Vintage Pens January 2006 Stylophiles Online

By Mike Stevens

There are many different choices when it comes time to add another currently produced pen to your collection. If you're into modern pens, it's quite simple to look for a bargain, in some cases, it comes down to finding the best price and buying, simple as that!

When looking for a vintage pen to add to your collection, however.... They say the hunt is half the fun, and if so, it's a good thing! You'll spend more time searching, but in many ways, you get a certain sense of satisfaction from finding the "perfect" pen from the past that you simply won't find when you order the latest hot limited edition from a catalog. The sad fact is, however, the hunt has changed a bit over the last few years.

When I first began collecting, the place to find fountain pens form the past was at the local antique shop. In fact, instead of comparing the merits of Ebay to online retailer to penshow, I was limited to having to debate the advantages of large antique mall to small out of the way antique shop. There weren't any alternatives available to me. Garage sales, I suppose...

I did eventually discover the wonders of a pen show, and the wide range of vintage pens available there took my breath away. Still, the LA show only came around once a year, and so for the most part, it was making the rounds of the local shops or nothing at all. Not that it was a hardship doing so. I found some of my best pens during those days. It was still possible to find good pens "in the wild" witha bit of patience and perserverence. It was nothing like the stories I heard from collectors who had been at it longer: "when I was first collecting, you could buy boxes of mint Patricians for $1 apiece, and silver overlays were $10" and so forth. But still... It was normal to head out for a Saturday of shopping knowing that you'd come home with at the very least a couple of new pieces for the collection.

Enter the internet. Or, more appropriately, enter Ebay!

I can recall when I first heard of this new web site that allowed you to bid on things, auction-style. They didn't even have a "collectibles" section, much less one devoted strictly to writing instruments. You had to wade through the "antiques" catagory, looking for pens. When you did find one, you usually won the auction.

Now, of course, Ebay is a highly developed system, and locating, tracking, and bidding on pens can be a full time occupation if you let it! I'll leave the debate over whether Ebay is a net positive or negative to another time, and instead we'll just look at it as another venue for finding vintage pens.

Comparing it to the other "best venue" for locating vintage pens, the large Pen Show. Pen Shows have a lot of advantages over Ebay, but Ebay has a few very striking advantages over the Show. We'll look at some of the pro and cons between the two.

The first point at which most would consider the Pen Show to be way ahead of Ebay (or any online retail outlet for that matter) would be in having the ability to examine the pen in person before buying. Online, you are limited to a picture. With a fully developed retail outlet selling modern pens like Worldlux or Swisher, this is less of a problem. You can count on a good picture or pictures, showing all the details. Even most vintage pen dealers online will do their best to have good, clear catalog style images of their offerings. When it comes to Ebay, however, you tend to find that many auctions come up short in this regard.

Of course there are some auctions with good, sometimes even great images of the pens. But far more are based around a single, often less than crisply sharp shot of the pen set out on a tabletop. For some reason, a lace doily is very popular as background for this style of shot. Auctions with this sort of picture are better than no picture at all, since after all, you can probably distinguish between a Waterman 58 and a Parker 21, regardless of the picture quality. But can you distinguish between say a Parker Vacumatic Maxima (with the Vacumatic cap band...) and a Vacumatic Major? The difference in value between the two is "significant"!

Without the ability to pick up the pen and examine it in person, you are limited to asking questions. Questions are not only a good idea on Ebay, they are usually a requirement, plain and simple. Ask about cracks, dings, dents, warping, missing nibs, bent nibs, brassing on the trim, the size of the pen, the diameter, the color.... The more you ask up front, the better the chances that it will be a smooth transaction for both you and the seller.

The advantage of Ebay is that, sitting in the comfort of your own home, you can page through thousands of pens. No matter how rare it might be, the chances are, sooner or later, one will end up for auction on Ebay. If it's a more common pen you are searching for, you're likely to be paging through hundreds of listed examples. There is a lot of variety available, just remember that the variety can extend to quality, so remember to ask those questions!

While it might seem as though a Pen Show has it all over Ebay in this regard, remember that paying attention here can also be vital. Having the opportunity to examine the pen in person means that you should do just that! Checking carefully for cap lip cracks, brassing on the trim, and that all the parts are correct is every bit as vital.

The chief advantage to being at a Pen Show as opposed to bidding or buying online is in having the chance to examine in person several examples of the same model pen. Unless you're buying something really, really rare, there will be several to look over. The disadvantage of course, is that going to a show requires you to... Well, go to the show. Travel costs need to be factored into the equation. The Pen Show is also a social event, and aside from the pens you will find, there is the interaction with your fellow collectors to think about. There's nothing better than being able to not only find and buy a pen that you've been looking for, but to then discuss your collection over dinner with other pen nuts!

Of course, it's not impossible to find pens in antique shops these days. It's just a great deal more difficult! I have come across a few pieces "in the wild" over the last year, but it's literally just that, a couple of pens. Compared to the number of pens I would usually find five years ago, it's pretty clear that it's not the best place for finding pens anymore. In addition to finding fewer pens altogether, the ones you do come across are very likely to be priced significantly higher as dealers beging using Ebay as a "price guide". This might not be so bad were it not for a tendancy to simply pick the highest closing value for a pen of the same brand (or one that sounds close at any rate), and putting that price on their pen. Thus you find Eversharp Skylines prices as though they were a mint OS Deco Band.

It's a tough call between the Pen Show and Ebay when it comes down to sheer variety, with the antique shops coming in a distant third. The cost of attending a Pen Show is higher than that of simply sitting down and switching on your computer, that's offset by the advantage of being able to examine the pens you purchase in person. Whichever methods you select to fill in the slots in your collection, here's wishing you the best of luck! (Always assuming of course, that you're not bidding against me!)

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