How Do I Start Collecting Pens: Fake Montblanc Serial Numbers

After 14 years in the pen business, I have just encountered one the very best fake Montblanc pens I’ve ever seen. It came with a collection of vintage pens for appraisal. I had been told it was a Montblanc rollerball, and it looks very much like a Montblanc Classique. The appraisal customer told me it was a LeGrand.

A quick inspection showed it had a serial number in the clip band, Pix written under the clip, perfect cap band nomenclature. It came with a convincing box and set of papers!

My first clue something was wrong came when I tried taking off the cap. A true Classique has a slip cap. This cap was threaded…and LeGrands are supposed to be threaded…though this pen was too skinny to be a LeGrand. Open the pen, and it took an authentic Montblanc rollerball refill. But, inside the barrel was a metal threaded space when there are no metal threads in an authentic MB Classique. There was so much right and wrong with the pen.

That’s when my brilliant fiancée recommended searching the number on the clip band.

Lo and behold, this pen turned out to have one of the most faked numbers for faux Montblanc pens: EN1340798. Research quickly showed it on fountain pens, rollerballs and ballpoints.

In a security fail for the actual Montblanc company, they don’t track their serial numbers. As such, many, if not most, MB serial numbers are not assigned to a pen owner or provenance of any kind. Montblanc has even acknowledged that sometimes it reuses serial numbers! Ironically, this makes the very security measures the company uses to authenticate its pens that much less secure.

In an effort to help separate the real pens from the fakes, please write in the comments section any other serial numbers you know to be fake. Thanks!