A school pen if ever there was one-- there's few so secure about their
status as an adult as would dare to keep a pen this colour in easy
public view. It's got a sturdy but cheap steel point, a deeply
uncomplicated clip, and feeds from cartridges so the tykes don't get
their fingers (and a surrounding three cubic meters) dirty.
Platignum gots its name when the Mentmore company established what
seems to have been a budget-line in 1919. It seems that they
wanted to call this line "Platinum", but some quirk of British
law insisted that to use that as a name the pen would actually need to
contain some of the metal. This leads to the conclusion that the
middle of the name must be meant to be pronounced as in "sign", but
most people I know tend to say it as a rhyme of flat-pig-numb. As
time went on, Platignum seems to have gotten ever more firmly sunk into
the the second- if not third-tier pen market, although a recent relaunch of the marque seems to be if not expensive (about £25 at the top end, and no sign on them in any North American outlets I can find) are at least interestingly designed.
Functionally, there's not a thing wrong with the pen. Even though
it has a cheap self-tipped point (like Osmiroid's "Rola-Tip"), it
writes with sufficient smoothness. I can't honestly compare it to
a similar line of Sheaffer or Lamy, because it's really worn;
although that does indicate a failure of durability compared to
the Sheaffers, which seem to take decades of use without showing it,
the fact that it's still writing at all well is a mark in its favour.
My one serious complaint about this pen is about the point, but
it's not so much a question of design as wisdom; who puts a broad point
on a
kid's pen? They have enough trouble not collapsing the 'e'
without a huge fat line to contend with.
This pen stands as a bit of a warning about buying cartridge pens of
strange provenance. There's a clearly proprietary cartridge in
this thing, and I wager it's not been made for a couple of decades.
Happily, the business end of it is pretty much the same as an
international pattern cartridge, so one isn't stuck with refilling the
thing until it fails, as in the case of Wearevers and to a lesser extent C/Fs (for which converters can still be got).
Specifications: Broad steel point-- nibs are folded back portions of the tine. Cartridge filler. 12.5cm long capped, 13.9cm posted.
Condition: Overall pretty good for a school pen.
Repairs:
Soaked and flushed feed for cleaning,
For sale?: Not
specifically, as I'm not anxious to sell a pen with a point in this
sort of condition. If it drives you into some ecstacy of
nostalgia, and you feel you must have it, drop a line-- I'm sure we can
come to a reasonable price. Contact me at :
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