Pen Shows: The Long Island Pen Show ReviewPosted on: Saturday, March 23, 2013

The last show in March Madness, three shows in successive weeks, was Long Island.  Once again we saw a Thursday departure, leaving after work was done for the day.  For the most part, the 16 hour drive was uneventful and we got to our first stop of the day, Kenro Industries, just before noon.  We met up with Jared Lutkowski, who gave us the grand tour, as well as Bryan Hulser and Mr. Joel Kenro himself, showing us where the pens live.  Lisa was drooling in the Aurora room, and I in the Omas room.  It was a fun visit, but they were busy so we didn’t stay too long and moved on.  It was great to meet some of the people we talk to on a weekly basis though.  We did get to photograph some new prototypes they had just received, that had not even been photographed by THEM yet, which was really neat.

Since Lisa is originally from upstate NY we made our way to visit both her grandparent’s homes and took pictures.  Lisa had instructions to go to the homes that both sets of grandparents had owned.  She didn’t have any memories of her mom’s old house, but did remember her dad’s old house, so that was cool.

Everything on our list was pretty close together, so we made our way to the hotel, then took the drive to Hofstra University to see where it was in relation to the hotel.  It was a good thing we did this because as it turned out, there was a very long walk from the parking lot to the room the show was in.  Since this wasn’t a hotel where one could use a concierge cart, we realized we would end up taking a minimum of 20 trips from the car to get all our stuff in.  That wasn’t going to happen, so we sought out a Harbor Freight to find a cart to put our boxes on.  We found one big enough but now had a different problem, it was not assembled, and they wouldn’t do it for us, so I had to buy some wrenches (of course, you can’t just buy the one you want) in order to put it together. The wrenches proved to be a disaster and many a curse word could be heard in the hotel room trying to put this thing together.  In the end all was good and we were ready to go for Saturday morning.

Saturday morning saw us getting to the show a little after 8:00 am and it took only three trips with the large cart.  Definitely a wise investment!  I think the setup was pretty quick, even with five tables, but the tables were pretty tight together.  People sitting directly behind us would be about a foot from our tables if they kicked back their chairs to stretch.  We ended up spending a lot of time with one person behind the table, another on the opposite side, just to avoid constant running back and forth.  During setup Lisa noticed Fountain Pen Hospital had bags of parts and parts pens on their table.  She told me to go look.  Me, being grumpy and tired, declined the offer, just wanting to get things set up.  Then the light bulb went off in my head and I ran over there to look.  About twenty minutes and five bags later, I had myself a nice stash of pens.  I should have bought more, but as they say, hindsight is 20/20.  There were some great pens in there!

A MHR Moore model 1 safety with no cap.  The original price was imprinted on the barrel end opposite the model number, this one costing $2.50 at the time.  Yes, I know a cap is going to be impossible to find, but a nice crack free part.  What a great piece!  Interestingly enough this one has the Star of David on each side of the imprint.

There was also a Moore number 10 in there as well.  Also sold for $2.50 in its day.  Your basic Moore Safety, but also with the Star of David imprint.

The highlight of one of the bags of parts, a near complete Moore Ink-Tab Safety model 62 trench pen.  This pen carried its own ink pellets in the top of the cap and had a glass window so you could see the pellets inside.  Unfortunately, the glass part is no longer present, but such a rare and hard to find pen in crack free condition was a delight.  This pen also had its price imprinted on the barrel and cost $3.00 when it was made.

Hiding in one of the bags was a complete John Holland Ringtop with number 12 nib.  John Holland was unique in its nib numbering system in that they placed a one in the tens column of their fountain pen nibs.  Therefore a number 12 was really more like a number 2 nib made by anyone else.  This pen is a little worse for wear, having seen better days, but will clean up and potentially replate well.

Another interesting find was a Conklin model 23.  This lever filling pen looks just like any other BCHR pen of its day, with one unique exception, the cap band sports the same chasing pattern as the barrel, and in a nice touch is lined up with the cap such that the pattern appears to go from the hard rubber to the cap band and back.  They could have just slapped it on there and it would have looked nice, but aligning it with the cap chasing was a real nice extra touch.

And perhaps one of the more controversial pens in the goodie bags was this vintage 1949-1950 era Aurora 88 piston filler.  In working condition, it has a hard rubber section and turning knob with a beautiful gold filled cap.  The nib is even flexible and a delight to use. Lisa will probably end up with this pen, but I will enjoy using it for a while.

One of our earlier visitors on Saturday was the young George Ramikis.  This man tortures me with beautiful hard rubber pens.  I picked up a nice Aikin Lambert lever filler from him in Philadelphia earlier this year, and this time he had something even more sinister.  A MHR Wirt #7 eyedropper.  I turned him down at first because we hadn’t even made enough money to afford the five bags of pens I just bought, but I told him to stop by later in the day and talk to me.  He did, and we negotiated a decent price.  The pen had a couple of issues, the most noticeable a crack at the base of the nib, but that is easily remedied.  George also had a killer Parker click filler to show off.  The first of which I’ve ever seen in real life.

The Wirt is a big pen for the company, although not as big as other manufacturer’s large pens.  Perhaps more like a 6 size for other companies.

Traffic was crazy busy on Saturday, so much so that it was reported there was twice the traffic on Saturday as all of the previous year alone.  We did have some negative experiences, as two pens were stolen from the table, but at least they weren’t terribly expensive items.

Saturday night meant dinner in New York City with Lisa’s best friend from high school whom she hadn’t seen in over 25 years.  Dinner was great and driving around NYC without getting in an accident and actually finding our location was a bonus!

Sunday morning came too quickly and it was a bit slower in the morning.  I got a chance to walk around and look at more parts at FPH, but they were pretty well picked over.  I’m kicking myself for not going back and looking at them again Saturday as there was a Parker bag with some hard rubber parts I wanted.  Oh well.  I looked over some of the other pens they had on the table and managed to pick up two more, one an Italian Continental overlay style safety pen, marked Oceanica.

The next pen was a Sterling Montegrappa with 18kt two tone Broad nib. It needs a little bit of work, but I think it should be back in good order soon, and after all the price was right for such a beautiful pen.

The two tone nib is really pretty on this one and I can’t wait to get it back to writing condition!

I did also manage to buy a large number of esterbrooks at one table, and then I looked down and saw, to my amazement, a baby safety that needed to come home.  It was fairly beat up, but clearly an Aikin Lambert safety. The price was right, I begged and pleaded and Lisa let me get it. 🙂

To find two Aikin Lambert Safeties in the course of two months is nothing short of amazing after having looked for a year and a half for just one of them.  This one has seen better days, but I wasn’t picky and the price was ridiculously right.

One more pen was stolen from us on Sunday  but we called ourselves lucky and will have to think of some better anti-theft measures for the future.  I think we will contact Hofstra and see if we can rent one of their off-duty security guards for next year.

I also managed to trade a nice snorkel set I had on the table for a Pelikan 140 for Lisa.  I think it was a win-win situation as the snorkel set was near mint and the pencil even had the original hang tag on it.

A number of killer pens were seen on Sunday, including a Waterman 48s safety, which looked more like a coffee thermos than a pen, a pair of Waterman 12 pump fillers, a very short lived filling system by Waterman, a #8 sized Mabie Todd dip pen with especially beautiful and unusual holder (wished I could have purchased that one!), and an Aikin Lambert in Rose Ripple.  A very, very, rare piece obviously made by Waterman, but with full Aikin Lambert imprint.  A stunning piece.

As Sunday came to a close and the traffic thinned out we started to box up slowly.  By 6:00 pm we were fully packed and back on the road. It was a full weekend jam packed with lots of events, which had us constantly going somewhere, but we were glad to get home on Monday afternoon.  After three weeks of travel we’re glad to have three weeks off before our next show in April.  Come see us in Atlanta!

Cheers!
Brian & Lisa