As is the case with so many smaller companies, Merlin’s history is a little hard to pin down. It seems that they arose in the rebuilding of Germany following the Second World War. What I’ve been able to dredge up, which is desperately third-hand, is that the company mainly made pens for sale in the Dutch market, and that they did not last a very long time before the rising tide of ball-points smothered them.
During their brief appearance on the scene, Merlin made pens that might be thought of as rather conservative; they used pre-war styling, materials and fillers, and this probably didn’t help them to last in the post-war context of looking to a brighter future (although some makers, notably Pelikan, did get away with this sort of behaviour). However, for the modern collector it means slightly newer examples of the rather nice celluloids that were largely abandoned by 1950.
Models I’ve examined:
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