Parker 45 or 51

[lokesh4730]

To go to school which one is better a gold nibbed Parker 45 arrow or a Parker 51 with a gold nib

[Mercian]

If your school is anything like my schools were, I would use a Parker 45.

Because, if it ever gets stolen/broken by some idiot of a classmate, you will have lost less money than you would if the idiot classmate had broken a Parker “51” or 51!

 

Also, the 45 is a cartridge/converter pen, whereas the “51” can only be filled from a bottle of ink.

By far the cheapest way to buy ink is in bottles, but it also requires one to remember to check how much ink is in one’s pen every night, in order to be sure that one has enough ink for the next day at school.

It is far easier and far safer to carry a spare cartridge (or two) to school than it is to carry bottled ink, and the process of putting in a new cartridge is far quicker and far cleaner than is re-filling a pen from an ink bottle.

 

So, for school use, I would use a Parker 45 rather than a 51 or “51”.

I would get a converter for it so that I could use bottled inks, and I would make sure to check/refill it every night.
And I would also carry one or two spare Parker cartridges to school in my pen case (and a piece of kitchen roll/tissue paper, in case I ever needed to put a cartridge into my pen and the inky converter in to my pen case).

[Checklist]

I second this advice.  Never owned a 45, but I hear they are very plentiful, reliable, and, frankly rather attractive.

[inkstainedruth]

@lokesh4730 My first semi-vintage pen was a Parker 45, found in the wild a number of years ago in an antiques shop in NW Pennsylvania (it was also the first pen I had with a 14K nib).  

Much as I love my 51s, I would absolutely agree with Mercian and Checklist about having one in a school environment.  

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Mountain Man]

I took notes all through law school with a Parker 45.  Passed the bar on the first try. Go with the 45!!

[lokesh4730]

On 4/14/2024 at 6:16 PM, Mercian said:

If your school is anything like my schools were, I would use a Parker 45.

Because, if it ever gets stolen/broken by some idiot of a classmate, you will have lost less money than you would if the idiot classmate had broken a Parker “51” or 51!

 

Also, the 45 is a cartridge/converter pen, whereas the “51” can only be filled from a bottle of ink.

By far the cheapest way to buy ink is in bottles, but it also requires one to remember to check how much ink is in one’s pen every night, in order to be sure that one has enough ink for the next day at school.

It is far easier and far safer to carry a spare cartridge (or two) to school than it is to carry bottled ink, and the process of putting in a new cartridge is far quicker and far cleaner than is re-filling a pen from an ink bottle.

 

So, for school use, I would use a Parker 45 rather than a 51 or “51”.

I would get a converter for it so that I could use bottled inks, and I would make sure to check/refill it every night.
And I would also carry one or two spare Parker cartridges to school in my pen case (and a piece of kitchen roll/tissue paper, in case I ever needed to put a cartridge into my pen and the inky converter in to my pen case).

My carry pen to school is currently a sheaffer targa 1001x when th a steel nib and I use cartridges and refill them with an ink bottle from India called topperz which is spill free(and personally I never used a towel/cloth even when I used normal ink bottles as I only filled to the end of the nib and nothing more so precisely😁)are a.l the versions of the 51 aero metric or are some of them cartridge filling

[Mercian]

14 minutes ago, lokesh4730 said:

are a.l the versions of the 51 aero metric or are some of them cartridge filling

The modern, currently-in-production Parker 51 is a cartridge/converter pen.

 

The vintage Parker “51” was first produced as a button-filler pen (a system that Parker called ‘vacumatic’), from 1939-1948.

In 1948 Parker switched over to a new filling system, a squeeze-filled plastic sac, and it called that system ‘aerometric’.

 

For a very short time (1961-1963) Parker also sold a version of the “51” which was a cartridge/converter pen.
But these were not received very well/enthusiastically by the public, and so the model was discontinued.
These pens are very rare (in comparison, versions of the ‘aerometric’-fill “51” were made from 1948 to ~1976), and so the c/c “51”s are presumably expensive because of their rarity.

 

For more information about the Parker “51”:

https://parkerpens.net/parker51.html

 

https://parker51.com

 

 

 

[lokesh4730]

18 hours ago, Mercian said:

The modern, currently-in-production Parker 51 is a cartridge/converter pen.

 

The vintage Parker “51” was first produced as a button-filler pen (a system that Parker called ‘vacumatic’), from 1939-1948.

In 1948 Parker switched over to a new filling system, a squeeze-filled plastic sac, and it called that system ‘aerometric’.

 

For a very short time (1961-1963) Parker also sold a version of the “51” which was a cartridge/converter pen.
But these were not received very well/enthusiastically by the public, and so the model was discontinued.
These pens are very rare (in comparison, versions of the ‘aerometric’-fill “51” were made from 1948 to ~1976), and so the c/c “51”s are presumably expensive because of their rarity.

 

For more information about the Parker “51”:

https://parkerpens.net/parker51.html

 

https://parker51.com

 

 

 

Why were the c/c 51 not received nicely if the 45 were

[Mercian]

3 hours ago, lokesh4730 said:

Why were the c/c 51 not received nicely if the 45 were

There are two theories:

 

Theory 1:
At the time, the “51” was Parker’s ‘high-end’, top-of-the-range, ‘flagship’ pen. It was expensive.
The new, innovative, c/c system had only been introduced recently, and that was on a pen that was initially marketed as an inexpensive pen for school children to use. The 45 proved to be wildly popular, and it sold really well, so Parker then started to make more-expensive versions of it (e.g. with all-steel bodies, or with gold nibs and trim) to sell to adults. Those also sold well.
But at that time the c/c fill-system was still not perceived as being ‘appropriate’ for a top-of-the-range pen that was expensive to buy;

 

Theory 2:

If one looks at a Parker “51” that has been disassembled, inside its grip-section one will find a plastic ‘collector’ unit - a tube that has lots of fine internal fins. The ink passes through this unit slowly and steadily, by capillary action.
It was invented to ‘regulate’ the flow of ink through the pen. It makes the rate of ink flow consistent, as opposed to it being sped-up by thermal expansion, or by pressure changes.
The “51” was the first pen to have such a device, and the many-finned plastic feeds on modern pens are an evolution of the ‘collector’ that was inside the Parker “51”.

The “51” had even been advertised as being a pen that one could safely use on the airliners of the time, which were subject to greater variations in pressure than are modern ones.

The c/c version of the “51” did not contain the same ‘collector’ unit, but one that that was similar to the simpler version that is found in the c/c Parker 45.
Some people have suggested that the simpler ‘collector’ inside the c/c “51” might not have been as-effective at regulating ink-flow as the complex one inside the ‘vacumatic’ and ‘aerometric’ “51”s. Particularly for business Executives who travelled on the airliners of the time.

 

For what it is worth, although I can see merit in the second theory, I tend to favour the first theory as being the ‘main’ explanation for the lower sales of the c/c “51”.

If one is ‘investing’ a lot of money in buying the company’s ‘flagship’ pen, one would probably want to buy the ‘authentic’ version that made it famous in the first place.
Many people would, I feel, tend to be suspicious of a version that had been modified to contain the simpler, cheaper-to-make, filling system from ‘an inexpensive school pen’.

 

E.g. when I started to ‘get into’ fountain pens in a serious way, I was interested in Parker’s modern ‘flagship’ pen, the Duofold Centennial. And in Waterman’s ‘flagship’ pen, the Exception. Both are beautiful. Both have gold nibs. Both are c/c fillers. But when I first found FPN, I found out that one could, for the same price, buy ‘luxury’ pens from German manufacturers that were attractive, had gold nibs, and contained well-engineered built-in (piston-) filling systems.

To me, those pens seemed to be more-expensive to manufacture, and therefore seemed to be more ‘worth’ the high price for which they are sold.

I now have five such ‘luxury’ German piston-fill pens, and I do not yet own a (modern, c/c fill) Duofold. Or any expensive Waterman pen.
There is one model of c/c Duofold Centennial that I would still like to buy, but it was only produced in that finish for a short time in the 2000s, and so the Duofolds in that finish are rare, and they are very expensive 😔

 

The Parker 45 is a really good c/c pen. I have three of them. All of mine are steel-bodied pens (I prefer the robust nature of all-steel pens to the pens that are available with bodies in pretty colours, but which are made of weaker plastic). One of my 45s has a 14k gold nib. My other two 45s have steel nibs.

45s are really easy to disassemble if one wishes to clean the pen thoroughly, or swap nibs, but one really useful feature of the 45 is that the hole through which it draws up ink (if one is using a converter) is very near the end of the nib.
This makes it easy to get the last of the ink out of the bottom of an ink bottle. Some pens (e.g. my expensive Pelikan M800 and M805) have very large nibs, and they draw-up ink at the base of that large nib, next to the grip-section. One can not get the last of the ink out of a bottle with those pens!)

 

[ZeroDukE]

Also, the P45 nib is much easier to replace in case of accident.  No expert needed to do that either.

[lokesh4730]

How much would you pay for a 14k flighter 45

[Mercian]

11 hours ago, lokesh4730 said:

How much would you pay for a 14k flighter 45

How much I - or anybody else - would be willing to pay for a pen (or anything else) is irrelevant.

 

The only thing that matters is how much you feel comfortable paying.

E.g. Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos, or Mukesh Ambani is likely to feel comfortable paying an amount that would make you or me gasp with horror 😉

You should decide what you think that you are willing to pay, and then not pay more than that amount.

 

Millions of Parker 45s were made, and they are still widely available through auction sites. Some shops may even still have unsold ‘new’ 45s, as they were still being produced into the early years of this century. I think that the model was only discontinued in 2007 or 2008.

But: their degree of ‘availability’ - and therefore their price - will depend on where you are trying to buy them.

For what it’s worth, I paid roughly the same amount for my 14k-nib 45 ‘Flighter’ that I did for each of my two steel-nib 45 ‘Flighter’ pens.
But I live in the UK, which is one of the countries in which the 45 was made, and where many, many of them were sold, and therefore there are many of them still available on auction sites.
Often, they are being sold by the children of their original owners; people who have no interest in keeping/using an ‘old-fashioned’ fountain pen.
There does not seem to be a big difference in price here between a 45 with a gold nib and a 45 with a steel nib. One might need to pay more if one wishes to buy one with one of the more unusual nib-grinds (obliques, italics, etc).

 

In the USA, the same will be true, plus they also have a custom of ‘estate sales’ - events at which people open up their house on an advertised date, for visitors to come to buy-up the things that they wish to sell (we don’t have that custom in the UK).

 

If you are in India, there may be far fewer 45 pens ‘washing around’ on the ‘pre-owned’ market. But I imagine that you still ought to be able to find one fairly easily.
I have absolutely no idea what a ‘fair market price’ for a 45 would be in India; you will have to look on some Indian auction sites, and specifically look at their listings of ‘sold’ prices for the pen.

 

Of course, there are also many other types of c/c pens available. Whether made by Parker, or by some other manufacturer.
If you cannot find a 45 for a price that you are comfortable to pay, there are many other options open to you.
If your heart is set on owning a Parker, for school use I also strongly recommend the weird-looking ‘1970s Futuristic’ Parker 25, or the all-steel version of the Vector (which is narrower), or the 15/Jotter fountain pen (which is shorter). None of those models came with gold nibs, but that is not important.
Indeed, for school use, one might say that it is actually a benefit, as it makes them less tempting to thieves than a pen with a nib made of shiny gold would be.

 

Edit to add:

here is a photo of some of my own Parker ‘Flighter’ pens:

 

L-R, they are:

Parker Jotter (first version);

Parker Vector (made in India, by Luxor);

Parker 45 (with steel nib);

Parker 25;

Parker Frontier (made in India, by Luxor);

Parker Urban (first version, pre-2016 ‘refresh’).

 

The converter at the top of the picture will only fit in to one of these pens; the 45.
Its wide band around its middle means that it will not fit inside any Parker pen that was designed after the mid-1970s.

[lokesh4730]

The reason I am asking is because there is a seller who offered a reasonable price (to me ) for a NOS Parker flighter 45 gold nib for 2500 inr or 28 euros and I just want to know if it is a good price compared to others who have bought it and how do you feel the Indian Parker made by Luxor compares to the others what was your favourite model?

[lokesh4730]

32 minutes ago, Mercian said:

How much I - or anybody else - would be willing to pay for a pen (or anything else) is irrelevant.

 

The only thing that matters is how much you feel comfortable paying.

E.g. Elon Musk, or Jeff Bezos, or Mukesh Ambani is likely to feel comfortable paying an amount that would make you or me gasp with horror 😉

You should decide what you think that you are willing to pay, and then not pay more than that amount.

 

Millions of Parker 45s were made, and they are still widely available through auction sites. Some shops may even still have unsold ‘new’ 45s, as they were still being produced into the early years of this century. I think that the model was only discontinued in 2007 or 2008.

But: their degree of ‘availability’ - and therefore their price - will depend on where you are trying to buy them.

For what it’s worth, I paid roughly the same amount for my 14k-nib 45 ‘Flighter’ that I did for each of my two steel-nib 45 ‘Flighter’ pens.
But I live in the UK, which is one of the countries in which the 45 was made, and where many, many of them were sold, and therefore there are many of them still available on auction sites.
Often, they are being sold by the children of their original owners; people who have no interest in keeping/using an ‘old-fashioned’ fountain pen.
There does not seem to be a big difference in price here between a 45 with a gold nib and a 45 with a steel nib. One might need to pay more if one wishes to buy one with one of the more unusual nib-grinds (obliques, italics, etc).

 

In the USA, the same will be true, plus they also have a custom of ‘estate sales’ - events at which people open up their house on an advertised date, for visitors to come to buy-up the things that they wish to sell (we don’t have that custom in the UK).

 

If you are in India, there may be far fewer 45 pens ‘washing around’ on the ‘pre-owned’ market. But I imagine that you still ought to be able to find one fairly easily.
I have absolutely no idea what a ‘fair market price’ for a 45 would be in India; you will have to look on some Indian auction sites, and specifically look at their listings of ‘sold’ prices for the pen.

 

Of course, there are also many other types of c/c pens available. Whether made by Parker, or by some other manufacturer.
If you cannot find a 45 for a price that you are comfortable to pay, there are many other options open to you.
If your heart is set on owning a Parker, for school use I also strongly recommend the weird-looking ‘1970s Futuristic’ Parker 25, or the all-steel version of the Vector (which is narrower), or the 15/Jotter fountain pen (which is shorter). None of those models came with gold nibs, but that is not important.
Indeed, for school use, one might say that it is actually a benefit, as it makes them less tempting to thieves than a pen with a nib made of shiny gold would be.

 

Edit to add:

here is a photo of some of my own Parker ‘Flighter’ pens:

 

L-R, they are:

Parker Jotter (first version);

Parker Vector (made in India, by Luxor);

Parker 45 (with steel nib);

Parker 25;

Parker Frontier (made in India, by Luxor);

Parker Urban (first version, pre-2016 ‘refresh’).

 

The converter at the top of the picture will only fit in to one of these pens; the 45.
Its wide band around its middle means that it will not fit inside any Parker pen that was designed after the mid-1970s.

Half an hour ago I received a Parker 75 only body with no nib unite but with a converter it has that same converter?

[Mercian]

1 hour ago, lokesh4730 said:

Half an hour ago I received a Parker 75 only body with no nib unite but with a converter it has that same converter?

The 75 was designed, and first sold, in the middle of the 1960s.

I can confirm that the converter shown in my photo does fit in to my 75s.

 

I don’t know whether or not it would also fit into other Parker pens of the 1960s or early 1970s (e.g. 61, or 180), but I do know that it won’t fit into any Parker pen that I own that was designed after the mid-1970s. 

[lokesh4730]

Thanks

[vicpen123]

10 hours ago, Mercian said:

The converter at the top of the picture will only fit in to one of these pens; the 45.

Its wide band around its middle means that it will not fit inside any Parker pen that was designed after the mid-1970s.

I have some 45s and a 75 from that era that have a much sleeker metal converter with a squeeze bar in side that fits into any of my later model Parker pens.

 

Is the converter in the photo an original Parker?

[Mercian]

50 minutes ago, vicpen123 said:

I have some 45s and a 75 from that era that have a much sleeker metal converter with a squeeze bar in side that fits into any of my later model Parker pens.

 

Is the converter in the photo an original Parker?

I also have a converter like the one that you describe; I think that it was made from the 1970s into the 1980s. I got mine with a 75 that was made in the 1970s.

 

The converter in the photo that I already posted is a genuine Parker converter; if you open that photo and enlarge it you can see the Parker name, halo logo, and the end of ‘MADE IN ENGLAND’ all stamped around the band in its middle.

It dates from either the late 1960s or early 1970s. It is one of the second generation of Parker converters.
The c/c system was acquired by Parker when it bought the pens division of Eversharp. The Parker 45 was apparently based on a pen called the Eversharp 10,000.

 

Here is a post that contains a photo of several old Parker converters, including the Eversharp one on which the first two Parker converters were based:

 

 

And here is a photo that I took for use in another thread.
It shows some of my other Parker converters, including the type that I think you mean:

 

I really ought to take a photo that just shows all of my Parker converters. I have two more Parker converters that aren’t shown in the photo above.

 

 

Edited April 17 by Mercian
To include detail of stamping on converter in first photo.

[vicpen123]

Yes you are correct the converter third from the right is the one that I have in my pens from the 70s.

 

The squeeze 'u' bar is similar in usage to the converters in my Parker UK Duofolds except for the thickened mid section.

[Mercian]

12 hours ago, lokesh4730 said:

The reason I am asking is because there is a seller who offered a reasonable price (to me ) for a NOS Parker flighter 45 gold nib for 2500 inr or 28 euros and I just want to know if it is a good price compared to others who have bought it and how do you feel the Indian Parker made by Luxor compares to the others what was your favourite model?

I missed these questions earlier on, sorry 

 

My Luxor-made Frontier is actually made to slightly better quality than the UK-made model of that pen was.
The UK pens had a rubber coating on their grip-section, and that used to fall off in patches. I had to scrape it off my own UK Frontier.

The Frontier was made in the UK at a time when the company was losing lots of money, so its quality suffered as production costs were cut drastically. The company got bought out, and the UK factory got closed down, at the end of the era during which Frontiers were made here.
My two Luxor Frontiers are well-made and they have good nibs, but their caps don’t ‘post’ very well on to the back of the pen when writing with them. I think that this is a design problem, rather than a manufacturing problem.

 

My all-steel Luxor Vector is really well made. In this all-steel version it is a tough pen, and it would be a great pen for school or university if one finds its size comfortable.

 

My 25 is from the 1970s, and it is made to a higher standard than my early-2000s Jotter (again, this is the era when Parker was cutting costs).

All my 45s are from the 1970s, and they are all well-made, but their caps don’t ‘post’ as well as that of the 25 or the Vector; both of which are shaped so that the cap slots firmly on to the slightly-narrower end of the pen’s body.

 

The Urban is a heavier pen, made out of brass. Its cap ‘posts’ well, but its weight then makes the pen feel unbalanced.

 

The Jotter, Vector, and Urban all use the same nibs. They are very stiff, but they write reliably. The Frontier nibs are very slightly ‘bouncy’. The 45 steel nibs are very stiff, but reliable. My UK-made 14k gold 45 nib is slightly ‘bouncy’ too.

 

The 25 is probably the pen that I find to be most-comfortable in my hand when writing.
The Urban is the prettiest, and when I use it I do enjoy using it.
The Vector is a great tough pen to take out on-site, or to use in e.g. school, but it is a tiny bit too-narrow for me to use it comfortably for a long writing session. The Jotter is also a little bit small for my hand.
The narrow, tapered shape of the 45 means that I take a little while to get used to it (I normally use wider pens), but the nibs on mine write with quite narrow lines, so they make great pens for writing postcards in permanent black ink.

 

As for your price question, €28 for a gold-nibbed all-steel 45 would be a decent price here in the UK.
Is it a 14k gold nib? Or is it a gold-plated steel nib?

What era does the pen date-to?

And what size/grind is the nib?
45s were made with everything from XF to B, and with Italics, and obliques, and reverse-obliques. There should be a letter stamped in the underside of the nib collar. One of the more-‘exotic’ nibs might not suit your handwriting, so it is a good idea to check what size/grind of nib is on the pen.