PA3553 Parker Slimfold Fountain Pen and Pencil Set, boxed. (Semi-Flexible Medium)

PA3553 Parker Slimfold Fountain Pen and Pencil Set, boxed. (Semi-Flexible Medium)

Date: c1972
Size: Capped - 127mm ; posted - 142mm.

This Slimfold set in glossy blue and is in beautiful condition.  The pencil especially looks to me like it has never actually been used, and the pen perhaps once or twice.  Both pen and pencil have unmarked rolled gold trim.  Barrels and caps are in lustrous and scratch-free blue resin.  There are no cracks, splits or chips in either pen or pencil.  This is the late model Slimfold with the rolled gold narrow cap lip bands, simplified pocket clips and rolled gold cap top buttons.    

Fountain Pen

The arrow clip and cap lip band are both free from brassing.  The plastic of both barrel and cap are scratch-free.  The imprint is around the cap lip and is in lovely condition, being deep and crisp.  The nib is a lovely shiny and perfect 14 carat yellow gold Parker No. 5 in medium point.  Opening the pen up, the aerometric filler is shiny and undamaged.  The original pliglass ink sac is still perfectly serviceable and shows just a tiny but of ink staining to the very end, with the rest of the ink sac as clear as a bell.   

Pencil

The rolled gold trim is all unmarked and perfect.  The cap and barrel have no scratching and exhibit a lovely "as new" lustre.    The propel-repel mechanism works faultlessly by twisting the cap.  Taking the cap off, the original pink eraser is apparently unused, but it has hardened over the years.   I have installed a fresh 0.9mm lead into the pencil and it is working perfectly.  These later pencils seem to be very hard to come by at the moment.

Box

The original paperboard criss-cross pattern box is also in very nice condition.  I thas a grey satin pad and inside is the original instruction sheet that is dated to 1972.  

I have fully serviced this set.  During testing, the pen wrote beautifully.  The nib is very smooth and writes with a wet and consistent medium width line.  It has some lovely softness and will give you some almost effortless line width variation from a fine to a generous medium.