Styles Of Sheaffer School/cartridge Pens

[bob_hayden]

Jon, is that Canadian pen a cartridge pen? I have never seen any of this model with the gold tone caps. I have seen a picture of a pen that looked pretty much the same with two differences. One was what looked like a Sheaffer "S" icon on the section, and the other was what looked like a permanent squeeze converter. I stumbled across that on a web site not in English so I figured it was an export model. I know that for cars Canadian models were not always the same as US models.

 

Sheaffer seems to have been constantly changing the designs of their pens and often did not even give the less expensive models names so there is a lot of detective work to be done here. I had never seen the round ended dollar pens in opaque plastic but you seem to have at least five. OTOH I seem to recall an earlier and more expensive pen that looked like a round ended dollar pen. I do not remember just what was different about it.

 

[JonSzanto]

BTW, I am not certain about the $1.00 price point, though I'm not actively doubting it. The ad below is from 1957.

 

Edited January 6, 2017 by JonSzanto

[JonSzanto]

Jon, is that Canadian pen a cartridge pen? I have never seen any of this model with the gold tone caps.

 

Yes, it is a cartridge pen. I'm sorry that this is all coming down at a busy time for me, but next week I'll have time to take a few pics. I'm pretty certain the cap is correct, but seeing as this was just an open group of pens, I can't guarantee there wasn't a cap swap at some point. We'll do some digging...

[bob_hayden]

The gold tone cap looks like the right cap design for that pen and I am not aware of another model that used that cap. But I have not seen everything yet, and it could be a Canadian thing.

 

The ad from 1957 may be the "more expensive" pen I was thinking of. I don't have the time line exactly but there was an opaque cigar pen that cost as much or more than the subsequent low end models. There was a $1.95 pen made of soft plastic that does not look like anything else but seems to be trying to look fancier than the pen in your ad yet cost less. And I have seen ads for the pen with the gold cap (but silver in the ads) that listed it for $2.95. I think what happened is that the pen you show in the ad was replaced by a very similar pen with translucent plastic parts that sold for $1 early on and was the cheapest Sheaffer. The soft and the pens like your gold capped one took over the higher price points.

[mrcharlie]

That looks like a great deal on the lot of pens you bought; a quick look seems like they are mostly in good shape (many of the 1950s era SCP pens I've purchase have some amount of corrosion on the caps or clips). I'm jealous; nice find!

 

Nearly all of them look like the softer plastic opaque body pens, which were a "different" pen during the first gen body style than the transparent pens. The section/feed/nibs are the same, but the caps/clips are slightly more expensively made (the difference in the clip is pretty noticeable in person but harder to photograph for a bad photographer such as myself), and the body material.

 

I haven't seen any definitive documentary evidence, but from looking at old ads it seems like the $2.95 version was first introduced (and it was also sold in a student/handwriting kit sort of thing for a couple dollars more). After a year or three the cheaper version was introduced, and at some point the more expensive version was phased out. Also, at first the cartridge pens were called "Skripsert" pens and the cartridges Skripsert cartridges, but as you show with your ad copy by 1957 they were already dropping the use of that name.

 

By the second generation, both opaque and transparent were the same pen/price. The second gen opaque material doesn't seem as soft to me as the first gen $2.95 pen, but I haven't done any quantitative test of that.

 

I also have purchased a NOS replacement nib/section in a little cardboard tube marked as "S-302 Ex-Fine" with a listed price of "$1.25" and the labelling states it was for Sheaffer's $2.95 Cartridge Pen. I think I have seen a listing of the numbers vs the types of nibs of the 6 available originally, but I don't think I've saved it anywhere or remember it all.

 

The 302 is an Ex-Fine, the 304 is a Fine, and the 305 is a Medium. If the 303 is also an Ex-Fine I don't know the difference between the 302 and the 303.

Edited January 7, 2017 by mrcharlie

[jar]

Also remember that the pens were often discounted in the drugstores so even if they carried a $2.95 MSRP an actual street price of $1.00 is not out of line. I know that in the 50s one year I ran the school supply store that was in a corner in the attack of the upper school that had once been a stable, pens and pencils and notebooks, and we sold the Sheaffer Balance style cartridge pens for $1.00 and gave a 5 pack of cartridges with each one. However they were bulk packed and sold as individual units and the faculty set the prices so they may have not been MSRP.

 

When it was the stable and paddock

http://www.fototime.com/4FEA304B8EBA7D9/medium800.jpg

and when it was the Upper School

http://www.fototime.com/78EDADFC74ACC0E/medium800.jpg

[JonSzanto]

Thanks, Jar. Maybe "$1.00 pen" was the people's name for it!

[jar]

Thanks, Jar. Maybe "$1.00 pen" was the people's name for it!

I never heard it called that. There was an Esterbrook that was called that. We always called it either a Sheaffer or the cartridge pen.

[corgicoupe]

Okay, where are you in that photo?

[jar]

Okay, where are you in that photo?

In front of the building.

 

And all the Seniors as well as the Faculty.

 

http://www.fototime.com/A37E3B1FFF7D235/xlarge.jpg

Edited January 7, 2017 by jar

[JonSzanto]

I never heard it called that. There was an Esterbrook that was called that. We always called it either a Sheaffer or the cartridge pen.

 

I was referencing other's use of the term. I had never heard it called that, either. To me, it was always a "school pen".

[bob_hayden]

 

Nearly all of them look like the softer plastic opaque body pens, which were a "different" pen during the first gen body style than the transparent pens. The section/feed/nibs are the same, but the caps/clips are slightly more expensively made (the difference in the clip is pretty noticeable in person but harder to photograph for a bad photographer such as myself), and the body material.

 

I haven't seen any definitive documentary evidence, but from looking at old ads it seems like the $2.95 version was first introduced (and it was also sold in a student/handwriting kit sort of thing for a couple dollars more). After a year or three the cheaper version was introduced, and at some point the more expensive version was phased out.

 

By the second generation, both opaque and transparent were the same pen/price. The second gen opaque material doesn't seem as soft to me as the first gen $2.95 pen, but I haven't done any quantitative test of that.

 

This quote from mrcharlie matches my recollection/understanding. I have never handled the $2.95 type pen in the ad so I do not know how soft the plastic was but I wonder how it compares to the soft plastic in another old Sheaffer from that era. There is a picture of that one earlier in this thread. Maybe the best way to distinguish it is that the cap is mainly plastic with a wide chrome-colored trim band around the open end of the cap.

 

The OP listed three versions of the pen I've called a "dollar pen", I think it is unclear whether the $2.95 pen in the ad above is part of Version 1 or is part of another line. Should there be a 1A and !B or should the $2.95 pen be Version 0? Either way I think it should somehow be distinguished from the later pens with the same shape but translucent bodies and a lower price.

 

I do question whether "Skripsert" was ever the name of a pen. I think it was only the name of the cartridge, and "Skripsert pen" in an ad means that this pen takes a Sheaffer cartridge, not "the name of this pen model is 'Skripsert'". In later years Sheaffer refered to "cartridge pens" in the same way.

 

As for the "dollar pen" name, that is how we called then back when they were a current model, but for all I know that could be a Boston thing or a Cambridgeport thing or a 245 Chestnut Street thing;-) My best guess is that this was a market segment like "mid-sized SUV: or "family sedan" that existed whether or not any particular manufacturer used those words to name it's product. Ditto for "school pen" though I never heard any Sheaffer called this until someone started importing an inexpensive pen from England that carried the "Sheaffer" name some time after Sheaffer in Iowa was annihilated with ink eradicator. The dollar pen segment existed before WWII but took on a new life after the war when inflation meant we were now talking about much lower real prices, presumably forced by competition from ballpoints..

 

I note the ad offers SIX point styles! I have never seen any but M and F for the dollar pens and I am wondering if any other options such as 302 and 303 were really only intended for the $2.95 pen in the ad. (Since they appear to have fit the dollar pens, you might well find those nibs there today. I know I never made any effort to keep bodies, pens, and caps together with my own pens. I often searched for the F nibs and they seemed less common than M.

 

In any case, it is good to pull all this stuff together in one place. As people share old ads we may piece together more and more of the past.

[Sailor Kenshin]

This quote from mrcharlie matches my recollection/understanding. I have never handled the $2.95 type pen in the ad so I do not know how soft the plastic was but I wonder how it compares to the soft plastic in another old Sheaffer from that era. There is a picture of that one earlier in this thread. Maybe the best way to distinguish it is that the cap is mainly plastic with a wide chrome-colored trim band around the open end of the cap.

 

 

 

I have one of those plastic-cap models in green and was just using it last week. The plastic is PRETTY soft. Yup.

 

BTW...am also insanely jealous of Jon.

[pajaro]

My 303 nib section is on a dollar red clear plastic school pen with the more squared off ends. The 303 on the nib is so faint that I don't think I could capture it with the camera on my tablet, maybe with my film camera's macro lens. It is the only 303 I have found.

 

As a kid the last thing I would have wanted was an extra fine nib.

[bob_hayden]

The squared off ends were on the third and final version but the nib numbering system in the three hundreds was mainly on the earliest version. So I am thinking you may have a Frankenpen;-) I have a few of those myself because I liked the caps on the Reaktors but not the nibs so I put the caps on the older dollar pens.

[bob_hayden]

Aha, I found what I was looking for -- an explanation of why I keep using the name "dollar pen". It's a picture of one in the original packaging and if you look closely you can see that a price of $1 is printed right on it.

[mrcharlie]

That is a second generation pen, with the new logo that was adopted after the sale of the company to Textron.

 

There is no doubt that the second generation pen was sold for $1.00 for most or all of its time on the market (essentially the 1960s). There are many images of packaging from that time showing it for a dollar. In some cases it is marked at $1.50 -- $1.00 for the pen and $0.50 for the extra five cartridges -- and then the price is struck through with the $1.00 price replacing it and some sort of wording implying the extra cartridges are a free bonus.

 

Here is a photo of packaging of the first generation pen (called the "Economy Cartridge Fountain Pen" in this case) and the $1.00 price (just 2 cartridges, no bonus five pack).

 

 

 

[bob_hayden]

Thanks for the confirmation;-) Not only is the price (in blue) much clearer and not partially hidden as on my image, the price is repeated with a huge white "1" on which various things are printed in blue (such as the second notification of the price). I think we can safely say that Sheaffer was making a big deal out of the fact that it cost a dollar, and that is why it became known (in some circles at least) as "Sheaffer's Dollar Pen".

 

I think the sale to Textron was in 1966 which helps to pin down dates on the various versions.

[mwpannell]

Great stuff. In my fountain pen circles back in the day -- uh, pretty much me, just me -- they weren't known as dollar pens or school pens, just those pens at the dime store/drug store that I, a kid who liked 'em, didn't mind paying for. And their ad people are a crack-up: Loads like a rifle! Well, you do put cartridges in them. That's great, and elsewhere another of mrcharlie's product pics a copywriter's flagrant misuse of the word insures. Love all this new info. Thanks guys. I used to be the smartest Sheaffer cartridge/dollar/school person I knew. Back of the class now and glad to see all this.

[jar]

One reason I ended up with a bunch of them was that often it was cheaper to buy the blister pack when I needed cartridges than buying just the cartridges. The pen was just seen as free.