I have a Hero 600 (?) that is of unknown age (though it has a 1960s vibe), with a really well made cap and clip, as well as a gold nib and funky pea soup colored barrel and hood, it's a fantastic writer in the way the best Chines pens are, with a rigid fine nib that's smooth and wet-writing... a consistent performer, with its own sense of style (no clip design ripoffs in evidence). I wish I could find another, but it's the only one I've seen in years of patrolling Ebay.
P9130005 by David Wimmer, on Flickr
P9130006 by David Wimmer, on Flickr
P9130007 by David Wimmer, on Flickr
P9130009 by David Wimmer, on Flickr
The other is an un-identified Wing Sung, that has a nice dark blue barrel, with a quasi-Parker cap style and real live acrylic jewels at both ends! This pen also has the feel of an older piece, with excellent F&F and a solid feel that many of the current Chinese pens can't match. It came to me from Japan with a sooty smelling load of sumi gumming up the hood, collector breather tube and feed, the original steel nib was a mass of rust pitting, though it still wrote a smooth line. I ultrasonic cleaned all the important bits and stuffed a gold plated steel nib out of a brand new Hero 100 in it (the new 100s are a weird amalgam of useless garbage and true excellence, the cap is still well made, with an improved clip profile that actually comes *out* of your pocket without a struggle, but the nib is now steel and the barrel is too wide, so the cap can't seat on the section and the point dries out).
Again, a fantastic, solid little sort of Parker ripoff, that just plain writes well all the time and looks good doing it.
P9130002 by David Wimmer, on Flickr
P9130003 by David Wimmer, on Flickr
P9130004 by David Wimmer, on Flickr
In my experience the older pens are better fitted and function more consistently than the post-1990 Chinese pens I own, my sample is *quite* small though, so maybe I just caught a break twice? Do any of you have vintage Chinese favorites, or horror stories?
Bookmarks