TL;DR: What’s better than an iconic fountain pen? An iconic fountain pen with an iconic nib. Made by an idiosyncratic nibmeister. Hence, this Parker “51” with a Greg Minuskin (crisp) italic BB nib. Excellent, thanks, Greg!
Let’s start with the beginning: this is an excellent pen with exciting nib. Inked with this fantastic ink, it’s a wonderful drawing and writing instrument (see Figure 1).
The star of the show? Not one, but two: Tied, the pen and the nib! Both are idiosyncratic or at the very least quirky. I happen to like them both very much.
The Greg Minuskin nib (see Figures 2a-2c): it’s a crisp italic, thick, very thick (BB) on the vertical stroke, thin, but not too think (FM) on the horizontal.
It’s crisp, so it requires careful control to get good strokes out of it, even with a wet ink like Akkerman’s Steenrood van Vermeer. But what a delight when all works!
The Greg Minuskin experience: It’s special, but in the sense it’s very professional. Greg adds the pen to his website. You need to watch for it and send a message to Greg asap, if you want the pen. It’s apparently a meritocratic system, whoever sends first a credible offer gets the pen. You should know what you’re doing and your way with pens; a crisp italic nib is not friendly for regular daily writing. You get an email that you should make the payment and you’ve a limited but reasonable time for it. If you can do it, which should be very easy for anyone who buys stuff over the Internet regularly, then the pen ships. Shipping is expensive, relatively speaking, but you get the pen fast and with tracking. The package is done professionally. The pen is excellent out of the box. Nothing less than professional, nothing more.
So which Parker “51” is this? (see Figures 3a and 3b) Surely, it’s not the earliest variant, which used a Vacumatic filling system. And also not the modern re-issue, converter-based but modernized in several aspects. After some consideration, and checking Richard Binder’s book and the technically more detailed web information from Tony Fishier [TF], I believe this is a Parker “51” Aerometric (hence, this type of converter), first-generation or Mark I, the early model of 1950-51.
Even identifying the color gives me a headache: it’s likely the plum or the Burgundy, and I think it’s the Burgundy… Maybe an expert can help identify it correctly.
To conclude: (see Figure 4)
If you’re like me, you should get a Parker “51” for a spin sooner rather than later. For the Greg Minuskin nib, only if you’re prepared to learn how to write Italic, or put up with this quirky nib (and the seller).
Enjoy the day!
References
- Tony Fishier’s Parker Pens, page for Parker 51. Online: https://parkerpens.net/parker51.html Abbrev. TF.
