After the Conklin Pen Company’s failure in 1938, operations were moved from Toledo, Ohio to Chicago by a shadowy syndicate of investors. The identity of those investors remains an open question (see “The Chicago Syndicate That Rubbed Out Conklin” - December 17, 2015: Volume 4, page 42), and the quality of Conklin’s offerings declined significantly after the move to Chicago.
That decline is one most collectors decline to pursue. It’s sad what became of the once-proud company, and many collectors would rather dwell in the earlier, higher quality Conklins made in happier times.
I have never had reservations about chasing down Chicago-made Conklins. The story is fantastic, with all of Joseph Starr’s shenanigans. The story started in Ohio, and any proud burgee-wielding Buckeye feels that sense of obligation to be a completist about an Ohio company, even after they left.
Heck, I even collected modern Conklin Fountain Pens . . . until, of course, their new foreign owners couldn’t even spell the word “Ohio” right in the imprints on their pens. Someone really needs to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission, since they still stamp “USA” on their imported nibs.
I digress. Suffice to say I don’t turn up my nose at Chicago Conklins, like this one:
The other reason I like Chicago-made Conklins is that pen companies did things that were far more interesting when they were struggling than when they were cruising along and basking in their success. They did whatever they needed to do to survive when they had little or nothing to lose.
One of the more interesting things that I believe Conklin did during its twilight years involved the Parker Pen Company, that sacred cow of Pendom which has caused many a heretic to be burned at the stake for impugning its reputation. I have so impugned Parker three times now when it comes to Conklin, and while I have heard much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I haven’t heard I’m wrong.
The first time was when I suggested a pencil marked “The Glider Pen” was actually a Parker-made Parkette rebadged for Conklin in Chicago. See “Finally Enough Proof . . . and a New, Heretical Question” (February 27, 2018: Volume 5, page 166):
In that same article, I also noted that the “Glider Pen” pencils (Glider was a Conklin brand name - we’ll get to that in just a minute) were also constructed the same way as the cringeworthy “Minuteman” line of pencils Conklin offered . . . right down to Parker’s patented spare lead cartridge, painted an inconspicuous red rather than in Parker’s usual black and gold:
That was an intriguing, undocumented and wildly unpopular theory . . . so of course, I had to do it again. A month later, I posted “Poking the Wounded Bear” (March 14, 2018: Volume 5, page 188), in which I challenged anyone to tell me why I shouldn’t believe these crappy, washer-clip Chicago Conklin fountain pens were made by Parker, when anyone on the street would swear those pens were a match for Parker’s budget line of “Zephyr” pencils.
I apparently didn’t get enough abuse that time either, so I returned to the subject in 2021 with “Halcyon Once Again” (April 18, 2021: Volume 7, page 47), in which I compared a pencil marked “Parker” on its clip to the Penman – the Penman, of course, was part of Joseph Starr’s web of companies that also included Conklin.
“If we continue to deny Parker had anything to do with stuff like this, we are denying an increasing pile of evidence to the contrary,” I wrote. “Now we have the same plastics, a rudimentary version of Parker’s patented lead cartridge, and now a Parker-marked pencil constructed the same way as nearly every low-budget production made during the 1940s.
“I think this is an extremely rare glimpse behind Parker’s gilded curtain. Like any other business, Parker had to find ways to survive.”
If you weren’t convinced before, you might be now. When I saw this Chicago Conklin in an online auction, I couldn’t figure out exactly what wasn’t quite right about it.
It looks like a Glider - not those “Glider Pen” Parkette-style affairs I wrote about earlier, but the real Conklin Glider, as advertised by Conklin after the move to Chicago. It is generally regarded as the last passable excuse for pens and pencils that Conklin offered. Here’s an advertisement for Conklin’s Glider “Cushion Point” pens, as published in The Saturday Evening Post on January 19, 1946:
This one, though, isn’t quite a Conklin Glider pencil. Here it is, posed between a Glider at top, and beneath by an uncataloged but established variety from around the same era:
That is not the same celluloid by any stretch of the imagination, even accounting for variations between lots of rod stock. The pattern is too tight, and doesn’t have the grey of a Glider.
But we have seen it before.
These are Parker Shadow Wave pencils made, according to their stamped date codes, between 1938 and 1941. Note the tighter striations and note the dimpling around the nose cone. The browns have a little more orange in them, though – “halloween” colors, one might suggest. If that causes you to pause, try on these Shadow Waves:
We may never find written documentation that Parker supplied Conklin with lower-quality writing instruments while Conklin struggled to survive, and that may be because Parker was as careful about curating its reputation then as its fans are today. Nothing I’ve presented says that Parker was an evil empire . . . just that it was the same as every other company and if anything, it was trying to survive, and it was a helping hand supplying competitors with what they needed to survive as well, too.
It might be a different way to look at Parker, but it is no better nor worse than any other way.
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