A great number of collectors and fountain pen enthusiasts lusts after the experience coming from vintage writers – the aerometric 51s, Vacuumatics, or the safety pens of the older days – they come with irreplicable writing experience, yet also tag along are unforeseeable risks. Let’s take a look at the flip side of the coins – the advantages of modern fountain pens.
The reassurance
It’s a difficult thing to say that modern instruments are more reliable than those made in the past, but there are many more things we can be sure about when it comes to the latest releases of pens.
They come with guaranteed support from the brands and authorized dealers when they do not perform up to specs, something that we can never say with certainty when it comes to vintages – it all boils down to the seller persuading you on his guarantee policies and procedures after the purchase – and we still can never know till the pen breaks down on us.
Modern pens comes with the confidence that we can put almost any sorts of ink inside the barrel without a worry that the ink content may eat the ink sacs from the inside out, or the feed section shrinking after many years of use due to them being made with newer resin or plastics instead of the all so fonded ebonite. The comparison is skewed, but as a user, I would like my pens to be able to perform all day any day.
There is also the health and safety risk that comes with vintage pens. Celluloid for example, a really popular material for pen barrels in the previous decades, is actually really vulnerable to heat application, and can even ignites very readily without the [direct application of flame](https://www.nature.com/articles/092646b0). We really don’t want our precious cars suddenly burst into flame before our very eyes, and I think most of us wouldn’t also want that with our beloved writing instruments.
The maintenance
As per modern writers, the service is fairly straight forward: rinse with water, dry them up, rinse and repeat. Brands have come a long way in terms of designs: fewer moving parts, more corrosion resistant materials, and a simple to understand use and care guide that comes along in the boxes.
Vintage fountain pens are not that hard to find in the wild, and come with various shapes and sizes. The acquisition is thought to be the least tricky part of the pen journey, but what comes after that is what really makes or breaks your experience. What if the pen broke down and the only person having the parts and the skill to restore your pen is half way across the globe? What if the spare parts are no longer available on the market and all you’re left with is a combined piece of metal, ebonite and rubber to deal with.
Vintage fountain pens are not that hard to find in the wild, and come with various shapes and sizes. The acquisition is thought to be the least tricky part of the pen journey, but what comes after that is what really makes or breaks your experience. What if the pen broke down and the only person having the parts and the skill to restore your pen is half way across the globe? What if the spare parts are no longer available on the market and all you’re left with is a combined piece of metal, ebonite and rubber to deal with.
There is no coincidence that most vintage pen lovers also know how to disassemble a pen and maintain them with ink sac replacement or restoring the celluloid finishes. The skill cap needed to keep these wonderful writers in good shape is quite high, and with the majority of the fountain pen community, it’s a really difficult process to learn and master these techniques.
Much like cars and watches, vintage pens may not be for everyone, but we can all agree that even just a glance at them from afar could really evoke a sort of nostalgia, a vibe you might say, and the final call of acquiring them for your collection is totally up to each individual collector to decide. A daily driver should be a reliable one, with the least amount of hassle to deal with and the most amount of fun to work with on a day to day basis.
Many of the arguments for modern vs vintage are really no different than what the modern average fountain pen user already does, as well. Plenty new pens need work right out of the box. Plenty of vintage are well tuned already, after decades of loving use.
All the pictures used are of a Parker 51 aerometric, which are almost indestructible and are really no different than a modern piston filler to clean. Maintenance on the 51 is virtually nonexistent.
Sure, there are the vintage vac fillers and the Snorkel. And the arguments that vintage sac fillers need a replacement sac about every 10 years. Huh. There’s plenty of vintage Esterbrook and Touchdown Sheaffer’s still working great on their original 70+ year old sac. I even have a few 1930s Esterbrook that are still fine on the original sac… And change of a sac on almost every lever filler is really not that worse than changing a screw in converter. Unless you have to get vintage sealant to let loose, generally 5 minutes apart from dry time for the shellac to seal the sac on.
And then there’s the price. Even if you have to replace a sac, still generally MUCH less than a modern pen. Really, now, would you prefer a 1940s Conway Stewart that writes like a dream (and has a more interesting nib than the Jowo in the Bespoke Pens Conway Stewart that Queen Elizabeth II refused to use) or risk your 5x as expensive Visconti won’t write?
One critical issue you omitted… the nibs on vintage pens are FAR superior to those offered by JoWo, almost every Modern pen on sale today features a JoWo nib.
Imagine that your brand new Rolls Royce features the same engine, tires and chassis as my brand new Toyota. While appearances, weight, and styling are important, in fountain pens it’s where the rubber meets the road (or in this case where the nib meets the paper) that’s critical. Otherwise, you’ve just purchased a pretty face.