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Thread: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

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    Default Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    Safe queens
    Last edited by Empty_of_Clouds; March 14th, 2020 at 03:27 AM.

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    The only thing that I would like to add is I’m impressed with the topics that you’re able to come up with.
    Allan


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    This is a common internet forum topic whether it is musical instruments, straight razors, knives, and now pens. There is the concept of the "beater" used to describe something one can use and not be concerned about damaging.

    For me, the enjoyment is use. I would not own something I couldn't use, but I am an outlier perhaps. I've carried my two old Esterbrooks this week and used them for the reason one carries a pen. I prefer a fine point and FP's fit that need.

    I also think there is an appreciation of a old, well worn tool over a wall hanger. Willy Nelson's or Steve Ray Vaughn's guitars come to mind as does Dizzy Gillepsie's trumpet.

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    These are excellent questions. I have wondered the same. Fountain pens never came up while my parents were still alive, unfortunately.

    Prices... 1922 a Duofold Jr. was $5, the equivalent of about $70 now.

    Parker 51 prices in the early 40s were around $15 for a gold filled Custom, about $270 now.

    As expensive as they may have been I would think professionals and business people would want (or even need) to carry their pen with them and would thus buy comfortably within their means so they wouldn't fret daily use.

    1924 Parker Duofold advertisement.
    From https://www.penhero.com/PenGallery/P...oldFlattop.htm
    Last edited by azkid; December 6th, 2019 at 08:49 AM.

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    In the early '50s, my father was promoted to foreman in a machine shop and began earning $21 per day. My mother was a 6th grade teacher and earned a lot less. They decided to buy a couple of good writing tools. They both bought Sheaffer "Saratoga" Snorkels.

    Dad didn't carry his pen to work; anything he wrote was in pencil on oily paper. He used his "good" pen to write letters and for show when signing guest books at funerals and weddings (a marryin' and buryin' pen). This was the first pen I ever restored a sac in. It still works well.

    Mom filled her pen with Skrip Permanent Royal Blue ink and carried it in her purse every day to school. She used it when grading papers. It took a hell of a beating. I inherited it. The barrel is so cracked I have to hold it like a flute to fill it. I re-saced it and it still works well.

    Mom also had a Waterman "Lady's Model" Hundred Year Pen. It was a gift from her parents. This she filled with Skrip Red ink and used it for grading papers also. It probably beat up on the Sheaffer in her purse. The nib cracked in the center, away from any edge. Go figure. There is no other damage on this one, even though it probably saw harder and longer use than the Sheaffer. I fitted it with a new sac and it still works a treat.

    Our "house pen" was a Wahl-Eversharp "Pacemaker" pen from the early '40s. This pen was the community property pen that my brother and sister did their homework with. It cost probably $3 or a little more. No damage. A new sac put it in working order.

    My pen was a Sheaffer "school pen" and was left at school to be used for penmanship classes only (pax vobiscum). I still have it and use it, just to remind myself how damned old I am. My grade school journaling pen was a Wearever "Pennant".

    So, we were a middle class family whose pens were tools, although Dad was probably a little vain about his Snorkel with the two-tone nib.
    "Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little." -Epicurus-

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    The evidence from my grandparents is that they had one fountain pen at home. A Valentine's/Parker hybrid that my grandfather probably picked up whilst he was serving in Newhaven, where he served part of his time in the Navy.

    The pen stayed at home - and seems to have been used for official documents only. all the informal stuff - letters, notes and so on was written in pencil. Writing in pen, at least until these new fangled biros came out was reserved for signatures on documents - life policies, apprenticeship documents and so on. Even the letters we have from the army (1st & 2nd world wars) were all done in pencil.

    He was a plasterer by trade and worked at the power station, so I guess he didn't need a pen for where he was, and it would be jostled about as he was in the blue collar part of the plant.

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    I am into the point in my life where I only buy things I will use from fountain pens to firearms, tools and razors. I have been purging unused/unneeded items, with most going to my son-in-law. This is such an interesting topic.......

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    Quote Originally Posted by Empty_of_Clouds View Post
    Thinking on the history of fountain pens - although this could also apply to any tool that is seeing a modern resurgence in popularity - has got me thinking about what owners of fountain pens thought of their pens and why they had purchased them (ignoring the inheritances for the moment).

    Today there are a large number of very expensive pens, often made with materials that are also pricey or difficult to work with. How does the relative cost of these pens today, as measured against income/local economy, compare with (say) the 1920's? Further to this, did a person in the 1920's (again just as an example decade) who spent a modern day equivalent sum of money (if they are equivalent) on a luxury pen consider such a pen as a daily carry tool or a safe queen/at home desk pen only? (Hence the title of the thread).

    There are a number of threads here and on other pen sites that talk about whether one keeps pens at home or risks them 'in the wild' of a working or other extramural environment. And I wonder if this represents a change in the habits of pen user/owners over time.

    So, there are a number of things to unpick there, and I do hope the more erudite among you are able to bring some light or clarity to this subject.

    Up through the mid-60's, a fountain pen was how you wrote, if you wanted something more permanent than pencil. My parents, who graduated high school in 1940 and 1941, used inexpensive pens. Probably pens we consider "third-tier" pens today. When my dad was sent to an aircraft carrier in the Pacific, it was such a time that Mom saved up and bought a Parker Vacumatic. That was a big deal.

    As best I remember from the '50s, nobody had more than one fountain pen.

    It is hard to map current pen use back against the way life was lived in, say, 1957, a year that I will take as the peak of the Golden Years of fountain pens. That's why Sheaffer made their school pens, figuring to make us Sheaffer users when we were young, say, about 4th grade. That's when we switched to ink from pencil.

    Another device that cut into fountain pen use: the typewriter. Before about 1960, the typewriter was an office machine. Then families began to get typewriters so the kids could type school reports. When I went to college in 1966, nearly everyone brought a typewriter. Most of them were Smith-Corona, or Royal, portable electric machines. Cost, then, was about $120. My Parker 45 had cost about $4.98 in 1960, so it might have been $6 by '66. Ink was 25 or 50 cents -- can't remember exactly. McDonalds had just bumped their prices, which had been "only forty-seven cents for a three-course meal...at McDonalds (beep! beep!) the drive in with the golden arches". That was the advertising jingle about 1963. A VW Beetle was about $1,700 in the early '60s, and, in 1969, there was no place along I-80 that sold or repaired VW's between Salt Lake and Cheyenne.

    All that makes it misleading to take a list price Parker 51 from 1950 and extrapolate by inflation. It's also tough to calculate how many days or hours of work by an "average" worker could buy any particular pen. A lot of people didn't need a pen, or could use a stick pen at the post office when they needed to ink a letter.

    So, a great question, but hard to answer in a way that gets at what you want.

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    Yes they did, and we do. Though the expensive/beater line is movable.

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    Quote Originally Posted by kazoolaw View Post
    Yes they did, and we do. Though the expensive/beater line is movable.
    Sorry-ended too soon. "They did" is based on the number of sterling/gold pens showing signs one wear: dented domes and barrels, scratches, worn and damaged nibs etc. "We do" is based, to choose one example, on the MB 149 being a daily carry for many.

    Don't claim that the majority of us carry expensive pens for daily use, but it's not uncommon either.

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    If it is misleading to take a 50s Parker price and adjust for inflation, it's even more so to do that for 1920 so I probably should have acknowledged that in my post

    I was thinking as I wrote it how very different the economy was then vs now—the range of income from minimum wage to high earning professionals, the set of expenses (no cable, internet, cellphone, less throwaway stuff, free radio), housing costs, transportation, ...

    It's really deeply fascinating to hear from those who grew up in prior decades. It gives a bit of a glimpse of how things were.

    I think about my kid growing up now trying to imagine my life before cellphones, internet, cable tv, and computers.

    Oh by the way, on that comment about typewriters, I didn't know about the increase in popularity of personal typewriters and it reminds me of the personal computer trend.

    Interestingly enough, my mom's parents bought her a Smith-Corona portable (which I still have) sometime in the 1940s. I wished I knew more about that decision.

    I think she would've been middle school age when they got it. Apparently, they were ahead of the trend getting that for her?

    I'm going to believe that's the case because her mom, my grandma, got me a Commodore 64 when they first came out when I was in middle school. That computer led to a 20+ year IT career.

    Mom went on to teach art, then English. Oh... and also she taught typing for a few years. I have a vague memory from early childhood ('73 - '75?) of visiting the room full of mismatched surplus 1950s typewriters and furniture they used.

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    What amazes me is that today, we don't have to use fountain pens at all. Yet the interest in fountain pens are strong and healthy even among young people for whom computers are the fact of life since they were born.

    People in the 1920s to 1950's have little else to choose from if they decided to not want to use fountain pens. But today, we don't even have to write with our hand if we choose not to.

    So the question is why? Why do we find people today who chose to bother themselves with fountain pens?

    I think the answer is that today's pen people are discovering that writing (sketching) "feels" good, and it brings them joy as a hobby. More importantly, the fountain pen as an instrument has an appeal outside of its utilitarian purpose, namely, pretty and looks even better in a well curated collection.

    So no matter what you call them, a tool, or a shelf-queen (that term seems to have a mocking ring to it), the fountain pen has found a place in many people's heart. And if what I saw in reddit.com is any kind of indication, the number of these people are increasing... daily.
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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    You can use this if you find the old ads to do a comparison to the value of today's dollars : https://www.dollartimes.com/inflation/

    For example the Parker 75 Cisele when it came out in 1964 was $25, in 2019 that would be about $204. I got my 75 Cisele for about $120 and you can commonly find them for around $125 to $175 depending. But course it's not that far down from what used pricing reduction would be from new pricing.

    I feel like many of the pens are going to be cheaper than what their original brand new prices were when inflation are considered. The exceptions of course are the rare ones to survive.

    One such exception I recall would be the early Eversharp Skylines in the Moire finish, which was at the time much more economical to make those compared to the newer solid color plastics and gold filled caps. But now days the moire models will be a fair bit more expensive than the newer plastics and gold filled caps.

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    Quote Originally Posted by penwash View Post
    What amazes me is that today, we don't have to use fountain pens at all. Yet the interest in fountain pens are strong and healthy even among young people for whom computers are the fact of life since they were born.

    People in the 1920s to 1950's have little else to choose from if they decided to not want to use fountain pens. But today, we don't even have to write with our hand if we choose not to.

    So the question is why? Why do we find people today who chose to bother themselves with fountain pens?

    I think the answer is that today's pen people are discovering that writing (sketching) "feels" good, and it brings them joy as a hobby. More importantly, the fountain pen as an instrument has an appeal outside of its utilitarian purpose, namely, pretty and looks even better in a well curated collection.

    So no matter what you call them, a tool, or a shelf-queen (that term seems to have a mocking ring to it), the fountain pen has found a place in many people's heart. And if what I saw in reddit.com is any kind of indication, the number of these people are increasing... daily.
    No need to be amazed. Often we stop looking for what we truly want or need assuming it's not available or no longer obtainable. Often we discover we didn't know what we needed.

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    Since this basic question/topic has come up with regularity over the years, I'll reiterate my reason for not buying into it: versus.

    I don't believe it is an either/or decision made on a pen-by-pen basis. I think the pens I own lie on a continuum, from ridiculously inexpensive pens that I wouldn't give a second's thought if I lost it or if it was broken in battle as an EDC, all the way up to prized possesions that most certainly stay at home, in the studio, used seldom but admired always and cared for with acknowledgement of the singular nature of the pen: meaningful, personal and probably irreplaceable. With those as the end points, all of the other pens span the gamut in between and will go out or not based on the kind of assessments used in the examples above.

    I have pens I use and pens I adore, and you can't put me in any one camp.
    Last edited by Jon Szanto; December 7th, 2019 at 11:53 AM. Reason: grammar
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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    Although I got the point of the thread anyway, I have to ask. Am I the only one who had to google "safe queen"?

    https://www.urbandictionary.com/defi...m=Safe%20queen

    Odd term.
    "If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly."
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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    Quote Originally Posted by Empty_of_Clouds View Post
    Were pens ever viewed as a collectible in that era?
    I don't know, it was (just ) before my time, but human nature being what it is (people collect all sorts of weird stuff, paperclips?), I would assume some did.
    Vintage. Cursive italic. Iron gall.

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    I apologize for my comments just a couple of posts back, as I completely missed the fact that OP was wondering about how this question played out in the distant past, not how we feel currently about our pens. I would just propose that unless someone can come up with first-hand accounts from the time or other hard data, the answer(s) iwill be a complete guessing game, nothing more.
    "When Men differ in Opinion, both Sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard by the Publick;
    and that when Truth and Error have fair Play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter."

    ~ Benjamin Franklin

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    Quote Originally Posted by Empty_of_Clouds View Post
    Using the "what the dollar was worth" tool, $40 in 1920 is equivalent in buying power to $550 today....
    Further to this, how likely would a person in the 20s be to buy multiple pens at that price or above? Were pens ever viewed as a collectible in that era?
    ...
    I'd also add , how likely were the 'everyday' pens of the 20s likely to have survived nearly 100 years later? Seems more likely that the more expensive, less used, or often 'stored away' models are more likely to have survived to this day without needing a major restore.

    Far as how they treated them in the past, I once saw a rather popular restorer and nib seller, retort that their restored vintage pen they sold was leaky/etc because "all vintage pens leak", I'd have a very hard time believing that because even back then they wouldn't tolerate such a defect in common practice, so not sure why we would accept less now days (though we do in a variety of markets where the products aren't intended to last that long)

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    Default Re: Perceptions - tools versus safe queens.

    It’s only a movie, but in the Flavour of Green Tea over Rice, an Ozu film from 1952, there are shots of the husband working at his desk at home and at work. He uses a variety of instruments at home, but one of them is a fountain pen. At work he is shown using a pencil only. The company president has a glass jar on desk with a variety of writing instruments in it, but none clearly recognisable. There’s also a bottle of Superchrome on the president’s desk, so presumably whatever fountain pen or pens he used were destroyed — unless the boss was carrying a 51.

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