Accessions and Deaccessions

My reputation as a Parker hater isn’t really accurate, even though I’ve poked the wounded bear a few times here by suggesting Parker made some regrettable lower-quality things for other companies. Maybe this article will redeem me – I have several items in the Parker wing of the museum that I haven’t written about, many of which are truly one of a kind.

A few years ago, Larry Liebman told me he would like to rehome some Parker prototype pencils, and he thought the museum might be a good place for them to enjoy their retirement.

At top is a “Reporter,” a weird Parker subbrand that I haven’t thought about much since the first volume here at the blog; I haven’t seen one for years, so there hasn’t been an occasion to circle back around to them.

These are rarely found in working order, since the material had a tendency to shrink and freeze the mechanism in place. This one works, and the overall shape and proportions are slightly different from what I’ve seen before. Usually these are marked “Reporter” on the clip, but that blue one at bottom is marked “Parco.”

In “Harder Than It Had To Be” (April 10, 2012: Volume 1, page 169), I had concluded that these were a Canadian product, thanks to George Kovalenko’s contribution of an advertisement by Eaton’s, a Canadian retailer. I no longer believe these were exclusively for the Canadian market, though – a current search of newspapers turns up more American advertisements than Canadian, beginning in fall, 1930. This one (abridged here) was in the Great Falls (Montana) Leader on September 12, 1930:

These may have worked as well when they were new as they do today – Reporter Pencils were being blown out at clearance prices by mid-1930, and the last advertisement I found was published in December, 1931.  

That second example, in coral, sports an ill-fitting washer clip sandwiched between the top and bottom sections. 

Years ago I saw another example just like this, including the ill-fitting clip – I believe Joe Nemecek had it. It seems like too much of a coincidence that the only two of these I’ve seen have that same poorly fitted clip, and besides: even if the clip isn’t right, the rest of the pencil is so weird that if it was supposed to have something else, I have no idea what that might be.

The two ringtop pencils are fairly straightforward, except for the banding.

These are typically one solid color, sometimes tipped at the ends with black. The black used on these, however, is not that same material – on closer examination, it has shrunk a bit.

Speaking of weird gold-capped Duofolds, Eric Magnuson brought this one by for a photo session a few years ago: 

This one looks almost like a reproduction: those green veins are something very atypical for Parker, and it isn’t hard to make these Duofold barrels out of modern materials since there’s nothing more to them than threading opposite ends of a straight tube. Eric’s example is the real deal, though, fully marked with a Duofold imprint.

Larry’s red vest pocket pencil (some call them “golf pencils,” but we’ll get to that tomorrow) is unusual because of that added black band. Also . . . now that I think of it, when I find these in red they have a longer, less streamlined top than these. More on that tomorrow, too . . .

The rest of Larry’s deaccessions in this batch were in Parker’s “Pearl and Ebony” (as described in Parker’s 1928 and 1929 catalogs), renamed “Moderne Black-and-Pearl” in Parker’s 1930 catalog; none of these, however, were in any of Parker’s catalogs.

That weird vest pocket-ish pencil isn’t anything found in regular production. As mentioned earlier, vest pocket pencils had long tapered or short streamlined tops, but nothing so rounded as to be perilously close to Walter Sheaffer’s design patent for the Balance line’s golf pencil.

On these, my working theory has always been that the example at top is earlier, and the more streamlined, shorter caps are later – but I don’t think that’s right. More on that tomorrow.

Next are a couple shop pieces, showing how Parker’s design department was playing around with different designs:

The one with a “tip” is a dummy – there’s nothing there to write with.

At bottom is a “pregnant” Duofold, to borrow the term from the collector’s nickname for earlier Parker fountain pens with bulbous barrels. It is unusual not only for its girth but also because there are no black ends; the 1928 and 1929 catalogs showing the Pearl and Ebony flattop Duofold pencils only show those with black ends.

And speaking of black . . .

These also came from Larry, but at some other time. They are along the lines of the pastel Duofolds shown in Parker’s 1929 and 1930 catalogs – I owed it to you to show you a spread of these to explain yesterday’s reference to George Parker and the Easter Bunny.

What makes these two unusual is the trim: the deluxe trim, with that wider center band, was first cataloged in the green pearl Duofolds in 1932. This is “reverse trim,” meaning it is the opposite color from what one would expect to see – these typically had gold filled trim. As for the other, that extra-wide gold filled band is to my knowledge uncataloged. I don’t have any evidence to tell me whether this is factory or a jeweler’s modification.

I mentioned my photo shoot with Eric Magnuson earlier, and Eric had a couple other things to share. First is this streamlined Duofold pencil:

It is close to, but not quite the same as, the color of my gray Parker Zaner Bloser pencil:

Like his yellow pencil with green veins, this one is also fully marked with a Duofold imprint:

Eric also brought his examples of those weird “Parco” pencils – not along the Reporter lines as shown earlier, but those with black plastic caps. We got our respective collections together for a group shot:

Finally, Eric brought his weird Challenger/Duofold hybrid in mandarin yellow, shown here alongside my larger (and a little messed up) example and at bottom, a “normal” Mandarin Duofold:

Those top two are ordinary nose drive pencils, while the bottom one has a typical rear-drive Duofold mechanism.

Both of these Challenger/Duofold hybrids have Duofold imprints:

While my larger example doesn’t have any markings on the cap, Eric has two of the smaller ones – both have advertising imprints, suggesting these mules were put together from leftover parts and sold however they could be sold.

My last news on the weird Parker front – for now – is this one, courtesy of Fred Copsey-Pearce:

Parker fans will immediately recognize this one as one of Parker’s special-order pencils for the Zaner-Bloser Company of Columbus, Ohio, with Zaner-Bloser’s typical contoured grip. As with other pencils made by Parker for Zaner-Bloser, it is imprinted on the cap; however, it lacks the “Made by Parker Pen Company” part you’ll usually see:

The last time I saw a Parker Zaner-Bloser pencil in lapis was when a pen and pencil set turned up in the Chicago Pen Show auction a few years ago. It sold for more than you’d pay for a used Volkswagon, more than I could afford – I approached the buyer after the auction to see if he’d sell the pencil, but he wanted to keep the set together. I can’t say I blame him.

Fred’s example is missing the top piece and the clip, and I’m still waiting for the right parts to make that happen; the diameter of the opening at the top is larger than any normal Duofold, and someone crudely wedged a now-fossilized eraser in its place after it went missing.

Fred says that he ran across this one in an online auction, and everybody missed it – myself included. But wait . . . there’s more. Fred says it was part of a lot that included some other odd things . . . 

These are dummy pens rather than functioning models, so I’m saying the following with caution: look at that cap . . .

If these were finished, production pens, I’d say that top is a dead giveaway that these were made by the Pick Pen Company in Cincinnati – that might make sense that another Ohio company wanted to make pens for a Columbus firm. It might also explain – if these were made by Pick – why the typical Parker Pen Co. mention is absent on the cap of the lapis pencil, and also why a normal Duofold end plug isn’t the right size.

But these are conceptual dummies, not finished products, so it’s just as likely that whoever made this just didn’t finish the lathe work on the cap. Besides, there are some similarities between these and Larry’s pencil barrels.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to know . . . when the artifacts themselves are the only available evidence, the information vacuum leaves a few holes in the story.