Rollerball ID

[kappa]

I inherited a Pelikan roller ball pen that I am trying to identify as to model and some idea of the year; but it doesn’t seem to exactly what I have found in my web search.

The Pelikan logo on the cap is the etched with a circle and two chicks;
The cap is marked W. Germany;
The top of the cap is gold and the bottom has double rings;
The top of the barrel has a gold ring;
The grip is flaired; but there is no gold ring;
The barrel is 12mm wide, and it measures 147mm with the cap on and 122m with it off.

This is my first post on this forum board, so I'm not sure if the link below is the proper way to post a photo.

https://i.postimg.cc/tYHV2Bvs/P1100248.jpg (https://postimg.cc/tYHV2Bvs)

[jos]

At first look it appears to be a rollerball from the early Souverän series. The catalogs suggest that the rollerball with flanged section was introduced circa 1993. Only the R400 rollerball came without decorative gold ring at the section flange. But R400 obviously does not fit with a length of 147 mm.

Are you sure that the measurements are correct? 147 mm is really huge and would place this pen in the M1000 range. But there was no R1000 rollerball, as far as I can deduce from the catalogs. The M1000 was also introduced circa 1998 and that would probably not fit with a "W. Germany" imprint on the cap.

This is probably where you also got stuck.

Does the cap fit/thread properly on the barrel?

[Chrissy]

This is my first post on this forum board, so I'm not sure if the link below is the proper way to post a photo.

Many members don't like clicking on links that go to other sites.
Click on FAQ ^^^^ above then Reading and Posting messages then Attachments and Images in order to find out the best way to post images on here. :)

[kappa]

Thanks for your information. I rechecked the measurements. Perhaps I wasn’t clear. The barrel alone is 122mm. With the cap screwed on covering the point, the pen is 127mm. With the cap on the top of the barrel, it is 147mm.

[jos]

yes, that was confusing. A length of 127 mm is correct for a R400 rollerball.

I have a R400 with identical characteristics as your pen (double cap ring and single barrel ring) and checked the catalogs in more detail:
- the R400 rollerball with flanged section appeared in 1993 and had a single cap band
- the double cap band on the R400 appeared in 1998
- the single barrel ring was in use until 1997 and changed to a double ring in 1998

So that would place the year of origin of your pen in end of 1997 - beginning 1998.

It is a bit strange that the "W. Germany" imprint was still in use in 1998, 8 years after the reunification of Germany. The caps of the M400 are however readily interchangeable with the caps of the M600 "Old Style" (1985-97). So maybe Pelikan used old R600 caps, which always had the double cap, on the R400 range at some moment. That is just an assumption.

[kappa]

Thanks again for the very detailed answer and information.