Looking to ID a strange LJ

[hermesrouge]

Hello! I’ve just gotten an odd variant of an LJ, and wondered if anyone might know where it fits in Estie history... The body is a pure solid color red with a horizontal imprint, perpendicular to the pen. I haven’t seen that before, and while I know some English J series pens were solids, this imprint includes “made in USA.” Then it gets even stranger- cap is striped - could be a mismatch, but the color is exact. What’s the story on this one?

[gweimer1]

Definitely a mismatch.  The cap is from an icicle pen.  The barrel is from a really late model J pen, when cost cutting starting hurting the quality.  I've had a few of these, and they are definitely of lower quality than the J series from the '40s.

[hermesrouge]

Thanks for solving the mystery @gweimer1 !

 

It’s a shame the late ones are poor quality - I love the solid color for a change! Very pretty despite the mismatch.

[LoveBigPensAndCannotLie]

  On 9/16/2023 at 11:41 PM, gweimer1 said:

Definitely a mismatch.  The cap is from an icicle pen.  The barrel is from a really late model J pen, when cost cutting starting hurting the quality.  I've had a few of these, and they are definitely of lower quality than the J series from the '40s.

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I just got one of these and unless it's OP's pen in some strange twist of fate, I think this might be an original configuration out of the factory. Mine is exactly the same, icicle cap with a solid red body. Maybe they were running through old stock and combining whatever they had left?

 

Can confirm the quality is really quite bad. It has a weird thin lever reminiscent of late Wearevers, there's no spacer in the barrel, and the j-bar bar is a generic cheapo one-piece one you would find in a 3rd tier pen. The section doesn't even fit properly, it's loose.

 

Still a cool little oddity, I imagine these are kind of uncommon.

 

Edit: Strangely mine is an LJ as well. At least that explains the lack of a spacer, it would have never had one.

[LoveBigPensAndCannotLie]

If anyone's curious (doesn't look like it), I shone a bright light through the barrel and it is not actually solid red. It has very very faint lines like a normal icicle pen would have. It's like they ran out of dye or something. Curious that the material in the cap isn't faded, just the barrel. Maybe separate batches.

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

I would honestly have thought that the caps and barrels only came together at the every end of manufacturing... wouldn't they?

so that totally makes sense to me, the incorrect/seemingly all red barrels were likely from a small batch of incorrect plastic, while that batch never affected the caps?...

 

does that make sense to anyone else?

[LoveBigPensAndCannotLie]

Maybe, but I would think they would come from similar batches. I think these specific pens were from after Venus Pen Co acquired Esterbrook and started running the company into the ground. Venus pens had a good (bad) reputation for being Wearever quality pens, sad that they destroyed the Esterbrook name before going out of business themselves.

 

I have an entire little box of NOS Venus nib units that are all messed up because they had the idiocy to glue the nibs and feeds together. They won't work because the feeds are clogged with glue. The 1950's and 1960's were really a special time for penmakers.

[IThinkIHaveAProblem]

  On 4/11/2025 at 2:18 AM, LoveBigPensAndCannotLie said:

 

I have an entire little box of NOS Venus nib units that are all messed up because they had the idiocy to glue the nibs and feeds together. They won't work because the feeds are clogged with glue. The 1950's and 1960's were really a special time for penmakers.

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ouch... makes you wonder how a company like Venus had the money to buy Esterbrook... like how bad of a decision had Esterbrook management made to end up in THAT position...