One of the greatest screen beauties in golden-era Hollywood was Swedish-born Greta Garbo. She expressed a bold, raw sexuality uncommon in America in the 1920s and ’30s, and she maintained a famed “mystique.” Unlike so many who sought fame, Garbo famously said, “I want to be left alone,” though she was often misquoted as “I want to be alone.”

Her greatest films include the 1926 silent film “Flesh and the Devil;” “Mata Hari;” “Grand Hotel;” “Anna Karenina;” and my favorite, the Billy Wilder comedy “Ninotchka.” Garbo rarely smiled in her films, and the tagline for “Ninotchka” was simply, “Garbo laughs.” Considered a serious dramatic actress, Garbo is an absolute scream in the screwball comedy “Ninotchka,” where she plays a seemingly emotionally distant Soviet agent in Paris trying to sell stolen “White Russian” jewels to fund the communist regime when she is pursued by an unscrupulous playboy played by Melvyn Douglas. Easily one of the 10 funniest movies ever made.

Not surprisingly, Montblanc was quick to chose Garbo as the inspiration for one of its first…if not the first…Muses series limited edition pens in 2005. Celebrating the greatest female entertainers of the 20th century other muses include Ingrid Bergman, Marilyn Monroe, Liz Taylor and Maria Callas, among others.

As an early, and very desirable collectible, the Montblanc Greta Garbo is often faked. And those fakes can be surprisingly good. On first glance, the one we found can be easily mistaken for the real thing.

Here is a fake Montblanc Greta Garbo we discovered in a collection of pens.

It is easy to Google images of the Montblanc Greta Garbo set to see the original boxes and papers. (We thought we had and sold a set a little while back with photos of our own, but we cannot locate them.) The real pen has a unique serial number and Akoya pearl on the clip. The trim also is also silvery not golden. Authentic pens are also more solidly made.

The fake Garbo pen that we found looks real, but it feels flimsy and squeaks when you unscrew the cap. The clip and the golden trim are also rather loosely attached. You can feel the edges of the trim in the fake versions and maybe even wiggle the metal. The fakes likely also come with a generic converter or oddly imprinted converter with nontraditional Montblanc fonts and logos.

This close-up shows the poor quality of the fake pen’s steel nib, along with the condition of the “pearl” and trim.

In the close-up photo of the fake nib, you can see it is obviously a steel nib with an imprint that looks real. If you aren’t sure if the nib is steel or rhodium-plated, a test scribble will generally reveal a poorly made, scratchy steel nib.

Although we don’t presently have any photos of the authentic pen, we hope this helps to showcase the things to look for in the fake versions of the Montblanc Muses Series Greta Garbo fountain pen.