My first fountain pen - Parker 45 from my dad
This is truly my first "branded" fountain pen. It belongs to my father and I actually damaged his pen when I was young and I kept the pen in a drawer for many years. One day when my house was doing some painting or renovation work, we started to shift some furniture and the pen appeared again. By that time, I was studying at the National University of Singapore. When walking around Parkway Parade shopping mall with Chee Hoon, I saw a pen shop named Lin Kong and decided to ask if the pen can be repaired.
To my wonderful surprise, the pen could be repaired with a brand new nib and the pen could once again be used again. This discovery and the term life time guarantee started my hobby of vintage fountain pen collection.
During weekend, we would visit the various pawn shops, old stationary shops, flee markets, garage sales etc to search for vintage and old pens that have left in the shelf and drawer. Remembering that in the 1980s fountain pens were not a popular instruments as many were using the ball point of the roller balls pens, these fountain pens could be found cheap and very often, I could even get them in boxes..
Those were the wonderful and happy days where the hunt was as good as the ownership. My turning point in vintage pens collecting came when I met my sifu Mr. TK Lee who taught me the real act and skill of pen collecting...
The Parker 45 was designed by Don Doman (who also designed the Jotter, Parker 61, Parker VP, Parker 75, Parker T1 and Liquid Lead) Parker 45 (actually named after the western revolver) was aimed to shoot into and make a kill on the economy market in 1960. Interesting marketing concept indeed!
