Pens and Paper

You can write in your car - why not with a car?

Well, not quite with a car, but with a pen that's designed like a car, such as a Bugatti or Lamborghini. Find out more in my story in Pen World - yes, there really is a magazine for pen fanciers!

Sheaffer Touchdown

No vintage pens, I said. There are enough new ones out there. I don't need to get into vintage pens, too.

Famous last words.

I got this Sheaffer from a local dealer. I'd spotted it at her yard sale, and she told me to wait a few days while she adjusted the nib for me. (Talk about great service!) The exact model may always be a bit of a mystery, since it seems to have been put together from two pens at some time in its life. But I don't care, because it's a fabulous writer. The Touchdown name is for its filling system: you unscrew the end, pull out the filler mechanism, put the pen into an ink bottle, and then push the mechanism back into the pen.

I'm really starting to understand the charm of these old pens, and it's in the writing. This one is incredible. Smooth as silk, beautifully wet, just wonderful. There are a lot of very good modern pens, but because it's such a niche market today, so many of them are about the looks above all.

This old Sheaffer (circa 1950s, I believe) isn't the prettiest pen at first glance, but it's from an era where, above all, it had to work flawlessly. You basically had fountain pens, pencils, and typewriters, and that was it. No tapping messages with your thumbs, no voice messages, no rollerballs and gel pens. If a pen didn't perform well, it was dead in the water. This one works...well, swimmingly!

Fill 'er up!

Vintage ballpoint pens advertising gas stations are very common, but finding one in a fountain pen is rare. This one, a Sheaffer advertising Phillips 66 gasoline, is from Mack's Service in Coal Valley, Illinois. I got it for $5 at an automotive flea market, and after a quick cleaning and a new cartridge, it writes as good as new.

Sheaffer Taranis: Seeing is believing

The new Sheaffer with the odd name really is a case of looking better in person. I saw it online and was ready to go for the red one with silver accents.

But I was in New York on a business trip, and stopped by Fountain Pen Hospital to have a look. Oddly, while the red popped on my computer screen and the white looked boring, in reality, the red was kind of dull, and the "White Lightning" version, with its gold accents, was just stunning. So of course it had to come home with me.

This is a lovely pen, made of metal with a resin overcoat. The name Sheaffer is written in block letters down the barrel to the nib, which really sets it off.

Lady Sheaffer: A lovely pen that's back at work

Ellen DeGeneres rightfully picked on BIC for introducing a "For Her" pen, but the reality is that pen companies frequently brought out pens specifically aimed at women in the past. One was the Lady Sheaffer, and this is a lovely example that a good friend of mine gave me recently. I cleaned it up, filled it, and put it to paper, and it writes just as it did back in the 1970s when it was new. I just love it when an old pen can get back in the saddle again!