The Platignum School Cartridge Pen

[ShinyDemon]

Wow. I think I'm going to cry. Child of the (late) 70s here, in terms of FP use. These things were mandatory at our primary school. Showing this on a background of the ubiquitous pink blotting paper would have pushed me over the edge!

[kevinh74]

i had platignum pens at school. probably had an osmiroid too later on i think. went to school in the uk in the 70s and 80s. i remember when i was 9-13 years old one of my fellow pupils had a parkre 61. he was a bit posh though. now i've got one. hahaha.

[richardandtracy]

The Platignum pen used its own cartridge shape.

 

Horrid things. I lasted half a term in the summer of 1973 with one of these things and badgered my mother into getting me a proper pen because I hated this monstrosity so much. She bought me a P17 Lady, which lasted me until I was 13, then she gave me a P61 which lasted me 25 years.

 

Regards,

 

Richard.

[Scribble Monboddo]

The italic version was a bit more handy, I thought: http://scribbledemonboddo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/platignum-school-pen-italic-late-1970s.html

[Donna Spencer]

I have been looking for this pen for ages in fact i joined this network because this is the only place I have ever found them I would love to be able to get hold of a few of them if at all possible such memories of my days in school. I went to a Brisith Army school in Germany and have many memories of ink stanied hands using one of these pens. No the don't roll off the desk IF you put the lid on the end but No one EVER put the lid on the end in our class it was considered sooo uncool.

[jamesn]

These were still available at least up until 1988 when I left Junior school, I used the italic version at school.

Always remember that it used long cartridges but in the international format. Also I seem to remember that I only stopped using it because I couldn't get the long cartridges anymore.

[hailo21]

I was at Junior school in the late 1960s and it was there that I graduated from pencil to fountain pen. I have happy memories of scruffy writing and ink stained fingers. The pen that I first used was the Platignum school pen, possibly an even earlier version than this one. Show it to any adult of a certain age and the memories flow back, they were widely used in UK schools.

 

 

It's a strange looking pen with a shape more akin to a dip pen. Most of the pen appears to be made from polystyrene and it is very light. The barrel screws on to the section and houses a short international type cartridge, I think that there is enough room for a converter. It's well enough made but obviously not an item of great cost.

 

 

An item of mystery is the cap. It screws on to the section and turned around it pushes on to the end of the barrel. I guess that the shape is largely shaped to stop the pen rolling off the desk but the narrow side has a strange slot in it that no-one seems to know the reason for.

 

 

The nib is made from folded stainless steel. It has no tipping but writes a very smooth medium line. Unlike some expensive pens that I have used, these pens have a good ink supply at the tip of the nib within a very short time after pushing in a cartridge and the flow is constant with no skipping.

 

I have located a limited supply of NOS pens and am selling them to my pupils at cost and they are selling like hot cakes and the children find them great to use. It is nice to see these pens getting used for their intended purpose after probably around 40 years in a cupboard. If anyone wants one I will make them available in the market place once I have secured the rest of the supply. Let me know if there is any interest, the price will be mainly made up of shipping costs.

 

So there you are, more of a curiosity than anything. They are a practical writing instrument if somewhat individual in design but they don't half roll back the years for some of us.

 

WOW! I've been searching for this pen for the last week. I used them at school and currently find them nostalgic. but i cant find a place to buy these from.

 

I don't suppose you or any one know where i can purchase these in uk?

 

Thanks in advanced

[New_Falcon]

I used a pen similar to this at school too. Though the one that I had just had a round cap that as you would imagine would roll off the desk all the time. That's when you had the blackboard eraser thrown at you and you were told to post the pen.

 

Now I have to post every pen, be it my Lamy 2000 or a Varsity or a bic.

 

hailo21 - you might want to have a look at andy's pen http://www.andys-pens.co.uk/me173.shtml

[PDW]

Just pushed an old Platignum blue cartridge into a Cadet. It's small and the nib is bent steel, but it writes very nicely.

Edited July 12, 2014 by PDW

[Denisab]

Hi!

I would love to get this pen for my kids - i used to love it when i got it visiting an yorkshire primary school for a month in 1990, after the fall of the iron curtain.

 

Do you still have some available?

 

Thanks!

 

db

[PDW]

Hi!

...

 

Do you still have some available?

 

Thanks!

 

db

 

Long gone, I'm afraid, but Platignums (Platigfna?) are fairly common on eBay. Cartridges will be old and obsolete so make sure any cartridge pen you get has at least one in/with it (you can refill an empty cartridge from an ink bottle using a blunt syringe), but there are also a few cartridges for sale out there from time to time and some even have working ink in them!

 

Hope you find what you want. Oh, and

[Malcy]

Sorry, all gone. As the above poster says, ebay is probably the only source now. The school pens take international standard short carts.

[HarryB]

I was at Junior school in the late 1960s and it was there that I graduated from pencil to fountain pen. I have happy memories of scruffy writing and ink stained fingers. The pen that I first used was the Platignum school pen, possibly an even earlier version than this one. Show it to any adult of a certain age and the memories flow back, they were widely used in UK schools.

 

 

It's a strange looking pen with a shape more akin to a dip pen. Most of the pen appears to be made from polystyrene and it is very light. The barrel screws on to the section and houses a short international type cartridge, I think that there is enough room for a converter. It's well enough made but obviously not an item of great cost.

 

 

An item of mystery is the cap. It screws on to the section and turned around it pushes on to the end of the barrel. I guess that the shape is largely shaped to stop the pen rolling off the desk but the narrow side has a strange slot in it that no-one seems to know the reason for.

 

 

The nib is made from folded stainless steel. It has no tipping but writes a very smooth medium line. Unlike some expensive pens that I have used, these pens have a good ink supply at the tip of the nib within a very short time after pushing in a cartridge and the flow is constant with no skipping.

 

I have located a limited supply of NOS pens and am selling them to my pupils at cost and they are selling like hot cakes and the children find them great to use. It is nice to see these pens getting used for their intended purpose after probably around 40 years in a cupboard. If anyone wants one I will make them available in the market place once I have secured the rest of the supply. Let me know if there is any interest, the price will be mainly made up of shipping costs.

 

So there you are, more of a curiosity than anything. They are a practical writing instrument if somewhat individual in design but they don't half roll back the years for some of us.

 

 

Bit late to the table, i know; are there any of these left?

 

I learnt to join-up on one of these and i've been dreaming about them incessantly for the last 10 years or so. Now my kids are learning to write and as lovely as all my nibs are now, i've always wanted that first one back.

 

Any chance?

 

Thank you!!

[Malcy]

No, they have all gone to other homes.

 

Sorry

[HarryB]

FOUND ONE! Last one. Just need to get a cartridge now.

[grainweevil]

Seems to be varying info on which cartridges these take - perhaps it changed? But, fwiw, should it turn out not to take international standard ones, you might find Cross cartridges will work.

[trent999]

This has been a great read and really took me back. I am so sorry I didn't find it before as I would have loved to have bought one from you. I always felt sorry that I didn't keep my original safer. I would be really interested if you do have a spare still. Take care and thanks for the memories.

 

 

[Honeybadgers]

Count me in for one!

 

*edit* bummer.

Edited June 13, 2017 by Honeybadgers

[Jerome Tarshis]

Although I am a native New Yorker, I grew up next door to a Scottish family who were amply supplied by their relatives north of the Tweed with bits and pieces of what an anthropologist might call material culture. Including newspapers of modest intellectual ambition: I knew Tit-Bits and the Sunday Pictorial before I knew the Times of London..

 

I am a little bemused by all this amiable nostalgia directed at Platignum school pens. The ones I remember struck me as fairly horrid. It was and is easy to find reasons why being a child is awful, and a great many Things meant to be used by children aggravated that sense of injustice. On the other hand, Wee Gillis struck me as a pretty good book, and I have blurry but pleasant memories of, IIRC, the William stories of Richmal Crompton.

[grainweevil]

Rose-tinted spectacles render it amiable nostalgia rather than horrific flashbacks, I suspect. In the cold clear light of reason, I recall the endless blue inky fingers from leaky sections and flooded caps, the agony of handwriting practice that always involved dictated recipes that we never got to cook, and inevitably seemed to be scheduled as the very last class on a Friday afternoon. The tedium as the clock slowed down to the point of going backwards while a trapped fly buzzed at the unopened part of the window and the sun blazed down on an afternoon that was just waiting to open up to an endless weekend of freedom if only Miss Simmonds would stop circling the room like a buzzard, critiquing everyone's efforts on the basis of ink blots counted.

 

Better?