Exotic Sheaffer Balance Ebonized Pearl from the LA Pen Show 2015

[david i]

This year's LA Pen Show (Feb 2015) allowed me to add several great pens to my personal collection. I bought plenty for the website as well. This one goes into my personal collection. Sheaffer 1934-1935 Balance, oversized, Ebonized Pearl Celluloid, off-catalogue with extra-wide gold-filled cap-band. This is not an Autograph, a pen with solid gold trim, though based on the wide cap-band one might at first have wondered. I've seen just a few Balances with extra-wide smooth gold-filled cap-band and this is the first in Ebonized Pearl, never mind oversized Ebonized Pearl. One readily can imagine this to have been a special order item. "Hey we'd like to give a gift pen but don't want to spring for the $20 or so for solid gold trim. Could you give us a slightly bumped cap-band?"


Perhaps more scarce than some of the exotic cap-band pens (double, triple, fish-scale), it still packs a bit less oomph than those pens. Still, I'm always happy to add to the collectiona Balance that's a bit off the beaten path. This one is not in bad shape, though has a bit of brassing. Though I am a mere wee dabbler at Balance, mapping the skills honed from years of Parker Vacumatic hunting does make for some nice finds.


I post this as I end my short-notice vacation in Uruguay. Had some Bailey's in the airport VIP lounge. Getting ready on the plane for takeoff, dinner and 7 hours sleep. Weird week.

Sweet pen. I hope to have a couple other interesting Sheaffers to show later this week, some from the recent pen show.

[HughC]

Just stunning, ebonized pearl personifies understated elegance imo.

Regards
Hugh

[kirchh]

Just stunning, ebonized pearl personifies understated elegance imo.

Regards
Hugh

And it's interesting that this classy color appeared before the marbled Gray Pearl, but remained proudly in Sheaffer's top-of-the-line items while the Gray Pearl, apparently losing favor with the masses, was relegated to entry-level items only, then disappeared entirely.

--Daniel

[david i]

A key charm in collectable pendom is stimulating the generation of opinions and information-- both new and of course often old-- via the presentation of rare fountain pen eye candy. Excellent.

As is known to most of us, Ebonized Pearl-- like some other colors before it-- also wobbled in the end and-- again as with other colors in the series-- saw itself reduced in use to lower-tier Balances before vanishing.


Stay tuned, girls and boys. There should be more Sheaffer eye-candy from this wee dabbler in the week to follow



-d

[david i]

Just stunning, ebonized pearl personifies understated elegance imo.

Regards
Hugh

You know it. I have a collection of funky OS Ebonized with interesting features. I must hunt them.

regards

-d