collecting the parker 51

I’ve been collecting vintage fountain pens for some time now and I’ve come to the conclusion that the Parker 51 is my favorite.  They write beautifully and are an easy to use/very reliable pen.  One of the fun things about collecting 51s is that there are many varieties.  The pen was made from the early 1940s to the early 1970s.  For example, the early 51s came with a vacumatic fill mechanism and then Parker switched to an aerometric fill mechanism.  Caps came in a variety of materials such as lustraloy (brushed stainless steel) and gold filled.  Clips came in a variety of styles as well.  The early 51s had a clip similar to the later Vacumatics and subsequently Parker switched to the arrow clip similar to the early Vacumatics.  These pens came in a variety of colors and some of them, such as Nassau Green and Yellowstone (some call this mustard), are difficult to find.  Some have the single jewel on the cap and some are double jeweled.  Finally, the pen came in 2 sizes – standard and demi.  And, by the way, there are mechanical pencils to match as well with all of the various caps and colors.  OK, you can see where this is going – there are a lot of variations of this pen for the avid collector.   Fred Rosenthal, owner of Bromfield Pen shop in Boston asked me on a recent visit, “How many 51s do you have?”  While I have quite a few I am no where near finished collecting all of the variations out there.  A good source of information is Parker51.com so check it out and happy collecting!