Filling Mechanism: Lever Filler

Hold on to your hats, if you love buttery smooth extra-fine nibs! Our Sheaffer Lifetime pen might be a smaller junior-sized vintage pen, but its two-tone 14k gold nib really has what it takes. We restored it with a new ink sac. Solid for now, this pen shows the early warning signs of some possible krazing forming in the cap. Heavy brassing. You might not make it a museum piece, but it will be a helluva daily writer. 11.3cm capped.

Artistic doesn't always work for product photos, but we like the crisp Eversharp in the clip of this black Eversharp Skyline with a gold-filled cap. We restored this vintage pen with a new ink sac. The cap is dent-free, but the barrel shows some wear from use. Most remarkable is the 14k gold nib. It is a fat, juicy writer that goes from about a medium to an incredible 2mm wide! It is not a wet noodle, but if you go easy on its semi-flex nature with patience, it will deliver great results. This is the short version of the pen at 12.5cm capped. Click the headline for close-ups.

Far from being the rarest of Eversharp Skylines, this bandless cap version is definintely uncommon. Happily enough, the cap on this vintage pen is crack free, but it does look as if it had a brush with a lit cigarette on the back of the cap. Unfortunately there's a 2"-crack leading out of the point of the tail of the green barrel. We restored the pen with a new ink sac. The tail crack seems very stable. You will write a smooth medium to medium-broad line with its 14k gold nib. Click the headline for close-ups. 13.3cm capped.

If you think the Eversharp Skyline fountain pen design looks like the streamlined steam engine for the 20th Century Limited, you'd be right! Wahl-Eversharp hired Henry Dreyfuss to design the Skyline...after he designed the train! One of the most popular fountain pens of the 1940s, these vintage pens are a real treat. Ours is fully restored with a new ink sac. The gold-filled cap looks pretty sharp without any dents or serious scratches, but the burgundy pen barrel has a lot of scuffing just below the lever in the photo (though you may not see it in the photo). You will write a slightly dry fine to fine-medium line with its 14k gold nib. Click the headline for close-ups. Standard sized model. 13.2cm capped.

Have you ever seen a 1930s' or '40s' steam engine that looks like this pen? There's a good reason. The Wahl-Eversharp Skyline was designed by the same guy! This fully restored vintage pen has been restored with a new ink sac. It has a burgundy barrel and top dome over its gold-filled cap. However, you might notice that the section is black. We suspect it is a bit of a marriage. The cap isn't perfect, but it still looks pretty good. There are only a couple little marks on it. We were surprised when we dip-tested the 14k gold nib. It looks like a medium point, but it writes a wet, broad line with a little feedback. 13.3cm capped.

Conklin was a little slow to switch from their famous Crescent fillers to lever-fillers, but the more modern fillers worked great. We just restored this Conklin No. 26 with a new ink sac. It is a nice large pen but not oversized. The grip is probably closer to a Pelikan 400. The black-hard-rubber (ebonite) has some chocolate hazing. The chasing is fainter on the barrel than the cap. Minimal brassing on the gold-filled trim and some light wear marks on the cap and barrel. No cracks. Most people will love it for its FLEXI 14k gold nib. It is not a wet noodle, but it flexes from a fine-medium to a shade more than 1mm. The imprint is legible but faded. 13.6cm capped.

Can you spot what makes this Esterbrook Dollar Pen so special? Need to click the headline for a close-up? Need a clue? Look more closely at the bottom of the cap. 3 incised cap bands! This is one of the rarer features to be found on an Esterbrook Dollar Pen. We restored this vintage pen with a new ink sac, and it is in great working order. The cap is crack-free with minimal wear. Unfortunately, there's a scar the wraps a quarter of the way around the barrel between the threads and lever. You can see it in the photo. Unlike most 1551 nibs, we find this one to be an insanely smooth, wet medium writer. The pen itself is the long-skinny version of the pen. Were it the J-series, it would be an LJ, but we aren't sure of the Dollar Pen designation. 12.1cm capped.

As Esterbrook switched from Dollar Pens to the J-model line, they ran out of Dollar Pen caps to match with the Dollar Pen barrels. For a brief while, they married the new supply of J-pen caps to the Dollar barrels. This is one of those pens known as an Esterbrook Transition pen. It is SJ sized in the world of J-series pens, the shorter, skinnier model. We restored this vintage pen with a new ink sac. You'll find a little wear and a couple bite marks on the pen. No cracks. Some people actually like scratchy nibs, and they will love this scratchy extra-fine 2556 nib. If you aren't a fan of scratchy nibs, the beauty of these pens is that the nibs unscrew easily for replacement with smoother tips. 11.6cm capped.