SOLD: Eclipse fountain pen with the famous Boots script, sold by Boots Chemists in the UK with FLEX nib. Made in USA. It's in fantastic condition with wavy-line chasing (like a Conklin) with "ECLIPSE", "Boots", "SELF-FILLER SAFETY PEN", and with "SAFETY CAP" on the cap. It has a flexible EF nib for very expressive writing. The thumb filler is unique and very robust construction. This is a high quality pen. The thumb filler is a solid piece of metal engineering that slides precisely into the hard rubber barrel, and surrounds a new sac.
I've installed a fresh sac and tested with water, and I'm sorely tempted to fill it with ink because I never filled the pen since I bought it in 2009 from the late John Roede of Philadelphia. He wrote the following to me then:
The things I know about it include: It was made in the US.
Boots is/was the biggest drug chain in the UK, and sold pens made by any manufacturer they felt was cheap enough. They began offering fountain pens from the earliest days.
The patent for this pen was issued to Robert Hamilton, and he assigned it 50% to a John Lein of New York City.
Robert Hamilton was an officer of Standard & Vulcanite Pen company at 734 or 754 Lexington in Brooklyn. Crocker Pen, operated at 805 Lexington, and in 1917 Seth Crocker bought S&V (including the patent with 5 years remaining), changing its name to Chilton. By 1920, the entire plant was moved to Massachusets.
The founder and long-term President of Eclipse, Marx Finstone, originally lived in Brooklyn, and purchased his earliest pens (starting in 1907) from existing manufacturers.
A British pen collector took an identical Boots Eclipse to the British Parker pen for evaluation, and they offered to buy it from him. He decided to keep it.
My theory:
Finstone purchased thumb filler pens (and probably eyedroppers as well) from Standard & Vulcanite. His first wife was from England, and I think he was able to secure a contract from the Boots drug stores to supply a large quantity of thumb fillers, thru his wife's relatives.
The reason there were no thumb filler Eclipse pens in the US, is that Finstone was super cheap, and felt he could not move the higher priced self fillers.
What a great history! This is a very fine pen to complete an American or British (or anywhere) collection!
$350$245 including shipping anywhere served by the USPS. More elsewhere. First PM that reads "I'll take the Boots Eclipse" with your email address holds it pending prompt payment. Questions and offers welcome! (but do not hold pen).
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FS: Eclipse by "Boots" BCHR thumb filler 14k EF flex nib
Re: FS: Eclipse by "Boots" BCHR thumb filler 14k EF flex nib
Originally Posted by RocketRyan
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