Late October 2004 Newsletter
Melbourne Vintage Pens
in this issue
 
Of Necessity - Pen Repairs á la WWII

Today many of us tend to forget that fountain pens were once a necessity of life, rather than a writing preference, collectable item or an adornment. Collecting of pens probably hadn't been thought of, but they were appreciated enough to be given as gifts.

Pen shops had loaner pens to offer if your problematic pen couldn't be fixed on the spot! I doubt that some of today's pen manufacturers/distributors could have survived judging by their repair turnaround. What would they have done during a crisis such as WWII? Send it back to Italy and wait for the war to end?

When pens were of necessity, repairs were often just functional, rather than cosmetic. A typical example of this is a rather discoloured Swan Eternal I acquired recently, with surprise, surprise, a Conway Stewart clip. I'm sure at the time, the owner was just pleased to get his pen back with a pocket clip.

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Dear ******,

Another overdue newsletter announcing an overdue website update. What's new? Well, there's a lot of catching up to do after four and half weeks away, not the least being a backlog of repairs. We are now back to a one week turnaround on repairs.

There are new items on most pages of the updated website, and we even have a few items running on Ebay.
Pen Shows

Our pen related travels are over for this year, and our next overseas pen show will be Los Angeles next February.

This year we have taken part in the Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington DC, New York and London Pen Shows. In all, travelling in excess of eighty thousand miles, the majority of them with United (great frequent flyer program). The only regret is not managing to fit the San Francisco event into our plans this year. Next year we intend to include San Francisco.

Quotations

The palest ink is better than the best memory.

Chinese Proverb

The Parker 51 Book

The publication of David Shepherd's book "Parker 51" has been delayed and will now be released "before Christmas". David gave a talk on his extensive "51" research at the Writing Equipment Society's October meeting in London. It was well illustrated, giving everyone a taste for the book.

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