Pelikan 140

**vPro** · April 14th, 2016, 12:13 PM

I'm selling my sweet Pelikan 140 fountain pen. It has a couple flaws so I'm listing these so you know exactly what you'll get.

The barrel of the pen is nearly flawless. The piston works and holds ink the way it should.
The cap has two, barely visible hairline cracks near the base. This is quite common and doesn't affect function at all; the cap consists of a metal inner cap that covers half the inside of the cap and the outer part of the cap is plastic. Due to the plastic shrinking and the metal not shrinking, small cracks develop. The clip has lost most of its plating. The cap band is intact and reads '+PELIKAN 140 - GERMANY'
The nib is a 14k gold nib, marked 'EF' but writes more like a medium stub nib. Please see writing sample. The nib does NOT have much tipping left, we're talking 0.01 mm; you'll still be writing with the iridium tipping and even this minimal amount of tipping should last a long time, but the nib, albeit acceptably smooth at the angle I write with (55 degrees), has some tooth or rather scratchiness (especially at higher/lower angles) and due to the rather miniscule amount of tipping left, you really can't smoothen the scratchiness out.
The nib is, as most Pelikan 140 nibs are, semi-flexible - however, due to the roughness of the tipping you can't flex the nib without ripping the paper apart.

After all this, I still claim this is a nice pen. It's a small, handy piston-filled pen that posts well and becomes almost as long as a posted Pelikan 400/M400. The barrel is nearly flawless and the cap is very good too. The nib isn't that good and that's the main reason why the price is as it is. You can change the nib to a nib of your liking if the current one doesn't suit you; the pen accepts Pelikan 140/150/200/250/400 nib units.

Asking price is $47 with standard priority untracked shipping. I have described this pen to the best of my ability and exposed ALL of its flaws. I will therefore not take any returns!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOpnyT39B6g

**Pterodactylus** · April 15th, 2016, 06:45 AM

Looks like somebody grinded away almost the whole tipping of this EF and tried to create an italic nib the Chuck Norris way.
I can imagine that it will cut into the paper when I see how it looks like.

People which do not know what they are doing should never try to grind awesome vintage nibs (and ruin them).

**vPro** · April 15th, 2016, 08:06 AM

I fully agree with you. Anyhow that's how I got the pen. I carefully tried to smoothen it on some mylar paper to no avail.

**vPro** · April 15th, 2016, 10:52 AM

Video writing sample:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOpnyT39B6g

**Pterodactylus** · April 15th, 2016, 02:28 PM

It is still a really nice pen,I just wanted to mention that I think your price is not too high for it (I didn´t wanted to disturb your sell).
I consider the 50s Pelikan pens as some of the best pens ever made.
But be careful, they are semi-flex nibs, not full flex nibs, this already looked quite heavy in the video.
Btw. good handwriting.

**vPro** · April 15th, 2016, 04:33 PM

Thank you for your post and for sharing your opinion.
I both agree and disagree with you with regards to the flex. If you look at the writing sample from the top, you'll see that the width of the 'flex' strokes aren't any wider than 3x the normal stroke - at most. I was just trying to show the flaws of the pen (and nib) to the best of my ability. I could have limited the 'flex' sample to a 2x downstroke, but that would not give the potential buyer a realistic idea of how much the nib actually catches the paper. In contrast to what other people might do to help their pens get sold (i.e. overflex to show 'wet noodle' nibs, overpolish them to cover up brassing etc.) I'm trying to give as realistic a picture of this pen as possible and I'd much rather have the potential buyer say 'Oh wow, this is much better than it was described' than have him/her say 'that *insert bad word here* scammed me'.
Yes, it's not what you're used to see but I'd much rather be a honest seller than a quick seller. I hope this clears any confusion

As for my handwriting, thank you! It's quite sloppy in this video and I just realised how much I've adapted to my oblique Pelikan nibs. They offer some very subtle line variation that makes my handwriting look quite a bit nicer. Seeing what my handwriting looks like without the 'stub-effect' is... different?

Have a wonderful day