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Need Help Identifying Omas Pen


mol_lon

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Little known fact, the German catalogue retailer Manufaktum carried a grey celluloid OMAS Paragon in the 90s - don't remember if speckled or marbled.

"If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live."

– Lin Yu-T'ang

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Little known fact, the German catalogue retailer Manufaktum carried a grey celluloid OMAS Paragon in the 90s - don't remember if speckled or marbled.

 

What do you mean? That they sold Omas pens in grey color back in the 90s? Did Omas make it specially for Manufaktum?

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I really appreciate your response. After going through Omas forums, I learned that the two tone nib is certainly from the 1990s. The word "Extra" doesn't really mean much, like you said. I could identify Burkina pens because there are many pictures available. But this one is harder to confirm.

 

As you pointed out, this pen is known as the paragon. The "Arte Italiana" part threw me off. Omas has so many different names for their pens. It has 1991 engraved on it. There were three colors available in 1991. Brown, grey, and green. In 1992, they introduced more colors. I just can't find decent pictures/review of this color and year. I am hoping someone with this pen could post detailed images. I also learned that the grey color was changed a little in subsequent years.

 

Any opinion on the quality? It's supposed to be mint condition. And it is going for roughly $1000. Fair price?

 

There were four colors available in 1991. I found a correction to what I wrote earlier:

 

"Released in 1991, the Classic Celluloid Collection was a high-quality OMAS range which featured the distinctive multi-faceted design in four beautiful celluloid stocks: "Scarlet Red, Saft Green, Pearl Grey and Bronze Arco (a shade of variegated yellow-ochre)". Later, three additional celluloids were added: Blue La Royale, Green Arco and Senape Blue, which is more commonly referred to as Saffron Blue and was sometimes referred to as Autumn Blue by OMAS in mid-nineties product literature."

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What do you mean? That they sold Omas pens in grey color back in the 90s? Did Omas make it specially for Manufaktum?

check my previous post. Yes, omas did a celluloid serie In the early 90's.

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  • 2 weeks later...

fabri00 is right

 

this is the saft green Paragon from the 90's

fpn_1541712720__p1080954-3_omas_paragon_

 

and this one is the scarlet red

fpn_1541712967__p1080955-3_omas_paragon_

sorry for the bad lighting, the pens look darker than they are in reality

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Is this one Extra Lucens? How does it write? Mind if I ask how much it costs. There is one Extra Lucens Oversize for sale for $1,600.

 

Sorry for late reply, it writes smoothly, great for me.

 

Price is about right.

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  • 3 weeks later...

My impression of 'Extra' as a term is that (when originally used by Italian pen manufacturers) the models were just that: left-overs, extras, or cobbled together from various left-over or extra parts. The pens were not necessarily inferior; sometimes just the opposite. Care was taken to re-shape or re-file so that feed, channel and nib fit together like hand and glove.

 

Later the term was applied (as car manufacturers might use "Super" or "Deluxe") to special models, larger nibs, circumference and so forth, by any number of Italian pen companies.

 

In decades of collecting I have not seen the term used on any but Italian pens, although I may be wrong.

 

My OMAS 'Extra' is an older Paragon from about '84 or '86, marked 'Extra' on the barrel. It may not have been called Paragon then, but it is a Paragon, simply smaller than versions from later decades.

 

This is all FWIW, which may be nothing really very important. In the early days of Italian pen making, my estimate is that model names -- well, let's be specific: OMAS did not pay much attention to model names. Numbers were assigned to models. Only the 'Ogive' received a special name, as I recall. When fortunes began to fail, OMAS tried to indicate the special or exclusive nature of its pens by naming them. Tactic that prolonged what was ultimately a failed strategy.

 

Sorry, when it comes to OMAS, the true paragon of pens in my opinion, I become voluble.

 

Oh, BTW sansenri -- thanks for the photos.

Edited by europen

No man is a slave unless he is willing to be bought by another. (EP)

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that's correct, Extra in Italian means special

it has nothing to do with leftovers... in case, it can mean "something more"

sometimes it also translates as bonus, but in the positive sense, so it also often means super, premium

 

The Omas were called Extra probably because they were the top of the range pens at Omas

and by no means it was used to mean "cobbled together"...

 

The Extra line, meaning top of the range included the larger size pen, the medium size pen, the small size pen, and it was the institutional premium line.

So you can find Omas pens, especially in black resin, which are just called Omas Extra but will be either 557, 556, or 555 size.

Omas has slightly changed the sizes of its pens over the years, and not just in the switch from classic "arte Italiana" to modern Omas pens, but also earlier. So it is sometimes not easy to exactly recognize the models.

In general the old line of pens are defined F when faceted, and S when not.

So the 557F size corresponds to the Paragon, the 556F to the Milord, the 555F to the 1930 (lady size).

You will find, depending on when the pen was manufactured, the same pen (almost, as I mentioned sizes do not always correspond exactly) called

Omas 557F or Omas Paragon, or Omas Extra,

Omas 556F or Milord, or Omas Extra

Omas 555F or Omas 1930, or Omas Extra

(already confusing isn't it?...)

then there are also some other variants

The 557F at some point has also been called Gentleman.

There is also an even smaller size than the 1930, called Dama.

The early pens all have the tie shaped clip .

here is a 557S in burgundy
fpn_1543440354__p1160769-3_omas_557s_bor

By the way, the name Arte Italiana is only very recent, and was probably chosen to distinguish the old line of pens from the new larger ones which were made more recently.
The Ogiva is also a recent name corresponding approximately to the 556S (the 557S, as in the picture, is bigger, Paragon size)

Edited by sansenri
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fabri00 is right

 

this is the saft green Paragon from the 90's

fpn_1541712720__p1080954-3_omas_paragon_

 

and this one is the scarlet red

fpn_1541712967__p1080955-3_omas_paragon_

sorry for the bad lighting, the pens look darker than they are in reality

Gorgeous pens! I have a saft ogiva and blue ogiva. Two of my favorites.

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