In this column, we will be taking short looks at various aspects of the pen collecting hobby, as they focus on collecting "vintage" pens, those made from prior to the 1980s. We'll try to include a little of everything, from the "one of a kind" high end collectible pens, to the more common "everyday" vintage pens that bring so many of us into this hobby. -Ed.

Most collectors, even those who don't make a specialty out of Parker pens of the 1930s would recognize the common varieties of the Parker Vacumatic. When it comes to the uncommon varieties, on the other hand, it can be tough. Sometimes the differences can be as subtle as having the feathered portion of the clip a half a millimeter shorter or longer... Not the sort of thing that leaps immediately to the eye!

Sometimes though, you get an uncommon Vacumatic that does stand out of the crowd. Such as the subject of this month's Vintage Column, a very uncommon pen indeed.

This Vacumatic is made of a material not ever used in regular large scale production. It is doubtless what even the most discriminating would call "rare", with only a few examples currently known to be in existence.

The Vacumatic pen shown here shares many characteristics with other Vacumatic Junior model pens from the mid 1930s. It is equipped with the same type and style of trim as one would expect to see on a Vacumatic Junior from, say, 1936. Has two thin cap rings. A black section, jewels, and blind cap. The only thing "not right" is that a Vac Junior should probably not be mounted with the two-tone arrow nib, rather than with a plain gold nib. Of course, nibs are easlily interchanged, and it's not uncommon to find the two tone nib showing up on pens that it probably "shouldn't" be on.

What really sets this pen apart from a run of the mill Vacumatic Junior is of course the material of the cap and barrel. It's what some might call a "snakeskin" pattern of a cream colored base with dark brown chunks and veins.

It appears to be manufactured of a wrapped sheet of celluloid. On close examination, the seam can be seen winding up the barrel and cap. This manufacturing process is not uncommon on celluloid pens from this era, and when used with a highly patterned material such as this example, the seam is really not obtrusive. It actually takes some looking to spot it among all the brown marbling and veins!

The dark brown portions on the barrel look to have been fully translucent at one point in time, and have ambered heavily over the years. This ambering has spread a bit into the surrounding cream colored areas, as you can see in the image above. The brown portions of the cap are a solid brown. This sort of ambering on the barrel is very common with the translucent celluloid used in Vacumatics, and a similar effect can be seen on many Vacumatic Juniors in the marbled colors.

It has been called a "prototype", which I don't think accurate, at least as far as the term should be applied to pens. Definitely a short run of production, but it seems that whatever the purpose in being made, that these pens were actually sold and used, albeit in very, very limited quantities.

Examples have surfaced with clear signs of use, and from sources that might tend to indicate that the pens had been bought (or at least obtained) by the "general public". A "true" prototype wouldn't usually have been distributed for use to the public.

So, if this isn't a prototype, what is it? It's clearly an uncommon pen, with a couple of examples like this one known, a double desk set that was reportedly found "in the wild" in Ohio, and some others in similar patterns with differing colors.

"Limited Production" might be a better term, as that would leave us with a descriptive catagory covering a pen made in only a few examples, without putting it into the same catagory as those "one-off" factory models that are clearly "prototypes" in the fullest sense of the word.

In any case, the pen shown here is at the very least a wonderful example of the wide range of materials offered by Parker in the mid-1930s. The Vacumatic was just getting into the swing of things as Parker's main model, and it seems clear that they were determined to leave no stone unturned in coming up with winning color combinations!

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We would like to thank Roger Cromwell and Victor Chen for allowing us the opportunity to photograph pens from their display at the LA Show. We are currently in the process of putting together research for a feature article exploring prototype pens. If you have any interesting examples and would be willing to share information or allow your pens to be photographed for inclusion, please contact us at stylophiles@comcast.net

copyright 2005 William Riepl