Why Parker?

[benbot517]

What makes Parker appealing to you all? For me its their incredible innovation. From the button fill that not only sidestepped Sheaffer's patents and allowed for a cleaner design, to the Vacumatics with their amazing striped bodies, the aerometrics that today work with only a cleaning, and the amazing capillary fill that only required being put in ink, Parker's constant, ceaseless innovation fascinates me, while their ever changing and evolving designs all work for me. What about Parker draws you in?

[WateryFlow]

Parkers of old were great trend setters, irrespective if the originality came from them. The range of nibs was both awesome and only 2nd to Sheaffer in terms of attractiveness of design.

 

Modern day Parkers are (self bleep) and every single one I've had has had problems such as loose caps (frontier flighter), drying up(Parker 45), and scratchiness (vector). I threw each one out after a while.

Maybe I've just been unlucky

Edited January 15, 2015 by WateryFlow

[Matlock]

What makes Parker appealing to you all? For me its their incredible innovation. From the button fill that not only sidestepped Sheaffer's patents and allowed for a cleaner design, to the Vacumatics with their amazing striped bodies, the aerometrics that today work with only a cleaning, and the amazing capillary fill that only required being put in ink, Parker's constant, ceaseless innovation fascinates me, while their ever changing and evolving designs all work for me. What about Parker draws you in?

The capilary 61 is probably one they wished they had not marketed. A great design but it required a certain amount of discipline on the part of the user. Get a good clean one and they are superb. If that discipline was lacking.oh dear

Of the modern Parkers the Duofold is still a great pen, not too sure about some of the others though.

[PAKMAN]

The other day I had the honor of holding a restored early 1900's Parker 45 in red hard rubber with mother of pearl body. Nuf said! Wish I had taken a picture!

[The Blue Knight]

I'm going to be the one different person and talk about my liking of modern Parker. I always as a kid (90's kid) used to like the fact that my pen was made in the UK obviously 10 years ago as things are know pretty much everything was made in China.and it was nice to The pens and pencils on my desk hadn't traveled thousands of miles across vast oceans to get to me instead a fairly short trip from Newhaven.

 

I've owned pretty much all the recent affordable Parker Vector/15/Reflex/Frontier/IM and never I have never owned that wrote badly however many of my other pens from notable manufactures have suffered problems with there nibs.

 

Because of this association with quality I decided to go for a Sonnet for first more expensive fountain pen which I really enjoy using. However I find the current line up frustrating as except from the Sonnet and probably the Duofold the pens they offer these days just aren't very appealing.

[Sasha Royale]

Janesville, Wisconsin Parkers

Canadian Parkers

UK Parkers

French Parkers

Shanghai Parkers

 

"WateryFlow" is generous. I didn't even throw away the last "bleep". I was writing

at a lunch table, and just got up and left it.

 

And the Fifth Generation "faux fountain pen" is insulting.

Edited January 15, 2015 by Sasha Royale

[lisadan]

Growing up in Israel in the late 60s and during the 70s, Parker was considered the leading pen (mostly ballpoint) brand, and was superior to most locally made and cheap imported pens, at least where I grew up (middle class family in a rural area). Receiving a Parker Jotter BP was a real treat and Parker FP/BP sets were common gifts for special birthdays (I still have my 45 BP/FP set I received in 1976). I guess I just got stuck with the notion of Parker as manufacturer of good pen, and have quite a few of them now. I do have many Sheaffers as well, but Parker will always be my number one brand, with the 25 being my most favorite model.

[JotterAddict62]

I started using the Parker Jotter in middle school in the early 70's and when I was looking for a ballpoint to use at my new job that I needed to fill out paperwork for I remembered the Jotter.

now some 6 1/2 years later I have massed a house full of Parkers , including displays, Pops, 3 ft floor case, anything Parker related. Living 20 miles east of Parkers hometown helps in collecting all that I can find.

[PAKMAN]

Some modern Parkers make me happy too! My Centennial Black and Pearl, LE True Blue and LE Norman Rockwell are all mighty fine pens!

[Write Again]

I guess my love for Parker was inherited. My grandfather was and still is an avid Parker user and collector, so that wore off on me. I had family that lived up in Janesville/Milton, so visiting and talking about the factory was always very interesting as a young child. Jotters were the 1st pen I truly collected, from there my collecting grew to any Parker pen I could find at antique malls or even more modern pens at local stores. Today, my collection is mainly Parker, mostly 51s. I do appreciate and use other brands of pens, but that I feel like I almost have a connection with Parkers.

[jisip]

My first pen was a Parker Vector with a plactic barrel. It was also the first pen I broke while trying to customize (was too lazy to remove the nib so rotated it while the section was attached to the barrel, cracked the barrel). After that incident I've been attracted to the Flighters because the steel give the illusion of unbreakability. I've since moved on to different filling systems but I recently got a Vac striped Duofold and I fell in love with the design. Nowadays I'm just going after grail pens (the Parker T-1 is one) but I still cherish my line-up of Flighters. Not so fond of the ballpoints and rollerballs as they always dry up on me.

[inkstainedruth]

I had some sort of pen/pencil combo when I was a kid that had been my grandfather's (sadly, long since lost). I never really figured out how it worked. But there's this weird sort of memory that it was some sort of Parker.

So when I started using FPs a few years ago (originally just for journalling) I bought some low end Parker cartridge pen with a rubberized section to use: $6.95 at Staples; then another one, when the grip got nasty and sort of disintegrated. When that happened to the second one, I couldn't find them anymore -- but I still had some cartridges, so I needed to buy another Parker pen. That pen was my blue Vector (the one that likes to occasionally play hide and seek). The (temporary) replacement until I got it back was an Urban, when I couldn't get another Vector easily, but by then I was finding my way here. I spent the first couple of weeks mostly reading the Parker Forum (yes, really! ) pretty much in its 3 year ago entirety.

What drew me to Parkers initially was availability -- that and it was what I really knew about. What kept me was reading about the different models and what great pens they were (especially the vintage ones). My first semi-vintage pen was a sumgai 45 -- didn't even know what it was when I bought it, except that it was a Parker ("Parker -- that's good, right?") and that pretty much everything else in the box looked like junk to me (whether it was or wasn't junk is a moot point). And writing with that pen was a revelation -- wet and smooth; the nib just glided across the page. Yeah, it's a small sweet spot -- but when you hit it, that is just an amazing writing experience.

What keeps me here now (mostly with the vintage Parkers -- that Urban is still a piece of trash) is the engineering, the R&D: the marriage of form and function. It's the look of them: classy, not gaudy or bling-y; they were designed to be tools -- they were expensive in their day, but they were designed to be used, not put into a trophy case, and the expense was to make them as good a tool as possible.

And it's the writing experience: I don't expect to have to constantly be fussing with them to get them to actually work.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[pajaro]

I don't really like old pens much, so I don't go in much for stuff older than the 51. The 51, the 61, the Sonnet and the Frontier all have a size, feel and functionality in the way they cap and uncap, in the way they write, in the balance and in the looks that I find to be perfectly pleasing. All subjective, but these models just work smoothly and are modern. I don't find any pen to have the durability of the aerometric 51. The Sonnet has some issues, but the ones I have write as well as any other modern pen and the extra fines are really pleasing, steel nibs or gold. The style, feel and working of the 51 and of the Sonnet are about as good as it gets for me. The Jotters are a great ballpoint for the money. The 51 ballpoint and the 45 ballpoint are really good, and I like the cap actuatiion.

 

There are other makes of pens I have liked, but there always seems to be something about them that just doesn't feel as slick to use as a 51 or a Sonnet.

 

The 61 that I have has a nice look and feel, and the capillary filler works perfectly. The only thing wrong with it is that the nib is too broad.

[Captivelight]

I grew up in Malaysia during the 60's and 70's where, to put it simply, Parker were the best.

 

My family ran several businesses so it was understood that your pen was a status symbol and in the same way that the only car worth owning was a Mercedes, the only pen worth doing business with was a Parker. I still remember my Uncle refusing to sign a contract using the offered non-Parker pen and waiting until someone had fetched him his Parker, signing the contract then giving the pen (a 51) to the young contractor as a gift so he would never again "look cheap".

 

When I was packed off to a boarding school in the UK one of the requirements was a fountain pen so before I went my mother gave me a Parker 45 Flighter and showed me how to maintain it. Since then I have always used Parkers from that era, currently a Parker 51 although I also have a 75 and a couple of 45's on my desk.

[Ste_S]

I went to school in the UK in the 70's/80's and Parker 'were' Fountain Pens as much as Hoover 'were' vacuum cleaners.

When I came to buy fountain pens again more recently, I naturally turned back to Parker and got a Vector and an IM. The Vector was ok, and as I discovered after trying numerous other pens, the IM is junk

 

After a while I started buying vintage pens, and found the pens I kept coming back to where a UK Duofold and a UK 45. Another 45 joined the fold (my dad's flighter), and now more expensive pens from Visconti and Pelikan are being left in the pen box.

 

There's something about vintage Parkers that connects with me, and am now scoping out Vacs, 51s, 61s, 75s, more 45s, more Duofolds etc

[JKelly]

As a former mechanical designer, I love the Parker 45 for its clean, elegant design. There are only six parts to the pen, and it can be disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled blindfolded with little fear of damage.

 

And they work!

Edited January 16, 2015 by JKelly

[VivienR]

I really like the overall designs most of the modern Parkers, especially the Sonnet. For me its the perfect size, the clean design and a beautiful classic nib, which writes really good. Appearance is really matter for me, and as brands Parker got my attention. Well, there are flaws... as probably other brands have too. But, besides those minor flaws, they work really well. Urban has a nice shape, I like it, but the section can be scratched even weeks. Sonnets are different, after more than a year intense use, its still looks beautiful. Finally last year December I treated myself with a Duofold Black and Pearl International. Simply: WOW! The nib is gorgeous, its really a classic beauty. Although its feels a bit unusual after sonnets, because its bit wider, but I really love it! And the best of all, I really don't need to sell my organs to get a Parker. Really love their elegance.

[Romagno]

When I was in grade school, I learned penmanship using a Sheaffer cartridge school pen, but once I had "established myself" so to speak, I was allowed to use a Parker 45 (my mother used a "51", which I was not allowed to touch). I used that 45 through high school, college and medical school. An indestructible, functional pen. From that time, I have been a Parker man. I now prefer a vintage "51" or Duofold Senior, but I still ink my 45 periodically. Stil a great pen.

[william2001]

They sell cheap(er) pens with very high quality.

They sell both classic and modern pens.

-William S. Park

[ParkersAndPaper]

I first became interested in fountain pens while in college. I picked up a Sheaffer set, not understanding that it was for calligraphy and not writing. Next I found a Yafa at Office Depot. It was nice, but very cheap and didn't always work. After working for a couple of years I returning to grad school and decided to give fountain pens another try. I set to google to do a simple search of what is the best fountain pen. Of course many of the returns were sites commenting on the 51, not being able to afford a 51 I went with a 21 Super. I quickly added an Urban to the collection, but I didn't like it very much.

 

When I graduated I decided to start collecting pens. I went after a 51, then a 45, and a Sonnet. By now I was hooked to Parker. Of course I have a few others. The Lamy Safari, Wearever Pacemaker, and several significant Sheaffer designs all have spots in my collection, but I favor Parkers for looks, usability, durability, and fascinating history of innovation.