Just over a week ago, a friend emailed me a link to a forthcoming local auction and mentioned that there were some fountain pens included. I had a browse at the online catalogue and began to get moderately excited at the prospect of acquiring a vintage  Pelikan M400 tortoise.

Still a newbie to the process, it was a novelty to log in to the sale room web site and submit  a bid. The auction was due to take place on Tuesday at 10:30am. With around 500 lots to get through and the fountain pen lots all coming towards the end of the sale, it was likely to be late afternoon before the Pelikan came up. On my only previous  experience with this auction, I had been hopeful of buying a burgundy Parker Duofold Centennial but was unprepared when the bidding sped past the estimate and I let it go.

I was quite expecting to be unsuccessful again and so had a back-up plan of bidding on one or two other pens, in the event that the Pelikan went to someone else.

In the event, when the Pelikan came up, as I listened online to the auctioneer, there were no higher bids placed and it went to me. (I should have walked away from the computer at that point content with my success. However I lingered online to see how the other pens sold. When a blue resin limited edition Sailor came up, I found my mouse hovering over the “Bid” button and, seeing off some half-hearted opposition, I found myself owning this pen as well, more of which another time).

I had been reading up online about the vintage Pelikan. On the following morning, I received the invoice for my two pens, by email from the auction rooms, which I thought was very speedy and efficient of them. I arranged to collect my pens later that day.

The Pelikan was fitted with a Rover 14k gold nib, extra fine, as the catalogue had stated. The pen was apparently an export model. I do not know the history of Rover nibs and am not sure whether the pen was first sold with this nib option (the piston turning knob does have the letters EF printed) or whether it might have been a later replacement of a Pelikan nib.

At home that evening, I was able to have a closer look at my purchase. The pen looked to be in a reasonably good condition for its age, which I believe dates from the early 1950’s.

On the barrel, barely legible unless with a loupe, are the words EXPORT and PELIKAN GUNTHER WAGNER.  The nib reads ROVER 585 EXTRA. (Presumably the word FINE is concealed by the section).(Update: No, on later removing the nib, I was surprised to see that below the word EXTRA, it reads “PO.45”)

Looking at the cap, there is no inscription on the cap band. I have read that this puts it as being an early model. There were plenty of shallow scratches on the cap, signs of general use, but these are not visible to the naked eye and are only cosmetic and do not worry me at all. There are a couple of tiny cracks no more than 2mm long just below the pocket clip ring, possibly due to shrinkage but again, of no concern.

The nib looks to be in good condition with some wear, as a smooth, rounded foot can be seen to the tipping material. I was excited to try the extra fine nib but had to be patient.

The feed is an ebonite one, with “longitudinal fins” which all looked intact. These can become brittle with age and are easily cracked. I had read up on the informative “The Pelikan’s Perch” blog, how to go about removing the nib and feed, taking great care not to damage the feed.

First I wished to establish whether the nib and feed were screw fit or friction fit. Again, I learned this week that some rare early models were friction fit and that this design was briefly repeated later when the model was re-introduced.

I tried operating the piston. This was very promising. The piston traveled up and down and still felt reasonably stiff. The attractive tortoise-shell coloured, striped resin barrel gave a good view of the piston, when held up to the light.

I wanted to measure the take up into the reservoir. I have contrived my own simple device for this, being a syringe, with the plunger removed and with the nozzle plugged with a match stick. This I attach to a vertical object (the bathroom clock!) with an elastic band, and fill the syringe with water using a pipette, up to the 5ml mark.

I then held the Pelikan nib down in the syringe, and filled it with water, as you would with ink. I was pleasantly surprised to see the water level drop down to 3ml, indicating a good 2ml capacity in the Pelikan.

Ejecting this first lot of water, produced some old blue ink residue from the pen and I flushed it a couple more times, before then leaving the pen filled with water and standing in a jar of water up over the nib to have a good soak.I left it for 24 hours.

The following evening, flushing the pen a few more times, I then tried for the first time to remove the nib.Gripping the nib and feed firmly, wrapped in several layers of tissue paper, I held these still while attempting to rotate the barrel towards me, thus unscrewing the nib anti-clockwise. I was delighted when the nib began to unscrew, with no difficulty at all and I was able to remove and wash the nib and feed unit. I gather that these are interchangeable with modern nib and feed units for the M200 and M400 series pens, so that I could try the 14k gold EF in my modern M205 blue demonstrator, or the steel broad from the M205 in the vintage tortoise.

Before I filled the pen for the first time, I had to make the choice of a suitable ink. I decided to go either for Waterman Serenity Blue, or Diamine’s Conway Stewart Tavy, for this first fill. Dipping the pen in each of these ink in turn, I settled upon the Tavy, as a darker more legible line in the extra fine nib. I also like the dark blue-black tones of this ink which seemed fitting for the vintage pen, such that you might find on a letter from the 1950’s.

I was concerned as to how well the old cork piston seal might work, on a pen of perhaps over 65 years of age. The piston had drawn up water to a very satisfactory capacity, but I did not know whether it might leak from the back once filled with ink. I had spent an evening reading about removing piston assemblies from these pens, by means of a dowling rod inserted through the nib end and this sounded much too advanced and risky for me to attempt.  I very much hoped that the piston would be usable. If not, then I had an attractive and rather expensive dip pen or a nib unit that I could use in other pens.

And so that night, the pen suffered the indignity of being stood in a glass jar to check for any accidents overnight. Happily (and this really has been a lucky story so far) there were no signs of any leakage.

So how does it write? Well, the nib is far softer than any I had experienced. A little pressure spreads the narrow tines to produce a lovely characterful broad wet stroke. Without pressure the pen writes a very fine line. I was pleased with my ink choice. The nib wrote smoothly when writing with my left elbow tucked in to my side (I am left handed) but when writing in my ungainly, overhand slanting style, with paper tilted and my left hand above the line (a bad habit from childhood to avoid smudging wet ink), then the nib was a bit scratchy. So I will go with what it likes best.

I amused myself trying the pen on every available type of paper. It suits smooth papers best. And I discovered a new source of amusement, in writing with the reverse side of a vintage extra fine nib, to give an extra extra fine line! This enables you to write in such miniscule letters, aided by a magnifying glass as you go, that you can achieve up to six lines of writing in one row of an exercise book. I then attempted the Lord’s Prayer which I managed to fit into three rows,  which is less than one inch deep. This is of limited application I know, but fun to try nevertheless.

You don’t need to spend long surfing in Fountain Pen Network to learn that the Pelikan M series are many people’s favourite fountain pens. It took me a while to catch on and to understand their attributes, while people wrote lovingly of their M200, or M1000 or whatever. The mystery was not helped by the fact that most regular stationery shops do not sell these and you will need to go to a specialist shop or a high end department store to see them in the flesh.

I first found a display of Pelikans in Selfridges a few years ago and was able to handle them. I watched as an M800 was dipped for me in Graf von Faber-Castell Cobalt Blue and the sales assistant produced a smooth and effortlessly elegant line of handwriting. I was smitten.

Having read much about the range in the mean time, I had an urge to own one, which refused to go away. In April, I bought a blue demonstrator M205 and chose the broad nib option. It proved to be an absolute joy to use. I filled it first with Waterman Serenity Blue and have been doing so ever since. The ink seems to match the sky blue pen perfectly and there was no need to experiment with anything else. The broad nib was silky smooth and springy and delivered a pleasant feedback. I took it on a two week holiday in the following month and I recall that it managed over 50 pages of an A5 journal on one fill. Also there were no problems at all with leakage on the flights.

I love the piston filling design and the ability to unscrew the nib and feed unit easily (even when the pen is inked if you want) to wash it or swap nibs.

I continue to enjoy my M205 but my only minor gripes were that it is a very light pen,  that the piston mechanism is plastic not brass and that the nib was a stainless steel one. And of course here, you have the options to look at the M400, M600, M800 and M1000.

As most readers will know, the M400 is the same size as the M200 and will also accept the same size nibs although it comes with a 14k gold nib. The M600 is a little larger, also with 14k nib. Then the M800 and M1000 bodies and nibs are each progressively larger still, with 18k nibs and brass piston mechanisms, making for a heavier pen.

Spurred on by predictions of imminent price increases in our post-Brexit era, I decided upon purchasing the M800. The choice of model involves a certain amount of guesswork as I purchased online with Cult Pens, (whose service I have found to be unfailingly excellent by the way) and so you do not have the chance to sample all the different sizes back to back, or to try out various nib widths.

The choice of an M800 model was the easy part. As to colour, I settled on blue over the more traditional and retro-looking green although would have been happy with either. But the nib choice is a tricky one. My handwriting tends to be on the medium to small side and I invariably find that the loops of my a’s and o’s are all filled in, and may have suited a fine or an extra fine more than my mostly medium nibs. Then on the other hand, I have the broad already in my M205 and love it. As someone who appreciates his inks, I like to see a good line of colour and some shading. And so after a little pondering, when it came to ordering, I settled upon a medium as being, hopefully, a good all rounder, a bit of a compromise but the best of all worlds.

The other choice to make is whether to opt for the standard gold coloured (plated) clip and rings and two tone nib, or to have the M805 version on which which all are silver coloured finish, which looks very smart. However I decided upon the gold plated version. With the blue, black, silver and gold combination this put me fondly in mind of my old school colours.

And so it was that just over two weeks ago now, my M800 arrived, literally as I was checking the tracking reference number online to see where it was. I became a two Pelikan man. It arrived in a large cardboard box, surrounded by copious amounts of protective polystyrene packaging and bubble wrap. And then the white cardboard outer box and another box inside that. Lifting the lid, revealed an attractive woodgrain-effect box with a white, leather effect bed, on which lay a white “penvelope” with brown elastic and a plastic seal. Finally inside that, in a clear plastic sheath, was the pen.

I must say, it looks absolutely stunning. I had not been prepared for how pretty, smooth and polished the blue striped barrel is, since each stripe of blue seems to reflect light in a different way. Between the blue strips, as you hold the pen up to a light and rotate it slightly, you can see through it and this allows you to see the ink level. (The ink level is not immediately obvious as it would be in a demonstrator model. I found that you need to hold the pen tilted slightly, for about 10 seconds to allow ink to clear from the walls of the barrel and then rotate it to see the height of the ink in the barrel. It holds 1.35ml which is a goodly amount).

I had a bottle of Cobalt Blue on my desk, and gingerly dipped it in. Panic. At first it seemed not to write at all. Heart in mouth moment. No, it didn’t seem to like this and so I gave it a proper fill, too excited and impatient to bother with flushing first.

I wondered whether my Cobalt Blue might have got a little bit contaminated by silicone grease from being used to fill my TWSBI Vac 700. Close inspection of the ink in the bottle with an illuminated magnifying glass did reveal a slightly oily-looking surface. I wondered whether this was what was stopping the M800 from writing.

However, once filled (the piston was super-smooth) the pen did indeed write and I tried several types of office copier paper that were to hand.

However, when trying it out at home with three different types of letter writing pad, Basildon Bond, John Lewis Script and Paperchase Inscription, I found that it skipped dreadfully. Ironically, it seemed to be happier on photocopier paper rather than heavier, smooth writing paper.

I looked online and soon found lots of advice about running in a new Pelikan nib. One article recommended writing two pages with it, every day for two weeks. I started doing this, as well as using it generally whenever I could. Happily, well before the two weeks was up, the initial skipping problem subsided and then disappeared and it seems therefore to have been simply a case of highly polished rounded nib clashing with highly smooth paper. Now that the nib has adapted a little to the angle at which I hold it to the paper, it writes just beautifully.

As for the weight, it is considerably heavier than my M205 and a good bit wider and longer too. Here they are side by side.

To me the pen just oozes quality, class and luxury from end to end. The Pelikan Souveran online catalogue makes good reading and has some lovely photography. Needless to say, a great deal has been written about the Pelikan 800 and there is no need for me to attempt a review of its specifications here.

Just one niggle recently. In a rare opportunity to enjoy writing on a Sunday morning with some wintry sunshine, slanting in low to my dining room table as I wrote, I became aware of a halo around my nib on the page.   I was writing in a sort of golden ellipse like a comet across the night sky. It soon dawned on me that this was the sunlight reflecting on the gold plated ring at the lower end of the grip section and casting a golden reflection on the paper. I tried to photograph this with one hand as I held the pen and so, apologies for the blurry image, but you will see what I mean.

This was short lived as the winter sun does not last long. However, it struck me that if a golden halo from your new M800 is your biggest irritation in life, you are a very fortunate man.