Esterbrook J SOLD ($75 US)

Hello there! Welcome to my channel. My name is Doug, and I’m back with another Inkquiring Minds Sunday video. Today, I’m trying to do a twofer: resurrect two pens in one video.

The first pen is a desk pen set I purchased at an antique store a few months ago. The base is Parker, and you might be able to see that right there. It says Parker, maybe not there, but it says Parker. The nice marble base is interesting. The pen with the base is a Schaffer Touchdown desk pen with a Dolphin inlaid nib. These were called dolphin, porpoise, or something like that because of their bulbous nose on that inlaid nib. It’s a steel nib, and the pen unscrews at the back. There’s also that touchdown filler. We’re going to try to replace the sack on the inside of this touchdown and get this pen working again.

The other pen I want to look at is almost identical to an Esterbrook J that I recently restored. This is an Esterbrook J made in Canada. It’s the same brown root beer kind of colour as my previous video. This one has the clip broken off, and the lever filler is nice and crunchy. There’s a desiccated sack in there that needs replacing. The pen is covered with all kinds of scars, except for right there where I polished it as an example of my previous restoration to show how this celluloid can polish up. The section on this is particularly scratched up, and the nib is gnarly.

When I purchased this pen, I thought I might be able to resurrect that nib. I probably could, given some effort, but it’s not an actual Esterbrook. It’s a Venus, which fits the Esterbrook Jays. I think Venus took over the Esterbrook Company or Esterbrook took over Venus, or something like that. But these were very typical of these Ebrook celluloid pens of the 1940s and 50s. I decided I would go ahead and look at eBay and see whether I get a replacement nib.

I picked this up on eBay. This is a 2668 Esterbrook. It says "general writing nib firm medium solid eurochrome renew point Esterbrook Camden New Jersey". This should screw right inside that section. Here is the nib that I bought on eBay. It is a medium point 2668 Esterbrook we should be able to unscrew the gnarly nib that has all kinds of gunk all over it I have no idea what all that gunk is it's chalky blue i don't know what it is pasty and screw in the Esterbrook and there it goes perfectly. We'll take that apart again, we'll try to get that section off by heating it, and replace that crunchy sack inside that barrel. The sack I use is a number 16. I have a number 16 sac. The Sheaffer nib looks in really good shape, they had that slightly upward bend to them. We'll see whether it runs ink through it.

THOUGHTS

What are my thoughts on these restorations? I’ve left the desk pen out for another night and just pulled it out now. I’m very pleased with the desk pen. It’s written perfectly, and the real test will be if the desk unit can keep the nib wet for a week without being used. This took minimal restoration; it just replaced the latex sack within the touchdown filler. The seal on the back seems to be working fine, so there’s no reason to replace it. I think I’ll use this as a desk pen and keep it with me. If the vacuum fails, I’ll replace the O-ring at the back. It’s a simple operation, and the pen polished up like new.

I should call it the Sheaffer Parker because the base is Parker and the pen is a Sheaffer. They seem to get along well together, and there are no lawsuits involved. The Esterbrook came up brilliantly. I thought it would cause me problems because of the last few restorations I’ve had issues with. The only problem I had with this one was getting the remnants of the old sack out of the barrel, which took quite a bit of teasing. The nib on this one is because I bought it new, old stock. It says it’s a firm medium, and it wrote okay out of the box, but it needed a little bit of tuning. That was just a little bit of 8,000 and then 12,000 micro mesh in figure 8s and so forth for a couple of minutes each. It was easy to do.

The only issue that this pen has now is the lack of a clip. The pen isn’t worth enough to find a way to replace that clip. The top finials were riveted in there, and there are ways of doing this with different machinery and so forth to replace that top rivet, but again, the pen is not worth as much as it would cost to repair it as it is. If you don’t mind not having a clip, this is a beautifully restored fountain pen. It takes a lot of ink, writes smoothly, and looks gorgeous in this brown striated celluloid, which I think looks like root beer or Guinness, depending on your preference.

As for selling these pens, I’ll keep the desk pen with me and use it quite regularly, but this Esterbrook I will sell if you’re interested. If you’re interested in purchasing this pen, please drop me a line at inkquiringminds@gmail.com with your name and address. I’ll send you a shipping quote to your location anywhere in North America. Currently, shipping is about $10 US. I’m selling this pen for $75 US. The last one I restored sold for $90 US, so I figured dropping it to $75 would be reasonable considering the broken clip. If you’re interested, please let me know.

There you have it!

That just leaves it for me to say thank you for watching, and that's all she wrote!