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View Full Version : Interesting Sheaffer Autograph



kirchh
January 13th, 2015, 04:23 PM
I recently acquired an unusual Sheaffer; it's a marbled Marine Green (or "Emerald," as the seller termed it) Balance combination pen-pencil in Autograph trim:

http://home.comcast.net/~kirchh/Misc/Sheaffer_Autograph_Combo_2_Diagonal_Capped.jpg

It just came in and I wanted to put up a quick picture; I'll explain more about why it's special a bit later when I get some time.

--Daniel

david i
January 14th, 2015, 12:17 AM
A not uninteresting pen. Though caps are swappable, there are correlative identifiers that suggest originality for these, as is well documented in my Cap Banditry: Hunting off-catalogue Sheaffer cap-bands 14-page article a few years back. These are not news but they are charmers. Pat Mohan has a nice spread of 'em.

Far more interesting to many of those who know than are the mottled Marine Green pens, are the striated Marine Green Combo Autographs. All three of the pens below are Rudy pens

The Rudy connection of course has provoked interest.



http://vacumania.com/penteech2/sheaffer_combo_rudy_trio500.jpg

From one of the near-final versions of that 2012 Cap Banditry article:



That this is the first formal survey of this Sheaffer exotica demonstrates that our 35 year old hobby still offers space for fresh research. I invite future commentary from readers of this article, as I’m now a bit burned out on this subject. It is my hope that this text will be the springboard for future research by others and will prod collectors to examine their holdings and to come forth with new information. Oh… and yeah… if you happen to have spare special cap-band pens my collection needs, do drop me a note.


Seeing new and better information brought forth always appeals. Best of all would be catalogue info. I had hoped that old 2012 article would inspire. Excellent.

regards

david

kirchh
January 14th, 2015, 09:04 AM
The promised follow-up. Though Sheaffer cataloged pen-pencil combinations in their step-up, best non-Lifetime, and Lifetime lines, in four colors including the marbled Marine Green shown here, I've not seen any Sheaffer documentation of combinations being offered in Autograph trim. Though the casual collector might think an Autograph combination could simply be created by swapping an ordinary, cataloged Autograph fountain pen cap onto an ordinary, cataloged combination body, this is incorrect, because a correct Autograph combination has a 14K gold pencil nosecone to match the cap trim.

Many of these Autograph combinations are found with gift inscriptions from Rudy Vallée. Though only his first name is present in the inscription, the fact that the inscriptions are facsimiles of the writer's own handwriting provides the proof needed to state with confidence that the giver was Mr. Vallée. A simple comparison of the bands on a couple of my examples of these pens with Vallée's autograph as shown on his personal letterhead demonstrates that this attribution is no myth:

http://home.comcast.net/~kirchh/Misc/Sheaffer_Autograph_Combo_Bands_Detail.jpg http://home.comcast.net/~kirchh/Misc/Rudy_Autograph.png

This particular pen languished on eBay for a while; perhaps it was seen as a possible put-together job, worth no more than an inscribed Autograph pen cap and a combination body. I finally pulled the trigger on it last week, though I don't really need more of these (is "quintiplicate" a word?).

--Daniel

david i
January 14th, 2015, 04:45 PM
An excellent review of mostly older information. We have of course seen before the connections to Rudy of the people receiving the pens from him.

I always knew that article would inspire...

Wee dabbling is fun.

-d