The LA Pen Show looms large on our horizon. After attending at least four International shows each year over the last five years, only attendinf two shows in 2006 left us with withdrawal symptoms. This year we hope to attend LA, Chicago, DC and one other yet to be decided.

The recent Melbourne Pen Show drew a disappointingly small crowd. One of the problems seems to be (as for all smaller shows) "small show = small advertising budget" which is compounded by the high advertising costs in major cities.

We’ve been forced by Ebay/PayPal policy to include minimum insurance (to obtain tracking) on all airmail shipments. This has meant an increase in our base airmail-shipping price, which we have kept to less than break-even.

Sheaffer made some wonderful pens during the period when Vac Fillers were popular. They were good reliable pens, but gained a bad reputation over more recent years due to some less than perfect repair methods, usually incorporating a rubber bung! Pens with such a repair rarely lasted for more than a year.

We are now able to restore these pens to their former glory by removing and repacking or replacing the troublesome rear end packing unit. This is a difficult and time consuming job, but well worth the effort to resurrect some of Sheaffer’s fine writing instruments.

Extracts from a July 1965 Australian Stationery Trade Magazine

“With babies and other non-buying age taken out, every fourth person in Australia bought a fountain pen in 1963”. In 2006 it probably wasn’t one in four hundred!

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

Robert Frost