About

We help people buy a vintage fountain pen that will actually write. Name the pen you’re after, like a Parker 51, a Montblanc 149, a Sheaffer Snorkel, a Pelikan M400 or a Pilot Custom 74, and we have a page for it. Each one tells you what the pen is, how to identify the version in front of you, which filling system it uses, what tends to fail and what to check before you buy.

What collectors know about old pens is scattered across restorer reference sites, maker histories and decades of forum threads. A raw eBay search gives you none of it, and sellers often don’t know whether a pen fills. So we keep 34 pen pages in one place, write down the details that usually take years to pick up, like which sacs and seals perish, how to read the imprints and how to tell close siblings apart, and pick the listings we’d buy.

We don’t sell pens. No affiliate links. We earn nothing. We’re not affiliated with Parker, Montblanc, Sheaffer, Pilot or Pelikan. See how we work for how the pages are researched and our disclosure for how links, picks and photos work.

Ink & Imprint is part of allbutnew, a set of shops for secondhand gear. Got a pen to sell? The “Get an offer” link on every pen page sends it to our pen expert, who replies by email.