The Royal Challenge

As if I had not spent enough money at Michael Krut’s table at the Detroit Show, he also had this one:

“I have to check the pictures on my laptop first,” I said. Up in the room that evening, I checked – and I was back at Michael’s table first thing Saturday morning. This is a Parker Royal Challenger, bearing a date code of 9 with no dots; that’s the fourth quarter of 1939.

I had started to write an article about these a few years ago, then stopped because I was missing a couple pieces of the puzzle, this being one of them. 

All of the examples with sword clips shown here have date codes of 17; that designates the first quarter of 1937 (the coding system changed between then and 1939). That isn’t a large enough sampling from which I can draw any conclusions, but it does square with what sparse documentation we have about these. Parker’s regular catalogs between 1937 and 1941 include no references to the Royal Challenger, but a four-page flyer printed in July 1937 shows them. Perhaps this was intended as supplemental pages for the 1937 or 1938 catalog.

The back page, which includes the publication date, shows a Parker Royal Challenger pen and pencil set, “with swank Roman Dagger Clip.”

These sword or “Dagger” clips were apparently discontinued shortly into production in favor of a clip with a stepped end, which was used exclusively on the Royal Challenger series.

The example shown here with three bands has a 28 date code, for the second quarter 1938; the wide band example, like Michael’s example, has a 9 date code designating fourth quarter 1939.

The stepped clip might have been introduced for 1938; one page in N.Shure Company’s 1938 catalog shows the Royal Challenger with that same clip:

My working theory is that 1939 was the final year for the Royal Challenger, and these all . . . mostly . . . had that wide band and the same stepped clip from 1938. As I worked on this article a couple years ago, I found an online auction for another wide band example in red, but also with that same clip. Unfortunately, the date code was not visible in the pictures.

Of course, it would be too much to expect Parker to be consistent in 1939, as the Royal Challenger was being phased out and the company was piecing together all sorts of weird combinations of parts. The example I got from Michael has the straight clip found on the lesser Challengers.

Perhaps that is a replacement at some point during the last ninety years or so, since the clips are interchangeable. However, I can’t discount the possibility that this might be as it was originally assembled after the supply of stepped clips was exhausted.

And speaking of parts . . . the Royal Challenger’s parts are not compatible with anything else I’ve found. For some time I’ve had a red Royal Challenger I’ve been trying to complete. The threaded end of the mechanism was snapped off at some point, and I haven’t been able to find a donor.

The 1939 wide band should – in theory – provide a perfect replacement, but it doesn’t. The mechanism was modified slightly between 1937 and 1939, just enough that the one doesn’t fit in the other.

That means . . . the only mechanism that will get my sword clip Royal Challenger back on the road will be what’s inside another 1937 Royal Challenger.