Pens on this page are part of my personal collection and are not for sale. If there is a magnifying-glass symbol () next to a pen, click the magnifying glass to view a zoomed version for more detail.

I collect and use fountain pens. But there are times when a fountain pen just won’t do the job. (Ever try to sign one of those horrible thermal paper credit-card receipts with a Parker “51”?) For those rare occasions, I do actually possess ballpoint pens. But I like my ballpoints to have a little pizzazz, so I’ve chosen the pens shown here (and fitted them with gel refills).

First is the Eversharp CA, the pen that almost killed Eversharp. Original CA refills are no longer available, but it really doesn’t matter because they didn’t work anyway — which is why the CA was a disaster — so I have refitted both of my CAs to accept standard Parker ballpoint or gel refills. The Fifth Avenue version is 5¹/8" capped and 5⁷/8" posted, and the Skyline version is 5¹/4" capped and 5¹/2" posted. As long as these babies remain capped, they can masquerade as real pens.

At 5½" capped and 6¹/32" posted, my 1940s Sheaffer Sentinel Stratowriter ballpoint is a perfect match for a Sentinel fountain pen I don’t yet have. As with the CA above, original refills for early Sheaffer ballpoints are no longer available, so this pen has also been refitted to accept a standard Parker gel refill.

Here is a black 1954 “First Year” Parker Jotter. The Jotter has changed relatively little through the years; one of the distinctive characteristics of the First Year model is its fluted barrel. This black pen is 5¹/16" retracted and 5¹/4" extended.

Next are my Parker Big Red pens (clip-type men’s and ringtop ladies’ versions) from about 1972. The Big Red, an obvious tribute to the Parker Duofold of the Roaring ’20s, played heavily on the wave of nostalgia that swept the U.S.A. in the early ’70s. It’s patterned after the Streamlined Duofold that appeared in 1929, and advertising for it featured a cartoon in the style of John Held, Jr., showing a Sheik and Sheba dancing together with a ringtop Big Red flying at the end of her necklace. My men’s Big Red is 5½" capped and 5¹³/16" posted. Including its ring mount but not the ring or chain, the ringtop is 5⁵/32" capped — distinctly shorter than the men’s version — and 4¹⁷/32" uncapped. (Posting a ringtop makes little sense…)

In 1906, William A. Welty patented a filling system using a cam and locking ring (U.S. Patent Nº 834,542). Known as the Wawco, this design formed the basis of the Welty Fountain Pen. (The design attracted Conklin’s attention despite its not being a literal crescent filler, but a suit brought by Conklin was decided in Welty’s favor.) Welty set up his company in his home town, Waterloo, Iowa. In 1915, upon its founder’s departure, the firm changed its name to Evans Dollar Pen Company (in recognition of principal investor Patrick H. Evans). I have a Welty pen; the later Evans is markedly inferior in terms of workmanship. At 5¹³/32" capped and 6¹¹/16" posted, this pen is a nice size. The Nº 4 WARRANTED nib is a decent stub.

Frank Spors, of Le Sueur Center, Minnesota, was disabled and unable to work in most of the jobs available in the 1920s. To earn his living, he imported inexpensive (cheap!) merchandise of all types from eastern Asia. Spors pens are typical of the lower end of the third tier; they were Japanese made, and they were truly cheap, with thin celluloid and wooden inner caps. (In 1926, he was jobbing them for 67¢ each, to retail for $1.25.) The best thing about them is the reliable glass nib, which is well made and, if not chipped, very smooth, and wet. Spors sold both lever fillers and crescent fillers, but it’s the crescents that turn up most frequently today. I’m not sure whether that's because they were more popular or because they were so bad that people just shoved them in to the backs of drawers and forgot they were there. This Spors pen, probably made in the later 1920s or early 1930s, is 5¹/16" capped and 6⁵/32" posted.

The Wahl Company began producing pens in 1921. Their first-line pens were of very high quality and often bore innovative features. The Wahl Gold Seal pen shown here, in Lapis celluloid, has a roller clip and features Wahl’s Personal Point screw-interchangeable nib unit. The well-designed Personal Point anticipated Esterbrook’s Renew-Point by six years, and it continued in production into the mid-1930s on pens such as the Equipoise and Doric.

My Lapis pen, probably made in 1929, is 4¹¹/16" capped and 6¹/16" posted, and its smooth fine nib is semiflexible.

As might be expected, not all of Wahl’s pens of that period were Gold Seal pens. A lesser pen, interesting because of its “Tulip” clip, is this Coral specimen, 4³/8" capped and 5³/4" posted. This is a very small pen, and its nib is quite firm.

The Nation at War

Design Features

World War II sparked an incredible patriotic fervor in the people of the United States. Practically the entire nation went to war, if not on the battlefield then in the factory. Much of the period’s history that we have today is drawn from letters written to, and by, the fighting men of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. Pen companies switched production to war matériel, making a much-reduced number of pens (most of which went to the military). Morrison, in addition to its war work, designed and produced a pen and matching pencil named the Patriot. There were versions honoring the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Army Air Corps, each featuring the crest of its respective service. The set sold for $6.25; considering the pen’s 14K nib, this was a remarkably low price during wartime. The Patriot was a simple and reliable pen, with a syringe filler that was almost unbreakable. The most common Patriot was also rather unusual in appearance, with a sharply raked diagonal cut across the end of the cap, onto which was fixed the gold-plated cast metal service crest.

My Army Patriot is 5¼" capped, 6⁹/16" posted. My Navy pen is slightly shorter, at 5⁵/32" capped and 6¹⁵/32" posted, and the Air Corps pen is 5¼" capped and 6²¹/32" posted. These pens were sold in sets with pencils and a leather carrying case that attaches to the belt. The Army pencil (4¹¹/16") here did not come with my pen; it’s probably earlier, as its Army crest is enameled and its clip has a different design imprinted.

Perhaps the crest on the cap was thought too flashy for some people; Morrison also made crestless Patriots, fitting them with a plain slightly rounded cap crown. My crestless Navy Patriot is 5¹/4" capped and 6⁷/16" posted. The 4²¹/32" pencil shown here came in a carrying case with this pen.

Brothers in Arms

Even before the U.S. entered the War, Morrison had made pens in support of the Allies’ war effort, and the company continued to do so after Pearl Harbor. One of the wartime “Allied” pens was this one, with its hemispherical cap crown decked out with the red, white, and blue roundel of Britain’s Royal Air Force. This pen is not marked “The Patriot,” but it has the expected wartime syringe filler, and it is 5⁷/32" capped and 6¹⁵/32" posted. This example is fitted with an iridium-tipped steel nib that has lost all its gold plating; I have no way to know whether this nib is original to this pen.

The Patriot’s Antecedents

The pen below is a prewar Morrison. Its interest to me is that it has the same sloped cap crown, in a contrasting color, that appeared later on the Patriot. Although this pen, at 4⁷/32" capped and 5³/8" posted, is much smaller than the Patriot, there were also larger pens of this design.

I really don’t know when this pen was made — based on its being a lever filler, I’m guessing that it’s a prewar model. It is marked “The Patriot,” so I‘m thinking of it as a “Protopatriot” rather than a pre-Patriot. It’s an odd duck: shaped like Sheaffer’s Balance (which was on its last legs as the U.S. entered the War), it’s Olive Drab, and it’s chased (!). In terms of size, it’s 5³/16" capped and 6³/8" posted. Its original nib was an untipped Morrison’s Nº 7 whose plating was gone; I've replaced that nib with an iridium-tipped XF no-name nib just so that the color would be as it should. (But a little tweaking made this nib into a remarkably nice writer!)

© 2008 Richard F. Binder

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