The best Namiki Emperor Urushi

[shuuemura]

Actually you can roughly date the manufacture of the pen from the date code imprinted on the nib.

The following text is borrowed from kmpn's blog:

"Most Pilot/Namiki nibs have date code stamped in the format of "XMMYY", "XMYY", "MMYY" or "MYY"

X is a alphabet, e.g. "A", "B", "a", "b", "H", "T" ...

"H" was the Hiratsuka factory 平塚工場, and "T", Tokyo factory 志村工場 (opened Dec 1935, renamed to Tokyo factory May 1966, moved Nov 1978), was closed for some time. these two alphabets are no longer used today. "A" and "B" mark the different welding machines in the Hiratsuka factory.

MM or M is single or double digit denotes the month.

YY is the year, e.g. 09 is 2009.

some older nibs would also have the old JIS mark."

http://kmpn.blogspot.com/2010/04/pilot-nibs.html

[josephchow42]

An update: I just received my pen back! The good people at Pilot USA exchanged my medium Mt. Fuji nib to an old-style <50> broad nib, which (to me, at least) is the more desirable version of this nib! They also enclosed gratis a 70 mL Pilot Blue ink bottle for my use. Needless to say, I am stoked. Am at work now, but will update when I get back home and ink this beauty up.

 

Wow! usually they change the older version to the new version. You are so lucky to get that old version with a sexy vintage look!