"Stealth Wealth"

Several years ago on the old Fountain Pen Network Forum, user “Pepin” started a thread titled “Which pen is the epitome of stealth wealth?” to discuss pens that are much more expensive than one might initially think – sort of an IYKYK sleeper show.

No, I don’t always talk in acronyms . . . but when I do, I’m proud to show off that stodgy old guys like me still have the capacity to learn new things, such as IYKYK means “if you know, you know.” For . . . you know . . . those who don’t know.

Mont Blanc doesn’t cut it in this category, because that snowflake or “bird splat” on top is deliberately intended to draw attention, and everybody knows there’s no stealth in parading around that wealth. That’s true of the genuine ones, anyway – the fake ones scream stealth poverty. “Stealth wealth” implies something that is so understated that the average person would have no idea how expensive they are.

Richard Binder was among the first to jump into that discussion with his images of a Chilton Golden Quill. As mentioned yesterday, this was the Chilton Pen Company’s last model, introduced by Chilton at the New York Worlds’ Fair in 1939. Richard Binder’s thorough profile of the Golden Quill (the full link is https://www.richardspens.com/ref/profiles/golden_quill.htm) is an invaluable research tool, and it is what I turned to immediately when I found this unmarked pencil in a junk box full of random stuff. 

This was one of those boxes that had come to me years ago, and I only recently got around to going through it; there must have been just one thing in there that I really wanted, but I had to buy the box to get that one thing. Maybe someone convinced me to accept a donation of stuff because they had heard I like pencils. If it was the former I got my money’s worth, and if I was charitable in bringing in a box of stuff I didn’t want, at least my good deed finally went unpunished.

What struck me about this one was that it was heavier than I thought it would be when I picked it up. Despite its drab maroon color and the poor condition of its trim, it just felt better in the hand than I expected, with a smooth and slop-free mechanism. The barrel is unmarked and is in decent shape, but there is a canyon stretching across its rounded top. 

It looks like a crack at first glance, but it’s an odd place for a crack to develop. When I examined it more closely, it looks like it had been deliberately molded or cut into the barrel. That, and a clip shaped so much like that one Chilton Wingflow from yesterday’s article, sent me Richard’s way to explore whether this junk box interloper might actually be much stealthier and wealthier than it appears.When the Golden Quill was first unveiled in 1939, the clips sported quill-like adornments on either side and they had a strip of gold-filled adornment set into the end of the cap resembling, as Richard Binder so aptly suggests, a mohawk haircut. This image was from an online auction many years ago and is preserved by Worthpoint on its website:

As Binder notes in his writeup, Chilton’s Golden Quill lasted for only a couple years before the company finally succumbed. His article includes this image of an example in maroon, and it best illustrates why I thought my pencil might be the pen’s match:

Towards the end of Richard’s article, I found enough to suggest to me that this might be a Golden Quill, even though my clip lacks the Golden Quill’s adornment and I would assume the mohawk was never installed (I’d expect to find some damage if it had one that had been removed or fell out). Binder notes that as Chilton circled the drain towards the end of its existence, Golden Quills were jobbed out to retailers - he notes how some were marked for Montgomery Ward. 

And then came the end of the company, when leftover parts were cobbled together and sold off in an effort to make use of whatever remained in stock.

We know from yesterday’s article that identical clips were used on the Wingflow series, even if only on my example. We know that both the Wingflow and the Golden Quill represented shifting consumer tastes during the late 1930s towards more minimalist design.

We also know that many other pen companies copied that minimalism, partly because imitation is the best form of flattery but more because they were cheaper to make with injection-molded thermoplastics.

But most of all, we know that Chilton made damn nice pens and pencils, and despite outward appearances what’s inside this one reflects the level of quality Chilton produced, even in its dying days. For that reason, I keep this one in the Chilton wing of the museum – unless evidence surfaces that conclusively establishes that I need to toss it back into that junk box.