Possible counterfeit Parker IM?

[BHuij]

I have an old style (tiny nib) black/chrome Parker IM which I purchased for way too much money in Russia in 2012. It has never been a particularly good writer. Recently I decided to learn the basics of tuning and polishing my own nibs so I could try and improve the writing experience of a few of my pens, this one included. After a bit of work spacing the tines out a little to improve flow, making sure they're aligned, and some polishing on micromesh and mylar, it's quite a bit better than it ever has been, and actually pretty enjoyable to write with now. Yay.

 

In the process of disassembling it and whatnot, I managed to drop the tiny nib down my sink drain. I ended up finding it in the trap and recovering it, but for a while I thought it was gone, so I went looking on eBay for a replacement nib, and ended up finding a lot of listings for old style Parker IMs just like mine, in various colors, for really cheap. Like less than $10 cheap. From China, mostly, from what I could tell. I ordered one in a brushed copper finish with gold trim, figuring I could at least cannibalize the nib from it. By all accounts it should be an identical pen to the one I bought in Russia.

 

Today that brass/gold IM finally showed up. At first blush it seemed the same. I took it for a test drive with my standardized "how good is this pen" setup (Rhodia paper and Serenity Blue ink). First oddity: the converter in the pen was a push-pull style piston, rather than a screw-type like in my Parker from Russia.

 

The nib was in fairly bad shape. Pinched fairly tight at the top, more open than they should be at the bottom. It wrote... eh. Kinda dry and inconsistent.

 

Then I pulled out the genuine one to compare side by side. The nibs are actually kinda different. New pen seems larger, wider. Minor but noticeable differences in the dimensions of the sections.

 

Finally, a last oddity. Aside from ordering a donor IM for cheap on eBay, I ordered one of the newer IM nibs in a housing and section. They have a much wider flair than the IM I already had, but I figured there was a good chance the section threads would fit my pen body. As it happens, that second nib unit showed up today too. It does indeed fit my original black IM. However, it does not properly thread into the body of the gold IM.

 

See attached pics.

 

Safe to assume the gold one from China is a counterfeit?

[InesF]

Hi @BHuij.

It surprises me that a Parker IM should be worth copying.

However, I own only one IM made around 2015. Its nib and section looks like the one in your gold coloured pen.

While it is well known that Parker changed the nib shape, I'm not sure if they also changed the thread geometry of the nib unit. The combination of new style replacement nib with old style threads reads a bit confusing - maybe there was something wrong delivered from the ebay seller?

[BHuij]

Yeah I'm realizing it was written kind of confusingly. Basically I have 3 things:

 

1. Old style Parker IM (black/silver) from a stationery store in Russia in 2012

2. Old style Parker IM (brass/gold) from an eBay shop in China selling them at ridiculously low prices (I think I paid $7)

3. New style Parker IM nib/housing/section assembly purchased from an eBay shop stateside

 

The gold pen has some odd differences from the black pen. The gold pen came with a push-pull converter instead of a twist. The newer Parker IM nib and section threads perfectly into my black/silver IM, but does not thread properly into the brass/gold IM.

 

My suspicion is that due to the super low price, the subtle differences in geometry, the odd converter, and the section threading incompatibility, the brass/gold IM is not a genuine Parker item. It doesn't much matter since they're not particularly high-end pens anyway, and for a $7 pen it writes just fine (pending more tuning and polishing of the nib). Just thought it was curious.

[Penguincollector]

I wonder if it’s a licensed Parker? I have a few Indian Parkers made by Luxor, and they come with the slide converter. The plating isn’t as nice as the American or European Parkers (not sure about the South American ones) and the stamping looks weird, but they’re legitimate licensed products that are made for sale only in that region. I’m not sure if Luxor produced an IM. I have a couple of pens called the Aster (so so) and a Vector (awesome). 

I just looked it up and Luxor produces (or produced) an IM for their local promotional pen market.

Edited March 28, 2023 by Penguincollector
Luxor information

[Mercian]

3 hours ago, BHuij said:

The gold pen came with a push-pull converter instead of a twist.

Parker has been making those converters for years. I think that they are nowadays made under licence for Parker,  by a sub-contractor company in an ‘emerging market’ country.

They were the ones that used to be shipped with e.g. the Parker Vector ‘Calligraphy’ set. Parker used to refer to them as its ‘Standard’ converters

 

The twist-converters (whether with gold-plated trim, or chrome trim) used to ship with Parker’s higher-end pens such as the modern Duofold. Parker used to refer to them as its ‘Deluxe’ converters.

 

[Parker’s current website is of course so shoddily-cobbled-together that it doesn’t make any mention of them.
Just one of its myriad instances of being not fit for purpose.]

 

Ironically, I have found that the less-expensive ‘Standard’ converters actually give better functionality than do the more-expensive ‘Deluxe’ twist-converters.

The slide-converters contain an agitator ball that breaks up any ‘blobs’ of ink that surface-tension causes to adhere to the distal/piston-end of the converter’s ink chamber.

The twist-converters don’t contain an agitator device, so they often suffer from surface-tension causing lots of ink to stay at the piston-end of the converter’s ink-chamber, rather than flowing down to the feed-nipple.

As such, they often starve the feed of any pen that one uses them in.

 

The best Parker converters (IMO) were the slide-converters from the mid-1990s, before the company got bought by Gillette - i.e. when it was still a pen-making company, rather than after that acquisition, since when its ‘uniqueness’ has been utterly subsumed-into the culture of whatever multi-national ‘collective’ has most-recently assimilated it.

 

Those converters had an agitator that was a small piece of tubing, rather than a ball-bearing.

They slid up and down inside the converter, breaking-up any ‘blobs’ of ink that formed in it, but they never blocked the feed nipple.

The ball-bearing agitators in the modern slide-converters can move to the bottom of the ink-chamber and completely-block the feed-nipple. If one is trying to use the slide to rapidly-cycle the piston to flush the pen, this can have explosive results 😕

[Penguincollector]

1 minute ago, Mercian said:

Parker has been making those converters for years. I think that they are nowadays made under licence for Parker,  by a sub-contractor company in an ‘emerging market’ country.

They were the ones that used to be shipped with e.g. the Parker Vector ‘Calligraphy’ set. Parker used to refer to them as its ‘Standard’ converters

 

The twist-converters (whether with gold-plated trim, or chrome trim) used to ship with Parker’s higher-end pens such as the modern Duofold. Parker used to refer to them as its ‘Deluxe’ converters.

 

[Parker’s current website is of course so shoddily-cobbled-together that it doesn’t make any mention of them.
Just one of its myriad instances of being not fit for purpose.]

 

Ironically, I have found that the less-expensive ‘Standard’ converters actually give better functionality than do the more-expensive ‘Deluxe’ twist-converters.

The slide-converters contain an agitator ball that breaks up any ‘blobs’ of ink that surface-tension causes to adhere to the distal/piston-end of the converter’s ink chamber.

The twist-converters don’t contain an agitator device, so they often suffer from surface-tension causing lots of ink to stay at the piston-end of the converter’s ink-chamber, rather than flowing down to the feed-nipple.

As such, they often starve the feed of any pen that one uses them in.

 

The best Parker converters (IMO) were the slide-converters from the mid-1990s, before the company got bought by Gillette - i.e. when it was still a pen-making company, rather than after its ‘uniqueness’ had been added-to whatever multi-national ‘collective’ had most-recently assimilated it.

Those ones had an agitator that was a small piece of tubing, rather than a ball-bearing.

They slid up and down inside the converter, breaking-up any ‘blobs’ of ink that formed in it, but they never blocked the feed nipple.

The ball-bearing agitators in the modern slide-converters can move to the bottom of the ink-chamber and completely-block the feed-nipple. If one is trying to use the slide to rapidly-cycle the piston to flush the pen, this can have explosive results 😕

My favorite is still the squeeze converter.

[Mercian]

2 minutes ago, Penguincollector said:

My favorite is still the squeeze converter.

I like the squeezy ones, but I do value being able to see how much ink I have left.

 

The best-possible Parker converter would be a squeezy one that had a transparent ‘pli-glass’ sac from a 1950s aerometric-filler 👍

[Penguincollector]

2 minutes ago, Mercian said:

I like the squeezy ones, but I do value being able to see how much ink I have left.

 

The best-possible Parker converter would be a squeezy one that had a transparent ‘pli-glass’ sac from a 1950s aerometric-filler 👍

That would be neat! 
 

[BHuij]

This is all good to know. Suppose it makes sense that it could be a licensed Parker IM made for a non-US market, given the price. At any rate, now that I've put the newer nib and feed into it and given it some tuning and polishing, it's a nice pen. Certainly better than its $7 price tag would suggest. Since I opted for a body that was brushed metal without lacquer, I don't really have any concerns about the finish quality.

[Number99]

I don't think there is any evidence presented for this argument other than speculation.

Perhaps you are referring to the Luxor Parker Odyssey, which is priced at about Rs. 2000-3000.

Several U.S. dollars is a price break.

 

I understand the desire to affirm the pen, but I hope that this will not be an argument that viewers will consider purchasing, unless they have clear proof.

 

If this is a fake.

Please, please note that there is a demand for fakes, and people reselling them.

I don't think you should have published specific prices or websites where they can be purchased ...

Even the images of the fakes …

 

Edited March 29, 2023 by Number99