Anyone Ever Get An Unnamed, Weird, Cheapie, Which Turned To Be A Lovely Writer?

[Alexcat]

I got this, along with a rollerball(which .i could get a refill for and use, if I wanted to....it's been used, the fountain pen had not)for very little....can't remember exactly, but certainly under £10

 

Well, the pen writes beautifully....smooth, glides over the paper, using a universal cartridge. Heavy, which I like.

 

No idea what it's made of, but actually feels like stone, or cement: it has a logo, which is

EL Business services

So I suspect it was a corporate gift.

 

Must be from a while back, as the nib says "Iridium point W. Germany"

 

So, has anyone else ever got a nameless, brandless, slightly odd pen, for not a lot of cash, and found it to be a pretty good one?

 

Alex

 

[lmarine0510]

Yes. I have bought a few no-name Chinese pens (i.e. "Iridium Point Germany") and some 1930's vintage, no-name, lever-filling, colorful celluloid pens with "Warranted" nibs off of eBay and the majority of them turned out to be excellent writers and they make for excellent knock-about pens.

[doggonecarl]

Interesting. The pen has a Rotring-like nib.

 

I picked up a unknown plastic pen with a plunger filler. The only marking on the pen--Made in England--on the cap. It had a wonderfully smooth #2 medium stub nib by Smoothline. I ended up putting the nib in my Noodler's Nib Creeper.

 

Later found out that Conway Stewart used Smoothline in their third-tier and school pens.

[canibanoglu]

That is a very nice looking pen, I would want one for myself. Especially curious about the material.

 

I don't have a lot of pens but two pens really surprised me. One was a Pelikan Pelikano P55 which had a medium nib. I was curious about the pen having seen a review of it online and I decided to buy one. The pen felt cheap in the hand and I expected it to be a bad writer too. Exactly the opposite! The nib was writing like a dream. The pen stayed in my possession for about an hour before my fiance took it for herself.

 

The other one was a Jinhao 159. I bought one of them for $9 shipped. Again, I was interested in the pen after reading reviews of it online. The similarity with the 149 was also a factor in my decision. I didn't expect it to write particularly well at all. After all it costs $9 shipped from China! I was wrong again. Amazing build quality for a pen of its price and it really has a great nib. The fate of the pen turned out to be the same as the Pelikano, girlfriend took it for herself! After that I bought 5 more of them for an even better deal $5/each shipped. I've been giving them out to people who are interested in fountain pens. A week ago I gave one of them to a co-worker and he wouldn't take it because he thought it was a very expensive pen. I assured him that it was not and he's been using that happily since.

[sidthecat]

I have a tiny little piebald lever-filler with a beautiful Warranted stub nib...no markings, but furnished in good gold. No discoloration, either. It's such a cute little thing, and what a nice writer.

[westhill]

I love that! I find no-names, or lowly names, that turn out to be great, all the time. Often they have interesting or beautiful celluloid pattern. My current fave is a no-name with elegant pearl-and-black stripes and a semi-flex nib. Really fun to write with. Some pens are so expensive/fancy that you don't want to take them out of the house because you're so worried about losing them. I love the inexpensive, non-famous ones that are no-worry daily users.

[virgilio]

It happens all the time. My favorite fountain pens of all time are some piston-filler school pens I got off of ebay, three dozen for aroung $35 a dozen. Granted they don't write that well out of the box, but the nibs are semi-flex, and so can be easily tweaked to make them very wet, smooth writers. I later learned they are Universals. The world is full of dry, scratchy, overly heavy, expensive pens, and of cheap pens that write perfectly... You just have to find them.

[estie1948]

I have at least seven lever-fill fountain pens that have no markings on them and are good writers. They are all probably 1950 pens and probably cost a dollar or two when new. I got them used at a thrift store for twenty-five to fifty-cents each back in the 1990's. Some of them needed considerable work on the nibs, but they all write great now.

 

I have also bought a few from this bargain bin that only contributed parts for other pens.

 

-David (Estie).

[sidthecat]

I've had good luck with the no-names. I just got a tiny ringtop in dark blue marbled celluloid. A tiny but very flexy Warranted nib. Needs a sac, of course, but it'll write a treat.

[ac12]

Several times.

In fact I enjoy looking at the "junk box," and restoring some of the pens to decent writers.

- Some times all it needs is cleaning the crud off the pen and resacing it.

- Sometime the nib needs a little bit of adjustment.

- Some nibs are broken/corroded/trashed and just need to be replaced. So I got a bunch of generic cheap Chinese nibs, that I use to renib old brand-X pens with NICE celluloid, into nice writers. The tipping technology of today is miles ahead of the tier-3 stuff they had way back then.

[Randal6393]

Yep, I love my odd-ball pens. The most notable ones I found are a set of six Hero Italic pens, from 1.1 mm to 2.5 mm (or so), for less than $10.00. Another nice set was an unknown Indian set of five italic pens for, again, less than $10.00. Love tinkering and bringing a poor pen up to highly functional.

 

Money spent isn't, IMHO, a good criterion of the quality of a pen. So, by all means, take a chance on a bargain. Might work out, might not. But how else are you going to learn how to work on a pen?

 

Best of luck,

[PAKMAN]

Yes, I've come across several no name vintage pens that turned out to be very special pens. Yours looks very interesting, congrats!

[Fuzzy_Bear]

Best one I had was a Scripto squeeze fill.

[mhpr262]

I bought eight "Magnum" fountainpens by the German brand Diplomat off ebay. The model has been discontinued and it was a bulk sale, four pens for about 8 or 10€ IIRC. Apparently they were designed to compete with the Safari and Twist and similar pens for german schoolchildren. I bought four blue ones first and only then I realized the seller was also offering four black ones which looked much better, so I simply bought those too. Nice for experimenting with and comparing different inks.h

 

Great writers and have a very nice, unique feel to the nib. I use one of them for my Rohrer&Klingner "Scabiosa" iron gallus ink which I hesitated to use in my more expensive pens. It has been working extremely well so far, even though I often don't use it for weeks at a time and the Scabiosa has turned to almost-black in the inkfeed.

Edited October 21, 2016 by mhpr262

[kestrel]

I have a number of pens of various ages with no identifying marks at all that just needed a good cleaning and either a nib adjustment or nib replacement to become very attractive, good writing pens. Boxes of cheap pens at antique stores yielded a lot of them. A few came in "lots" from eBay. Some are BHR or BCHR, some are celluloid. My oldest one is, I suspect, from the late 19th century. Repairing these little jewels is a great way to spend an afternoon.

[inkstainedruth]

Last year I found a no-name lever filler, fitted with what turned out to maybe be an English made 14K nib. I've been told the nib is worth about 5 times what I paid for the pen....

I still have to have the pen re-sacced, but I expect it will turn out to be an amazing writer. The irony of it all was that I had made a special trip up to the antiques mall across the street and had only found a junker Wearever. So at 10 of 5, I ran across the street to the tiny place, and the guy said he didn't have any pens. But I figured that I'd poke around and see what else might be interesting before the place closed for the night.

I also have a Wearever that I was *given* by a dealer at an antiques fair a year ago May. The guy said "Oh, I think I have some pens in the truck!" and pulled out a big corrugated cardboard box, which he dug through and pulled out the Wearever. I looked it over, told him what I could (which wasn't much, knowing very little about the brand, and started to hand it back to him. He said "Keep it! I can't sell it!" (not entirely sure why not, but okay...). I had it redacted and it's not too bad a writer -- smoother than I would have expected for being a 3rd tire brand.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[creeder14]

Got a piston filling Dollar demonstrator as a gift with purchase when I bought an Estie. WONDERFUL pen. Gave it to my girlfriend and I miss it... But she's very happy with it. It's her first fountain pen and she absolutely adores it! Smoothest nib I've ever used.

[ac12]

 

 

Last year I found a no-name lever filler, fitted with what turned out to maybe be an English made 14K nib. I've been told the nib is worth about 5 times what I paid for the pen....

I still have to have the pen re-sacced, but I expect it will turn out to be an amazing writer. The irony of it all was that I had made a special trip up to the antiques mall across the street and had only found a junker Wearever. So at 10 of 5, I ran across the street to the tiny place, and the guy said he didn't have any pens. But I figured that I'd poke around and see what else might be interesting before the place closed for the night.

I also have a Wearever that I was *given* by a dealer at an antiques fair a year ago May. The guy said "Oh, I think I have some pens in the truck!" and pulled out a big corrugated cardboard box, which he dug through and pulled out the Wearever. I looked it over, told him what I could (which wasn't much, knowing very little about the brand, and started to hand it back to him. He said "Keep it! I can't sell it!" (not entirely sure why not, but okay...). I had it redacted and it's not too bad a writer -- smoother than I would have expected for being a 3rd tire brand.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

Some of the Wearevers are GREAT writers. Too bad they are looked down at by many.

I have one with a modern 'brand X' stainless steel flex nib, and it regularly surprises people.

[ac12]

 

Got a piston filling Dollar demonstrator as a gift with purchase when I bought an Estie. WONDERFUL pen. Gave it to my girlfriend and I miss it... But she's very happy with it. It's her first fountain pen and she absolutely adores it! Smoothest nib I've ever used.

 

That is a GREAT starter and general every day pen.

And its easy to take it completely apart to clean it, if the ink does not flush out normally.

[fullfederhalter]

Had to add to the reply of ac12 concerning Wearever pens.

"Some of the Wearevers are GREAT writers. Too bad they are looked down at by many.

I have one with a modern 'brand X' stainless steel flex nib, and it regularly surprises people."

 

A few weeks ago at a flea market I bought a baggie with some pens and pencils. I really only wanted one pen, but the dealer was not interested in selling separately, and the price of the whole bag was less than what i would have expected to pay for the one pen I wanted. One of the pens I had no interest in was a red cartridge filling Wearever Pioneer pen with aluminum cap. As cheap pens go, this one couldn't be much cheaper. It originally retailed for half a dollar (about $4.15 adjusted for inflation). It has a semi-hooded nib (covering a standard steel nib) with the generally hated clear plastic feed. However, IMO it is not a bad looking pen, and it had an empty cartridge inside. I decided to thoroughly flush the nib unit and the cartridge, which I then filled with a syringe. The end result is a cheap pen which behaves better than many of my "expensive" pens: has not dried out, has good flow, and a smooth, if stiff, medium nib.

 

I guess I'd have to agree!

Edited October 30, 2016 by fullfederhalter