After Parker sold over 20 millions "51" pens, I thought it was about time to make a color identification chart of the avaiable colors.

First of all I want to thank Len Provisor who took his time to compare my first versions of the color charts with actual pens of his collection. It's nice to see that people of the Pentrace community help you out on the spot with projects like this.

As I haven't seen all the colors in real life, Len advised me so I still could come up with a pretty realistic chart . After some "colorful" e-mail exchanges we came to the conclusion that the colors shown below are pretty close to the actual colors.

Some colors (e.g. Nassau green) tend to discolor in some cases so, parts or the whole pen may look different, but the characteristics of the colors remain.

I have divided the colors into two parts, Part I for the Vacumatic versions of the Parker 51 (1941-48) and Part II for the later Aeromatic Parker 51 (1947-72) including two prototype colors which were used on slightly smaller Parker 51 sets ("Blood Red" and "Light Blue") test-sold in California.

There are rumors about a bright purple (beeing different from the "Plum"-color) and a blue green (different than "Nassau Green" or "Teal" ), but I haven't found any useful information to replicate those colors.

While rarity is in the case of the 51 pen mostly depending on the cap style, threre are still some colors which aren't found as often as others:

- Above mentioned prototype colors
- Completely or partially (only the hood/gripping section) transparent Demonstrators
- Nassau Green and Mustard are somewhat rare (in good condition because of its discoloration)
- I haven't come across Buckskin Beige either that often
- Plum (not to be confused with Burgundy or even Cordovan Brown; Plum was listed as a different color beside Burgundy in some Parker catalogues)

Other colors aren't as common as black and grey but still wouldn't be considered rare in my opinion.