1942 Parker Vacumatic: Golden or Silver Pearl?? $140 US

Hello there welcome to Inkquiring Minds! My name is Doug and I'm back with another pen resurrection Sunday video. Today's fountain pen going to come back from the dead is this 1942 Parker Vacumatic in what was advertised as silver pearl on the eBay auction. I'll show it right here, but in my hands it looks more golden. But then when I look at it again, it looks silver. So I'm thinking that it is silver, but it's just got so much grime on it. It's looking a little bit yellow. So we'll see when we triage this pen, find out what it needs, what it will take to get it back from the dead.

Let's triage this pen and see what it requires. Let's start from the top. The clip on this one looks like it is tarnished, and I think it's supposed to be silver. That tells me this is probably silver pearl because they match silver pearl with either nickel plate or silver plate. This is one of the lower tier Parker Vacumatics with the two cap rings and the no blue diamond on the clip.

This is what the top of the line looks like, with the blue diamond and that large, wide cap band. So I'll have to see how much of that corrosion is actually into the metal and whether that will come off. That top jewel looks like it's slightly proud there; it should be more deeply inset into the top. So it might mean that it's stuck, it might mean that it's loose. The clip does not move, so we'll see. No major gouges, but some scratches here and there. Lots of wear for this 83-year-old pen, but I'm sure that'll come up nicely. There's some pitting tarnish on those silver cap bands. Now let's look at the barrel. You'll see that it has JJ Hughes engraved on one side of the barrel, and then "Geo S Parker Parker Vacumatic Made in the USA," and a "2" with a dot, which means the third quarter of 1942 for this pen. And no real bite marks. There are some gouges there that will need to be sanded out. So lots of wear for 83 years.

MY THOUGHTS

What are my thoughts about this fountain pen? Well, it's never easy is it? I even did the pen whisperer thing before I started restoring this pen, getting up close to it and saying, "You're going to be a good boy, aren't you? Don't throw me any issues." I thought this might be a straightforward restoration; everything was a bit tarnished, the nib looked okay because it was aligned and not waffled or bent, and there weren't any serious scratches. But then it threw me some curves like they all seem to do. Chalk it up to a learning experience.

Let's go through what I discovered, starting with the first issues that were obvious when I got the pen. There was a personalization on the barrel. I decided not to remove that, as I thought the personalization of JJ Hughes might make the pen a little more interesting, as it has some history, and I found someone that might fit the JJ Hughes from Pennsylvania.

The clip and the cap band were very very tarnished I couldn't figure out whether it was silver or nickel, and the nib, although it looked in really good shape, has a bit of a wow to it right where the nib slit is, and so it looks a bit bow-legged. Sometimes that might be an issue, and sometimes it might not be. The most confusing thing of all was whether this pen was silver pearl or golden pearl. I couldn't figure it out. The eBay auction said silver pearl, and when I look at it, it's silver, I mean, look at that, it's silver pearl. It's come up nicely now that it's polished and very pearlescent.

But now that it's all polished up, look at the barrel. Now, that is gold. The in-between bands are an amberish color because that's the translucent color of celluloid. It's the same color as you see on the pump rod. I couldn't figure it, out when it was all dirty, whether it was gold or silver. Parts of it look gold and parts of it look silver.

So this is what I discovered when I started triaging the pen and fixing the pen: I discovered that the pump was stuck; like the last few Parker Vacumatics I've restored. Someone's glued the pump in. The other thing I discovered was the pellet retainer inside that pump was a replacement and had been glued on. The hole in the replacement pellet receptacle was too big to hold the pellet in place, so they glued the diaphragm to the pellet retainer. Some of that glue got onto those threads, and that's why that was so difficult to remove.

And then when I tried to take the feed out, it wouldn't come out. There was lots of old crusty ink, so this pen hadn't been used in many years. It wasn't just that the ink was in it, and I soaked it to dissolve it. It had turned almost into concrete, so it took quite a bit of effort to get that feed out of there. I discovered the nib was misaligned and had that "wow" in it.

What was I able to fix? I replaced the pellet receptacle with a new one. It took a bit of effort, too, because I had to shave down the pump rod to fit the pellet receptacle. Oddly, that pump rod was the wrong size because those pellets I've got fit all Vacumatics. I replaced the diaphragm, of course. I polished, aligned, and tuned that nib so it wrrites beautifully. I polished the feed, I polished the clip, and it is silver and came up gloriously. The cap bands are silver, too, and I polished the cap and the barrel.

What things didn't I fix? Well, the mismatch. Now that it's clean, and I can see the pearl celluloid, this is a silver pearl cap, silver pearl blind cap, and a golden pearl body. It's a Franken pen. You wonder whether JJ lost his blind cap and his cap and someone replaced them with another Parker Vacumatic. There's no way to date these things; the only things you can date are the nib and barrel, which are from 1942.

The other thing I didn't fix was that nib "wow". It doesn't affect writing performance once the ink is flowing, but if you stop writing with it for a while, it takes a bit to get the ink flowing down through that small slit. Now and then, between uses, I'll just have to take the blind cap off and pump up a little bit of ink to get that nib flowing.

Those are the existing issues with this pen: it's got personalization on it, it's mismatched in the barrel, cap band, and blind cap, and that nib will have some hard starts now and then. You'll have to either dip it in the ink to start or pump a little bit of ink using the pump filler to push some ink into that slit.

All that being said, this is a nice-looking pen even with its mismatched nature so if you're interested in purchasing this pen I'm selling it for $140 US plus shipping. Drop me a line at inkquiringminds@gmail.com with your name and your address and I'll get you a shipping quote. Shipping to North America is about 10 bucks these days.

And there you have it. Thank you for watching.

And that's all she wrote!