Pen Shows: Dallas Pen Show ReviewPosted on: Tuesday, September 25, 2012

On Wednesday last week Lisa took care of all the last minute details, packing, getting food for the trip, going to the bank, etc. but it all started at 6:00 am driving me to work.  At 5:00 pm she drove to pick me up and we left right from work since it is 35 minutes south of our house and on the way.  We drove all night, stopping twice to pull over and sleep (which is more than usual for us) since we just can’t go any further.  We fell asleep in a parking lot somewhere and slept for about 45 minutes to an hour then resumed our travels.

Thursday brings us to Texas and around 3:00 or so we arrive at destination 1: The Allen, Texas Outlet mall.  As we step out of the car for the first time in quite a while, we are hit with a wave of heat.  Much warmer than the 50-60 degree weather we had back home!  Lisa looks at Coach and we hit a couple of other stores, but for the first time (maybe ever) we don’t buy anything.  This is usually were I buy clothes/jackets/boots for winter, but the stuff we’ve bought in the past two years are still in good order, so it looks like we’ll be skipping the cold weather gear this year.

The show hotel is only 20 minutes or so south of the outlet mall, so now we’ve been a little invigorated, had a chance to stretch our legs for a bit, and head for the final bit of our journey.  We get to the hotel and then proceed to sit around for about twenty minutes waiting for a concierge cart.  Crazy how a hotel this large only has three concierge carts?  Well, we finally get one, and unfortunately get yet another over eager bus boy who wants to get our stuff out of the car in as fast as humanly possible.  This almost never works, since our boxes are carefully packed, and most is highly fragile. I’m envisioning the day when one of these guys throws a large box of ink on the cart, it falls, and there’s ink everywhere.  At least THAT didn’t happen and the only thing that fell was one of our paper displays and paper dropped on the ground.  Two trips up to the room and thank goodness for the second queen bed as that’s where everything went.  No sense in bending over picking stuff up on the ground when there’s a nice bed there. 🙂

We ran into Mike Walker, one of the show organizers, and he informed us where the early trading room was.  We were tired and decided to not set up anything but we could go and look.  We checked the room out quickly, said hi to the few people that were there, then went upstairs one more time to freshen up and came back down to get a better look at the pens present.

In a room with so few people you’d think there wouldn’t be much to buy, but nibs were the item du jour, and we walked out with over 100 nibs to put up on the website.  We found a hard to find Esterbrook nib as well, and that made it’s way into the bag too.  Early arrivals in the trading room included Pete Kirby, displaying a nice consignment collection, including a beautiful Waterman 542 1/2v solid gold safety, and a Parker eyedropper.  Joel Hamilton was present with his usual assortment of beautiful pens, including one Parker Vacumatic Maxima with the Christian Olsen mark and a custom cap band. Pendleton Brown showed up, Bill and Nancy majors were there, Andreas Lambrou was showing off his new book on pens of Japan, and a couple other people whose names escape me.

Lisa and I quickly realized we had not had dinner, but were too tired to drive anywhere and the thought of eating our leftover sandwiches from lunch earlier in the day was not too appealing.  We wanted hot food. So, the hotel bar seemed like the logical choice and it did not disappoint.  An appetizer plate of spicy egg rolls, chicken tenders and wings with a couple of Sam Adams Oktoberfest beers on tap and we were no longer hungry. Best hotel bar food I think I’ve had in a while!

After dinner we made our way up to the room and got ready for bed.  It seemed like it was midnight, but in reality it was only just after 8:00 pm.  Our wakeup time was 6:00 am, but ten hours of sleep went a long way towards making that bearable.

Friday – Up and at it early Friday after a good nights rest.  Amazing what laying down for more than an hour while not moving will do to a person!  We brought our own breakfast, so ate that while getting ready, then loaded up our hand cart with some boxes and proceeded to make our way downstairs.  We figured competition for a concierge cart would be fierce, so by the time we made two trips with our hand cart we had a concierge cart and only needed one trip to get the rest.  Setup was the usual two-three hour affair.  I didn’t time it this show, but it usually take several hours to get everything in place.  We went big this time around, with five tables, so this allowed us to spread out while setting up.  I don’t know how we did it with less before!

Friday traffic was quite busy and steady almost the entire day.  Dallas goes to 8:00 at night and I think this is a smart move.  I think it was about 4:00 before I actually got a chance to sit down and take a break.  Being busy, we didn’t have much time to scout out the pens in the room, but anytime I needed to go somewhere, I always took the long way around and checked out a table or three. The show spans two rooms, and this year the second room was full with dealers and the silent auction (which was in the second room last year) lined the walls in the outer hallway. The silent auction was larger than last year as best I could tell.  There were a lot of items, and something for just about everyone!

When I go to the Dallas show, one necessary stop is Presnall Wood’s table.  I don’t know where he finds his pens, but he finds some really amazing ones.  You’d think it would be hard to find early hard rubber pens and overlays in the wild (and it is!!), but he always has new ones!  In my quest for an early dip pen (as mentioned in my Dallas Show Wish List), I noticed he had an interesting wood pen rest with room for four bottles of ink.  While the pen rest was of little interest to me, the pearl handled dip pen that rested on it was.  Keeping in mind pearl handled dip pens are fairly commoon, and even finding them in their original boxes is a reasonably common occurance, I still asked to see the pen. Many dip pens were made as souvenirs and are not marked or of poor quality.  This one, however, turned out to not be any of that.

How about a Bard & Brothers New York nib? The holder itself is not marked, but a nice gold filled pattern with clean pearl handle. Since the nib is clearly marked Bard & Brothers, this effectively dates the pen in the relatively narrow time frame of 1849-1850. So, a nice New York nib maker which was the precurser to Mabie, Todd, and Bard, in the original box? a must have, and the price was right too. 🙂

Lisa had on her list skripserts she didn’t have. Well, I know this is a pretty impossible mission. She has most of them, including the matching pencils, but when someone came to the table with a particularly nice pen at a good price, she snatched it up.  It looked like it might have been an upgrade to one she already owned, but upon getting home found out the one in the pen case has the original chalk marks on it.  Oh well, it was worth getting just to see another nice example.

There were plenty of nice pens to be found on Friday.  Towards the end of the day I had more time to wander around and see the tables of some friends I only get to see at this show or in these southern shows.  Allen Butler was present with his display of Diamond Point pens.  One called out to me, but I like to wait until I start buying a lot of pens.  The first day I lay low, scout out my prey, then strike on the next day.  If you buy early, you never know what you may come up with later, and then you’re out of money.  Patience, patience!

Sam Elardo was also in attendance and as usual he had a fabulous display.  Any show we are both in attendance we get together and have show and tell of early pens.  This time was no exception, and he showed me a special case of Aikin Lambert and Carey pens.  The most spectacular was a large gold filled filigree pen with an Aikin Lambert #7 nib, with V shaped venthole and factory stub nib. Perhaps also equally as stunning was a sterling filigree which had the filigree work extended over the top of the cap.  Almost always overlays are either ended at the top of the cap or the entire cap is solid sterling.  This was the jeweler’s art at its finest.  Sam also was kind enough to look at a pen I received earlier in the year simply marked “Davis Bros”, but had a Betzler & Wilson nib.  I bought it for the nib thinking it was incorrect, and put it in an eyedropper I had purchased from him last year.  Well, as luck would have it, the pen was indeed made by Betzler for Davis Brothers, and now that nib will have to go back.  It looked a little odd in the overlay anyway, but I’ll still keep on looking!

Kim Sosin also had a table and all I can ever say about her offerrings is WOW. She has some stunning pens and if you’ve never taken a look at her table at the many shows she attends, then you’re missing out.

During slow periods I managed to get out and make critical strikes to certain tables.  One such table was that manned by our Yafa rep who had the new Delta Fusion pen.  I had seen this pen in an email Yafa sent and was intrigued.  Seeing it in person was another thing altogether!  The combination of the gold fused to the top of the steel nib really is interesting and the pen really wrote well.  Unlike many of Delta’s offerings, the pen was slender and tasteful and offered in some very interesting plastics, the kind you have to see in person to really appreciate as you roll them in the sunlight.  Expect these to make their way to our site sometime soon.  I also managed to grab a monteverde Invincia Stylus in brushed chrome for our table and the all black “stealth” version will be coming soon too.

Another critical strike was the Taccia table.  Several very nice pens were found here and we just couldn’t resist adding them to our roster.  They should be arriving soon and are good writers in nice plastics.  The Staccato is a senior sized pen that is very distinguished looking and the Legato are smaller pens in attractive plastics.  Lisa picked out a third model with a mosaic like looking pattern on it that we both thought was a handsome pen.

Friday 8:00 pm rolled around and we once again ended up at the hotel bar.  Julie Bynum (aka Okami) showed off some of her pens including a Nakaya, a Dani-Trio, a custom Edison, and one by Ernest Shin.  All really fantastic looking pens and definitely a different taste in pens then the usual hard rubber I collect.  Just goes to prove you can find just about anything at a pen show.

The food was again very good, having simply a burger, and Lisa a salad, but the Oktoberfest was gone.  Sadly, not a very good selection of brew was left, but that may have been partly due to the great number of people present in the hotel for any number of trade shows and conventions that were going on.  Nice conversations ensued with Larry Bedinghaus about how the show was run, but then my exhaustion started to set in and it was time for bed.

Saturday morning woke us up about the same time, and back down to the table and at it right away.  Early morning traffic was moderate and business was brisk.  Our good friends Tim and Mike Byler showed up from Little Rock and Mike brought with him some tempting and amazing pens for show and tell.

For probably two weeks or more, Mike had been torturing texting me with pictures of the most amazing dip pen any of us had ever seen.  It was large.  Dare I say almost ridiculously so, and coincidentally bore the name Bard & Brothers and was a number 8 sized nib and came complete with the holder.  The holder was gold filled and had an ebony taper to it, the gold fill worn in three spots such that you could see exactly how the owner had held this pen when in use.  While I normally dislike wear or “brassing” as it is sometimes called, this is unique in it’s wear pattern and gives us some insight into how this was used.

Mike then proceeded to pull out other hard rubber pens from his case, a security pen, a French mottled safety by Gold Starry, an Eagle, a Salz coin filler, and lastly, a Wirt.  Having a fondness for the PA company, I took a closer look.  This was a ringtop with a nice gold filled floral cap band, and was a matchstick filler where the matchstick hole was covered by a rotating piece on the barrel (much like the rotating portion of Conklin Crescent).  This was in pretty good condition, and I had only seen one other Wirt at the show, but this was a cool looking pen and had the classic vented feed and ventless nib.

Pens continued to come out of Mike’s pen case and departing from the hard rubber theme, a clipless pastel in yellow.  Now, we have a lot of Esterbrook pens, but the clipless pastels (model H) are very hard to come by and are always found in a light green (or at least all of them I have seen are that color).  This was a must have.

Some time went by and it was decided the Bard & Brothers dip pen, the Wirt, and the Esterbrook were going to end up in my pen case for “further” re-evaluation.

At 11:00 I set off to give a seminar entitled, “All About Esterbrook”.  Having only been informed of this several days prior, I grabbed as many samples of Esterbrook pens as I could, and off I went.  The room was quite full and given less than an hour to encompass over 100 years of Esterbrook history was quite the undertaking.  Show and tell ended the session with people getting the chance to see many of the very rare and hard to find models.

After the seminar it was back to selling at the table and to relieve Tim from his duties.  Busy, busy, busy!  I was able to secure my final acquisition of the weekend in trade, a Mabie Todd Swan chatelaine eyedropper in it’s original case, with chain and pin marked “C.T. & Co.”.  While the pen was not marked with the Bard name, the barrel by the section was marked, “‘Swan’ M.T.B.”.  The nib has a gold overfeed, and the spiral wire feed.  This pen looks like it was used once or twice and always put in its box. The black hard rubber is black and pristine and as crisp as it would have been at the turn of last century.  It was really too fabulous to pass up.

Saturday afternoon saw us adding Monteverde ink to our stable, but not quite in time to put on the table.  We also picked up a number of Sheaffer display trays, some books and some vintage pens and inks for resale.

All in all it was a terrific show.  Our best one yet, and the most highly attended I think we’ve seen since we started going.  Dallas is no longer the little regional or “club” show it once was and is fast becoming a major show on the pen show landscape, rivaling some of the other so called “major” shows.  If you have the time off next year and are within driving (or flying distance) I highly recommend making the trip and going!

Cheers!
Brian & Lisa