Dating Parker 75 Pens

[Matlock]

Nice pairing Love the T1s

Thanks for the photo, does the Sterling 75 have any UK hallmarks on the cap band?

http://i865.photobucket.com/albums/ab212/ceejaybee_photo/IMG_6763.jpg

 

No, but that is not that unusual with imported silver items.

[ceejaybee]

 

No, but that is not that unusual with imported silver items.

I agree, thanks for showing. Most interesting.

[Matlock]

Nice pairing Love the T1s

 

 

 

Love the look of the T-1 but it is not a pen to use. I dipped it once and found it to be a poor writer (I think that is well known) so it sits in a case as a collectors item.

[kansaskyle]

Reviving an old thread. Did any more information come in to augment the spreadsheet?

i found it very helpful, and I think I have a 1972-1973 pen based on the following:

- No 0 reference mark
- Short grip
- Front engraving, narrow band
- Dish tassie

- 43mm clip

[idazle]

Reviving an old thread. Did any more information come in to augment the spreadsheet?

 

i found it very helpful, and I think I have a 1972-1973 pen based on the following:

- No 0 reference mark

- Short grip

- Front engraving, narrow band

- Dish tassie

- 43mm clip

 

Hi!

 

I'm glad to hear that the thread has been useful to someone ;-)

 

Cheers

[mitto]

I have found a sterling silver cisele 75 with back engraving ,dish tassie but with an 0 mark on the section ring.

Edited July 31, 2015 by mitto

[dcpritch]

Carlos, I'm loving this thread - thanks for all your work and the expert input of so many others. The table and comments have been helpful in dating a flat tassie 75 I recently picked up. Most important to me is the nib - a factory stub/italic.

 

DAVID

[idazle]

Carlos, I'm loving this thread - thanks for all your work and the expert input of so many others. The table and comments have been helpful in dating a flat tassie 75 I recently picked up. Most important to me is the nib - a factory stub/italic.

 

DAVID

 

Hi David, glad to hear that you've found the thread useful. The Parker 75 is a pen I've been fond of since I took up this hobby. I too got one with the relatively rare nº 97 14K nib, which is a fine italic according to the USA numbering system. As it was too fine for me I then bought a French nº 94 18K medium italic.

 

You can see writing samples with the two nibs in one of the attached pics below.

 

I really like these Parker 75 italic nibs. A very straight italic cut, but pretty soft when you write a italic hand with the right 45º angle. Only my Sheaffer Targa stubs produce a better italic in my hand.

 

Carlos

 

 

Edited September 11, 2015 by idazle

[mitto]

My 75 Ciselé herd.

[dcpritch]

Mitto, what a nice pile of 75s! What nibs are on them?

 

Carlos, thanks for the writing sample (superb) and all the work in putting this thread together and keeping its direction moving forward. The info is very good and very much appreciated.

[mitto]

Mitto, what a nice pile of 75s! What nibs are on them?

Carlos, thanks for the writing sample (superb) and all the work in putting this thread together and keeping its direction moving forward. The info is very good and very much appreciated.

Thank you, dcpritch. Two of the nibs are mediums, two fines and one broad. The sixth one is a ballpoint.

[mitto]

These are my cisele 75s. I have a number of 75s in other finishes too.

Edited September 17, 2015 by mitto

[gregglee]

I ran found this thread when I was researching a pen I bought. I don't have many P75s but they are varied.

 

The crosshatch combinations I own are:

A couple of these are gold fill/vermeil over sterling. No reason to think their sequence of changes would be any different.

I don’t recall any other combination being reported. Others might exist, but for the moment the following sequence is the only one consistent with those reported and not reported.

 

 

The changeover in each part could overlap old and new and still be consistent, but two part chargeovers could not overlap without creating more combinations.

Time periods on this chart are of indefinite length. More than one could occur within a year.

I didn’t includes clips or engraving. I haven’t paid enough attention to them in for sale and my clips correlate exactly to band width. (edit: correction.below)

I do have one wide band with front engraving, which I hadn’t noticed until mentioned here.

 

www.parker75.com refers to the section with second chrome band near threads as a prototype, so I omitted it as a production type.

http://www.parker75.addr.com/Reference/Sections/Section.htm

Edited October 21, 2015 by gregglee

[gregglee]

So the next day I noticed a new combination on ebay (ignoring the possibility of a frankenpen)

plastic short zero dish narrow

Since all four combinations of ring and tassie exist, this requires that the changeovers overlap. That they could overlap is not unreasonable since Parker would not throw out all the old type parts when new type started. For a while both types could be in factory inventory drawn in random order to feed production. How long depends on Parker's practices in inventory level and whether they made parts in large batch runs then drew down before the next batch and how large were the batches.

 

Anyway a new chart to account for all combinations follows. T5 has the overlaps that allow all four combinations types of ring and tassie. None of the other part parings has more than three types, so far.

 

I misspoke on my previous post. My clip types match tassie type, not bands

Edited October 21, 2015 by gregglee

[idazle]

Amazing gregglee! I need time to go through it.

[jmccarty3]

I have two sterling ciselé 75s: the first I was given in 1967 when I graduated from high school. It has all the characteristics of that date (narrow cap band, front engraving, flat tassies), except the plastic threads on the section wore out and I had to replace it with a new section in the '70s that didn't have the "0" mark.

 

The other 75 is French, with a wide cap band, dished tassies, new clip, and markless section ring, but with the engraving on the front of the cap band.

 

It's difficult to imagine how such simple nibs could write so beautifully.

[gregglee]

Amazing gregglee! I need time to go through it.

This was to test for consistency with your date chart, not to replace it. Not directly for dating since several of my time periods could be within one year. And T8 for example spanned many years.

 

Other thoughts:

 

Hallmarks, makers marks, and assay marks are for specific markets and could appear on a pen of any age, so unlikely to be useful for dating. Might be a separate interesting topic though.

 

Parker 75.com tends to discuss changes in pen parts, but not whole pens and what combination of parts parts came with others. Pictures of whole pens there rarely show uncapped or show view of tassies so offer few clues. So here you are covering ground that Parker75 does not.

 

French made pens are a separate topic, but not as clean as we might think. When I noticed French body pens with US made nibs on ebay I emailed Lih-Tah Wong to ask about it. Not an exact quote but he said something like oh yeah, all the early production French Pens had Janesville nibs. As with part changes, the web site talks about french nibs or french inscriptions, but not about french pens as a whole. French pen version pictures show french bodies but are capped, so no clue on what nib lies beneath.

 

Since nibs are interchangeable they may be less reliable for dating, but I have noticed (on-line, not in-hand) one or two nibs marked USA that include a 585 inscription as well as 14K. Is this a dateable change? Or maybe just added anytime for some non-US markets.

 

Was the change from numbered nibs to letters well dated? Only works for the more common nibs F M B etc. though. The specialty / uncommon nibs remained numbers as far as I have read.

 

The radius of the bend in the clip varies, which changes the clip length as measured along the barrel. I have large point clips that vary in length along the barrel by almost 2mm. Length of arrow point and number of feathers seem like more reliable references.

Edited October 31, 2015 by gregglee

[Maine Vintner]

This is a great resource and fantastic idea. Thank you for initiating this project.

 

I own a 75 and have noted an inscription on the feed section that shows a number (66). Grandmia does a video review of a Parker 75 and notes the number 65 is on his. Does this have anything to do with the dating of these pens?

 

Best,

John

[mitto]

This is a great resource and fantastic idea. Thank you for initiating this project.

I own a 75 and have noted an inscription on the feed section that shows a number (66). Grandmia does a video review of a Parker 75 and notes the number 65 is on his. Does this have anything to do with the dating of these pens?

Best,

John

The inscription on the feed denotes the nib/tip size. On earlier 75 the tip size was in numbers. On later pens the same was in letters as F, M etc.

[catbert]

Fantastic reference. Thank you.

My 75 is (plastic, ?, blank, flat, narrow), so I guess T5.

 

Can someone post examples of long and short grip ridges for comparison? (There was a link earlier in the thread but it doesn't work now.)