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A Warning to be careful with Lacquered pens I own a few pens that have lacquered finishes. The first lacquered pen that I bought is a Parker Urban, in the ‘Navy Blue’ finish with chrome trim. I bought it in 2013, and I always used to post the cap on the end of the pen whenever I wrote with it. Being slightly-obsessive about having things arranged ‘just-so’, I always posted the cap so that its clip was aligned with the centre of the pen’s nib. This habit is actually useful if one’s pen has a hooded nib, like a Parker “51”. Aligning the clip of the posted cap with the nib of a “51” means that one always has an obvious visual indication of the position of that pen’s nib. Anyway, back in 2021 I was about to post the cap of my Navy Blue Urban when I noticed this: It is a small scuff in the lacquer, through which one can now see the brass of the pen’s body. OK, it is only small, and is hardly ‘the end of the world’. But it made me realise that lacquer (on this pen at least) is not as durable as I had assumed that it would be. Now, it may be that this lacquer on this pen is, for whatever reason, less durable than the lacquer on other pens. Or it may well be the case that I am especially ham-fisted, or clumsy in the way in which I post the cap on this pen, but… If you are, as I am, a person who would find a small scuff mark like this one to be disappointing, I advise you to take care when posting the cap on any lacquered pens that you own. I no longer post the caps on the few I own that have lacquered finishes. Slàinte, M.