I find vintage fountain pens to be one of the most fascinating areas of the antique market. Much like vintage mechanical wristwatches, vintage fountain pens were a relatively obscure collectible niche 25 years ago. There were a few hard-core collectors, but not a whole lot of public interest otherwise.
However, vintage fountain pens have exploded into a very hot market segment today. This shouldn’t be surprising considering the unparalleled beauty and utility of these retro writing instruments. Demand, along with prices, has inevitably skyrocketed.
While it used to be possible to cherry pick marvelous vintage pen specimens for $5, $10, or $15 at garage sales, flea markets and rummage sales, now these venues are largely picked clean of desirable examples. Today, a variety of investment quality, antique fountain pens can be found in good condition for prices ranging from $50 to $500.
However, as desirable as older fountain pens are, there is an often overlooked off-shoot of this venerable collecting category that offers even better value for your money. I’m speaking about vintage fountain pen sets. It was fairly common in the mid to late 20th century for pen manufacturers to package a fountain pen together with another, different type of writing instrument, usually a ballpoint pen or mechanical pencil.
Vintage fountain pen sets were often marketed as upscale gifts. They were promoted as the perfect luxury present for holidays, graduations, birthdays, etc. As a result, these sets were usually populated by more desirable, higher end models – with price tags to match!
Vintage fountain pen sets were also intended to appeal to people who wanted variety in their writing implements. Some customers might prefer the convenience of a ballpoint pen for travel and on-the-go usage, while a fountain pen might make sense for writing longer personal letters or business correspondence. A mechanical pencil might be favored by certain professionals who produced a lot of calculations and scratch work, like engineers, architects, and scientists.
In any case, vintage fountain pen sets are largely neglected in today’s marketplace. Few antique fountain pen collectors understand the charms of old mechanical pencils. And even fewer pen collectors are interested in vintage ballpoint pens. As a result, high quality vintage fountain pen sets can still be purchased for shockingly low prices.
There are a lot of reasons to consider investing in a vintage fountain pen set. But one of the most compelling is that they perfectly capture the zeitgeist of the mid to late 20th century. Stately fountain and ballpoint pens were omnipresent in the most pivotal events of the age, from the signing of the momentous treaty that ended World War II to the endorsement of groundbreaking legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And no successful businessman from the 1960s Mad Men era would have been caught dead without his prized pen at his side, always ready to sign a deal.
As mentioned above, vintage fountain pen sets were generally mid-range or high-end offerings. As a result, they were often constructed using the very finest materials available to manufacturers at the time. This included corrosion-resistant metals, such as stainless steel, gold-filled, sterling silver or even solid karat gold. Hard rubber, resin or dense, high quality plastic were also sometimes employed in pen sets, either in conjunction with metals or by themselves.
A factor that goes hand in hand with high quality materials is high quality construction. And quality was universally high in the mid 20th century. Vintage fountain pen sets, particularly the higher priced models, were produced to very exacting standards in the most technologically-advanced nations on earth at the time – the U.S., U.K., Germany, France and Japan. This is a far cry from the made in China syndrome that we wrestle with today in consumer products.
It is also common to find sets that are for sale with their original cases. An original case is not only a convenient storage container for a vintage pen set, but also adds to the period styling of the set. As a result, an original case significantly boosts a set’s investment desirability.
Another advantage of vintage fountain pen sets is the number of pristine, never-inked or new-old-stock examples available. These are eminently collectible pieces that are often 40, 50 or even 60 years old, and yet can sometimes still be found encased in cellophane with their original price tags attached!
But I think that the ultimate reason to invest in vintage fountain pen sets is price; they are often barely more expensive than a single vintage fountain pen by itself. And there is simply no conventional asset where a couple hundred dollars will get you so much value for your money. I’ve showcased several different vintage fountain pen sets on the Antique Sage website, including a 1960s Parker 75 flat top set, a 1950s Sheaffer Snorkel Statesman set and a mid 1950s Eversharp Ventura set.
None of these vintage fountain pen sets was more than $300. One was less than $100. Where else can you hope to buy a complete set of vintage luxury goods in its original packaging for a couple hundred dollars? It is one of those situations that you simply know cannot persist for very long. And I suspect it will not.
One day soon the supply of Mid-Century, new-old-stock vintage fountain pen sets will run out and their prices will skyrocket. Those who already purchased theirs will be sitting pretty. Everyone else will curse their bad timing. Don’t say you were never warned.
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