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Merlin fountain pens were made in Germany, apparently by a small family business. The company made parts, not complete pens; it exported the parts to a distributor in the Netherlands, who assembled the pens and sold them in the Dutch market. Eventually, the market for these pens dried up, and the Dutch distributor was left with the parts for more than 10,000 unsold pens. After his death, his widow sold something more than half of the parts to Andreas Lambrou and Keith Brown, who sold most of them on and used the profits to found Classic Pens Ltd in the 1990s.
In 2009, we purchased the parts for several hundred Merlin 33 and Merlina pens from Andreas Lambrou for resale. This page illustrates the 38 colors we found among these pens. In the lot we purchased, some colors appeared only on Merlin 33s, and some only on Merlinas — but this does not mean that a color we know only from one model was never made for the other. This is not a complete list; the Merlin 33 alone is known to have appeared in 56 colors.
Having no reference material available, we assigned our own color names. In some cases, we have used names that other companies used; e.g., Shell and Modern Stripe, which were used in the 1930s and 1940s, respectively, by Wahl.
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| Color | Name |
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Black & Pearl (Merlina) |
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Black Cherry (Merlin 33) |
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Blue Dawn |
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Blue Shell (Merlin 33) |
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Bluestone (Merlin 33) |
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Blue Striated (Merlin 33) |
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Blue Thunder (Merlin 33) |
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Chopper Gray (Merlina) |
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Chopper Rose (Merlina) |
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Coconut Macaroon (Merlina) |
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Copper |
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Crushed Emerald (Merlin 33) |
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Crushed Ruby (Merlin 33) |
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Crushed Sapphire (Merlin 33) |
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Crushed Topaz (Merlin 33) |
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Golf Green |
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Gray Flannel |
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Gray Shell (Merlin 33) |
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Green Shell (Merlin 33) |
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Green Striated (Merlin 33) |
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Ice Floes (Merlin 33) |
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Indigo Horizon |
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Lavender Shell (Merlin 33) |
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Leaf Green (Merlin 33) |
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Mauve Striated (Merlin 33) |
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Modern Stripe Blue |
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Modern Stripe Burgundy (Merlin 33) |
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Modern Stripe Gray (Merlina) |
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Modern Stripe Green |
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Modern Stripe Rose |
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Morocco (Merlin 33) |
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Palmetto |
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Rainforest Green (Merlina) |
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Red Shell (Merlin 33) |
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Shredded Brown (Merlin 33) |
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Slashed Rose |
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Storm Front |
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Woodland Green |
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