Sunday, September 13, 2009

A Tweet, a Parker 75 and a Flat Tassie

ORIGINAL POST (9/13/2009)
Today I learned that I own a Parker 75. Among people who know anything about fountain pens, it's a well known model. I don't know much about fountain pens. I've always owned one or two that I use regularly. The Parker 75 belonged to my grandfather before it was handed down to me. I've had it for many, many years and I just called it "my grandfather's fountain pen." Now I know it's a Parker 75 with the crosshatch grid design.

It all started with a tweet that I caught early this morning. The tweet was pointing to the website of a fountain pen repair expert. A few clicks later I was entering the world of fountain pen collectors and discovering an entirely new vocabulary. I looked for photos of my grandfather's pen and it didn't take long to find it. It's a Parker 75 but there are many variations of this model. I have the crosshatch grid design that was common with the original production in the mid 1960s. Mine also has a flat tassie. Do you know what a tassie is? I had to look it up in the pen glossary.

There's a wonderful website where I learned all there is to know about the Parker 75.

I'm sending my Parker 75 (and its little brother, the matching mechanical pencil) to be repaired and cleaned up... all because of a tweet.

UPDATE (12/9/2015)
I lost my grandfather's Parker 75 on a trip last Spring.  I was missing it a great deal and decided that I needed to replace it, so I went online and found the same model on eBay over the summer. It feels exactly like the old one.

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