A story of two pens: the Postal Reservoir Pen – Old and New

The Postal Reservoir pen: the new remake (top) and the original from 1925 (bottom)

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Sometimes it seems like old pens never die. Over the last two decades we have seen the return of many classic designs, often proposed as distant tributes to classic pens, like the modern Waterman Patrician or the Parker Duofold Centennial. Other manufacturers have produced close copies of their old classic pens, like the Sheaffer Balance remake of the 1990s, a pen that, in a LE variant, was even offered as a lever fill pen and was made of beautiful, vintage-looking Rhodoïd.

In other instances we have seen new companies, often started by pen enthusiasts turned manufacturers, take on the task of reviving old Brand names and vintage pen designs, looking for a near-perfect reproduction of a classic pen. Conklin, Wahl, Nettuno are names that live-on thanks to the effort of pen enthusiasts that succeeded in recreating some of the best classic pens of the past.

Today we are looking at one such pen: the Postal reservoir pen.

Old and new side-by-side

A few years ago world renowned pen expert Richard Binder set out to resurrect a few classic pens: the Dunn, the Belmont and the Postal Reservoir pen. These pens are now marketed by Gate City Pens, who also do the final assembly of the pens using parts made (very well, I must add) in large part by Bexley in the USA. The finish of the final product is excellent.

Since I recently found an original Postal pen at an antique fair in Wisconsin and later purchased a modern one, I thought it may be interesting to compare old and new and to record my impressions.

Let’s compare the old Postal Reservoir pen with the modern one:

Dimensionally, the two pens are very close, the old pen being about 3mm longer than the new one. The caps are the same length and diameter, but they do not interchange, due to differences in the threads and also in the structure of the inner cap. In fact, the most visible differences between the two pens can be found in the cap design. The vintage Postal pen, in my view, has a slightly better-looking cap. The cap is made in one piece and is fitted with a simple, short clip, inserted into the cap and fastened from the inside. The new pen opted for a two-piece cap, with a screwed on top which also secures the clip to the cap. The clip itself has a more complex design, with a rotating ball end, which makes it a tad longer than the original. I believe the clip is the same used on other Bexley pens. It is a lovely clip and quite compatible, in style, with the vintage look of the pen, although I would have liked to see a closer copy of the original clip in the new pen.

The barrel of the new Postal pen is nicely machined out of amber-colored acrylic that mimics the look of slightly ambered celluloid. All in all, a nice touch that looks “vintage” and goes well with the rest of the pen. The breather tube is clearly visible through the barrel and is, in my opinion, the least successful detail of the new pen. It is made of white plastic and looks a lot like a cheap plastic ballpoint refill. I would have preferred a black breather tube or a metal one. Even a clear tube would have been better than the opaque white tube that was selected.

The white breather tube is clearly visible in the new pen

 

The section is a close copy of the original, though slightly larger in girth, an increase made necessary by the need to accommodate a modern #6 nib, which is larger than the nib used in the original pen.

The nib in my example of the modern Postal pen is a two-tone steel nib made by JoWo of Germany. In my opinion, the nib looks very similar to nibs manufactured in China and I wonder if it is the fruit of a collaborative effort between JoWo and a Chinese sub-contractor.  Regardless of the Country of origin, this is an excellent nib, very smooth and reliable; it does not disappoint. Like most modern steel nibs, it is quite rigid (in the old days they were called “Manifold” nibs) and probably the best for today’s users, who usually come to fountain pens after having used ballpoint and rollerball pens. The feed is a plastic one and seems to work quite well.

The bulb filler is accessed by unscrewing the long blind cap and is a very close copy of the original. It works quite well (although, like the original, it takes a few squeezes to fill the pen to capacity) and, like its vintage sibling, the pen holds a large volume of ink.

Ink capacity was the main selling point of the original Postal pen. The Postal Reservoir pen was unique, in that it was sold exclusively by mail for $2.50 in the mid-1920s and proved to be a successful pen with a long production run. The filling system was later modified and adopted by many pen manufacturers and can be considered the origin of the popular Vacumatic filler adopted a few years later by Parker, as well as a precursor of filling systems used, among others, by Waterman’s (InkVue), Eversharp and more.

The bulb filling system has been faithfully re-created

Writing test:

How do they write? – No surprises, really!

The new Postal pen writes beautifully. The steel nib in my pen is very smooth, one of the best steel nibs I have experienced in a new pen right out of the box. This is, no doubt, the result of careful nib adjustment by the pen manufacturer. The rigid M nib in my pen offers no line variation, but its smoothness makes it an immediate favorite. A 14K gold nib is available as an option from Gate City Pens.

The vintage Postal pen has a 14K gold nib; the tipping is not as smooth as in the modern nib (although I am sure it can be made very smooth by a nib technician), but the nib offers a great amount of flex, with wonderful line variation. Its performance is typical of nibs used in many pens of the same period.

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A postal reservoir ad from 1928

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Conclusions: the original Postal Reservoir pen is considered a classic that has revolutionized pen design with its large capacity filler and was also unique in being sold exclusively by mail. It was an innovative, affordable, good quality pen, back in 1925. The modern Postal pen is beautifully made, reasonably priced for a low production pen and gives the owner all the advantages of the original, with none of the disadvantages that are typical of a vintage pen, made fragile by age and use. The only attribute that is missing from the modern incarnation of the Postal pen is the flexible nib: today’s pen is made for today’s user and it is a practical and classic design. As such, it must be regarded as a resounding success.

The original Postal Reservoir pen

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Another ad from the 1920s

The NEW Postal by Gate City Pens - a Richard Binder design

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Text and images © 2015 Giovanni Abrate 

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