellow spectrum. No brassing. A feint barrel imprint. Close to perfect two-tone plating for the 14k gold nib. (Click the headline for a close-up.) YET, as you can see on the main photo, the name "James A. Kunkel" is engraved on the barrel. We looked up the name, and there are too many James Kunkels to know who owned this specific pen. You'll write an extra-fine line that is a bit dry but can sometimes look fine. Restored and in great working order. Museum worthy rare burgundy...yet, still a good writer. 13.5cm capped.

In 1936, Fred & Ginger lit up the silver screen in the classic "Swingtime," King Edward VIII abdicated the British throne to marry an American divorcé, television broadcasts first began, Jesse Owens showed up the Nazis in Berlin, Joe DiMaggio was a rookie, FDR won a second term and this Parker Vacumatic standard set in burgundy was made. It was an elegant era, and this pen in many respects marks the pinnacle of art deco design. This particular set is in excellent condition. No cracks, maybe 1% brassing, no scratches, restored and working. Its two-tone 14k has some cosmetic issues. Click the headline to see close-ups. It writes an extra-fine line with a little flex but not much. The matching pencil works great in excellent condition and comes with spare 1.1mm leads. Pen measures 12.8cm capped.

Vintage ink collectors will love this complete Parker Superchrome ink bottle set. Included is a 4-oz. bottle of blue ink (dried out) and the special tin that it rested in. Superchrome was a brilliant and beautiful ink that was far more vibrant than standard inks of the era. However, it was only intended for the Parker 51 with the "pli-glass" ink sacs. That which made it so vibrant was highly acidic and tore through normal ink sacs very quickly, ruining many old pens in the 1940s and '50s. It was discontinued due to its corrosive nature. We've seen a lot of Superchrome bottles over the year but this is one of the first we've seen to come complete with its tin. The tin shows a little rust and wear in places, but it isn't all that bad. EXTRA SHIPPING CHARGES MIGHT APPLY DUE TO THE SIZE AND WEIGHT.