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Title: Fountain Pens: Past & Present by Paul Erano ISBN: 1574321102 Publisher: Collector Books Pub. Date: July, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent all around book for any pen collector.
Comment: This great book covers all the bases. It starts with a history of fountain pen development. This section is fairly brief but is thorough for its length. It gives a lot of interesting and necessary knowledge of how pens changed over the years. The book also covers how to collect, where to find them, storage and display, repairs, selecting a pen for use, inks, paper, and how to value pens. These sections are necessarily not encyclopedic but they do give all a person needs to get a good start with each of those subjects.
Then there is a nice, in depth discussion of the Major Manufacturers & Their Classics. This section is an excellent article about 7 of the most well known pen makers and their most successful or notable developments and pen models. It's also another look at the history of fountain pens. Of course, some people would say there should be other makers included, but I don't think anyone would say that these 7 don't belong here.
The rest and biggest part of the book is devoted to pictures of specific pens and a value for them. Most of the pictures are colored. The section is broken down into:
Early Fountain Pens
The Golden Age
The Modern Age
Contemporary Fountain Pens
The pictures are EXCELLENT! There are some representative reproductions of old fountain pen ads that give a good feel of the older pen era and also are valuable in identifying some pen models. These ad pictures are sprinkled through the book but are not overdone.
The pen prices, of course, go out of date fast but they do give an idea of the relative value of the pens. The prices are also given in retail, not street prices. This is a minor fault that is just about unavoidable in a book of this type. Prices would have to be issued at close intervals to remain current and street prices are nearly impossible to keep up with.
In my opinion, this is a classic book and the best I've seen about fountain pens. I don't see a single major fault. The quality of binding and printing is excellent also. While not a coffee table book as such and much more valuable, it could double for that if opened to the fine color pictures.
Rating: 5
Summary: Ideal beginners handbook
Comment: This book is not your usual coffee table book that elicits a sigh of possessiveness or, at best, a hope to one day procure the impossibly difficult to find pens, not to say unaffordable! I like Erano's book because it gives one the WORKS-- it tells us how to BECOME and flourish as fountain pen collectors. Of course, it does pay a good deal of attention to the zoological aspect of the hobby (or should I say passion), classifies pens and so forth, but to me the chief value of the book lies in its reality aspect, it gives us tips to be realistic collectors of any age or income group, and not just the snotty set looking for a psychological backup for their already rich and varied collection. In these days of online auctions (ebay and penbid come easily to mind), a book such as Erano's is not only a necessary tool (I have in mind the section on pen repair), but also a amply sufficient one. In particular, I would strongly urge you to not invest money in those highly regarded mindless "pretty pictures" books that cost about 5 to 8 times what this great book costs. I have them also, but i like Erano's the best!
Rating: 3
Summary: First Time Collector
Comment: I don't feel that this is a good book for the beginner. As a beginning collector, I am more interested in how to find and/or buy pens not how to repair them.
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Title: Fountain Pens: Collectible by Juan Manuel Clarke, Juan Manuel Clark ISBN: 2080107194 Publisher: Flammarion Pub. Date: May, 2002 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Miller's Pens & Writing Equipment: A Collector's Guide (Miller's Collector's Guides) by Jim Marshall ISBN: 1840001461 Publisher: Mitchell Beazley Pub. Date: February, 1999 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Fountain Pens: History and Design by Giorgio Dragoni, Giuseppe Fichera ISBN: 1851492895 Publisher: Antique Collectors Club Pub. Date: November, 1998 List Price(USD): $49.50 |
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Title: Collectible Fountain Pens : Parker Sheaffer Wahl-Eversharp Waterman(1018) by Glen Bowen, Glenn Bowen ISBN: 0910173001 Publisher: LW Publishing & Book Sales Pub. Date: October, 1996 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Fountain Pens: Their History and Art by Jonathan Steinberg ISBN: 0789306816 Publisher: Universe Books Pub. Date: October, 2002 List Price(USD): $32.50 |
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