Customer Reviews

The Illustrated Guide to Antique Writing Instruments (Schiffer Book for Collectors)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a handy book to take with you when prowling the antique stores for old writing instruments. Recommended by collectors and collector clubs, it's the handiest guide available. If it had an index and covered more of the less well known brands, I would give it five stars.

With fountain pen collecting fast becoming more and more popular, Schneider & Fischler's Illustrated Guided to Antique Writing Instruments is a wonderful introductory text for both budding collectors or those who are merely curious. This book provides brief histories of the major pen manufacturers and color illustrations of fountain pens, pencils, and other writing tools. While I wouldn't call this the definitive book on the subject, it's certainly one of the best books to be had for the price. Highly recommended as a "first book."

This is a valuable and handy pocket (briefcase, etc.) guide to take on a pen expedition. It's a bit big for anything but a large overcoat pocket but is handy when carried in a case. It is mostly a guide to the identification of some of the pens to be found at pen shows and elsewhere. There are brief histories of 18 fountain pen manufacturers but they are short to rudimentary. There is a short but to the point and valuable guide to how to grade a pen.

The rest of the book is devoted to colored photos of various fountain pens. The pictures are very good and the selection of pens shown is very good. The values shown are, like all prices shown in such books, progressively out of date. They are good though to give a relative value for pens.

This is an excellent book for its purpose - to help identify, grade and price used fountain pens. It does its specified purpose well. It's not meant to be an encyclopedia. Such a book would have to be a many volumn set.

Now in a completely revised, updated and expanded third edition, Stuart Schneider and George Fischler's The Illustrated Guide To Antique Writing Instruments continues to be the finest single volume identification and reference guide to pens and other writing instruments for collectors and dealers. Beautifully illustrated on every page with full color photographs of antique pens of all makes and categories, this uniquely beautiful and informative price guide is an indispensable reference that is an essential and enthusiastically recommended addition to any personal, professional, or community library antiques/collectibles reference book collection.

George Fischler and I wrote this book after we were approached by several publishing houses asking us if we would be interested in producing a book for pen collectors that would be inexpensive, pocket sized, and still contain enough information to make it worth carrying around. This was not meant to replace our hardcover books on pen collecting. We did a pretty nice job, certainly supported by the fact that the book is in its third edition and continues to get compliments. If you are looking for one book to answer all your pen collecting questions, our hardcover book "Fountain Pens & Pencils, The Golden Age of Writing Instruments" is more of what you want. If you are looking for a good travel companion when out visiting antique shows or pen shows, this book will become invaluable and pay for itself many times over. The more books you have on pen collecting, the less likely you are to buy an overpriced piece of junk (Often I hear from a dealer on a pen priced at $100 "Sure it's missing the clip, but that is easy to replace"). Look it up in the book. Is it worth $100 in perfect condition? Damaged, it is only good for parts.

This is by far the best book on the subject for the size. It has great pictures (all colored), concise information, and very informative price guides. It covers lots of different pens from major companies, such as Parker, Sheaffer, Waterman, Wahl-Eversharp, Conklin. It also has some useful information on some obscured old US pen companies (all gone now). I don't understand why people are so excited about the big book "Fountain Pens of the World" by Lambrou. It does have more company information and time-line of products and covers more international companies, but that big book has no price guide at all, and is about 8 times more expensive than this little book. In terms of the coverage of the types of pens in major US companies, the big Lambrou book is quite much inferior to this little book. I just love this little one. But admittedly, you need to have more than one books to do some cross-reference.

This book is very enjoyable. If you can't own every pen, you can still have a great time looking at the craftmanship of things gone by.

A small and handy book. There are brief history of the pen companies and short description on pen collecting. The illustrations are nicely done, though the descriptions accompanying them sometimes too short. Good book for beginners. But for serious collcetors, better off with the big version by the same authors.

An outstanding effort. The photographs are superb. Written in an easy language, makes it enjoyable to read to both novice and connoisseur collectors. However, the authors didn't mention some important pens (eg: Parker #14, Parker Duofold mandarin yellow, Parker Duofold Lapis Lazuli). ( My book is the Revised & Expanded 3rd edition, 2000).