A while ago I decided to extend my Parker 51 family. Found one online and bought it without knowing anything of the nib. Once again using Parker51.com for identification I believe this is a Parker Aerometric because of the colour, called Teal Blue. The Aerometric is a later model than the Vacumatic. The gold-filled cap has five tapered lines merging together at the bottom, and a grey jewel. The black Vacumatic Demi presented more closely in the post called My first Parker “51” has an almost identical cap. The arrow on the clip is longer on the blue pen than on the black Demi, as is the barrel, which makes me think the blue pen is full-size, not demi-sized. The line pattern is more deeply ingraved on the cap of the black pen, just as suggested for earlier pens on this ninth page on different “51” caps by the aforementioned site. On page ten you can see the black demi vacumatic cap in the second pic. I can’t find an exact match for the cap on the blue pen (despite going through alla 14 pages on different caps. Ah, I love this hobby), which makes me think it is a frankenpen, with a demi-vacumatic cap on a later production aerometric model but a later model of the demi-vacu-cap than the demi-vacu-cap of the black pen. Eh. Did anyone except me read through that?
Luckily, it turned out to have a very broad, fat nib, just what I needed to complement my first Parker 51, which is an EF (extra fine – or even finer?). I find the images above really pretty for some reason. There is an aesthetic appeal to this nib. I am not sure if it is a B (B for “broad”) or a BB (?). It is rather wet. The line is sometimes uneven, I am not sure if this is because of the grain of the paper, or if it can be blamed on the pen. Maybe I am too light and irregular of hand. A writing sample:
For a drawing made with these pens (and a brush), see the previous post “Evil Man Under Dying Sun (Wearing No Hat)”.
I haven’t decided if I want to keep the blue pen. On the other hand I’d like a set of four Parkers in black, blue, grey and burgundy. Hm, I have to think this over.