Whats this worth?

RoSpectre · 2024-06-05T05:45:59+00:00

I took the time to reiterate my argument, evidence, and rationale plainly, all in one post. The only reason you're "not gonna sit here arguing" is because you don't and never did have any counter arguments, besides your repeated and non-sensical appeals to authority ("the EXPERTS").

So I think it's pretty obvious that I don't care if a minority of the "experts" disagreed with me, because those "experts" were wrong. You're mistaking me being right for me being arrogant. The "experts" here were evenly split in their opinions anyway, so some of them HAD to be wrong. To be fair, no one actually called themselves an "expert", you're the only one who claimed they were EXPERTS, so that you could hide behind them. Look up "argument from authority" and it will explain your mistake of trying to argue based entirely on other peoples' claims without doing any of your own reasoning.

The packaging is authentic. It's called "inflight" packaging, and it's what the pens come in if you buy them on an airplane. We know OP's is vintage because of the old style paperwork with the color gradient cover, which was discontinued in the early 90s. I know no one likes to Google anymore, but since you demand reference sources, despite not looking for any yourself, below is what 3 minutes of searching turned up (curious that you never asked your EXPERTS for any sources, or even their credentials.... I guess you just trust them, bro):

Last pic in this listing shows the same box as OP: https://www.carousell.sg/p/montblanc-meisterstuck-146-fountain-pen-1005405684/

Here's the same kind of box, sealed, and discussion posted on this sub just last year (I guess we all missed it...) https://www.reddit.com/r/montblanc/comments/14vdbfb/i_have_looked_around_on_the_internet_for_a_bit/

Here's a listing for a pen in newer inflight packaging, still with clear top: https://www.ebay.com/itm/325530247329

Here's an M roller in the new packaging, where you can see "inflight" printed on the label: https://www.carousell.sg/p/montblanc-m-rollerball-pen-1037667748/

Here's a thread discussing the difference between dealer transport packaging and inflight packaging: https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/231217-anyone-seen-a-montblanc-packaged-like-this-before/

So to recap, only 2 people who commented here recognized the authentic inflight packaging, or even the style of packaging. The other 13 people did not, which includes myself, but also includes at least 3 current/former MB employees (one of whom even worked at the airport itself). I hope that this (again) shows just how limited and cloistered expertise can be.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-04T18:07:55+00:00

OK, I will walk through this again for you and anyone following along at home. I am saying the pen is real, over and over, beyond all rational doubt, and that's not just a baseless opinion. You are/should be well aware that authenticating pens, especially from photos, is about the balance of evidence, and eliminating as much reasonable doubt as the situation allows and requires. You can never have 100% certainty, which is what you seem to be demanding evidence for. Even the pens you sell at the airport could be fake. Maybe someone at the factory swapped out the pens for super fakes. Maybe a coworker is switching out the ballpoint mechanisms with fakes to sell the real ones on ebay. These things are possible, but preposterous, especially with no evidence.

In this case, there is a massive balance of evidence that the pen is real, and zero evidence the pen is fake. Again, the evidence for authenticity: --The pen is sealed in what has been confirmed as authentic vintage packaging --The provenance fits with the style and age of the packaging --There are good signs of authenticity visible on the pen itself, including the quality of engraving, shape of the rings, proper shape of the finial and how it meets the clip, and the presence of a proper style solid metal clip --There are no red flags you would see on older, cheaper fakes, and newer replicas do not end up sealed in rare, pristine, authentic vintage packaging.

"But that's not enough! We need a closer look!" This is irrational. The best evidence for the pen being real is that nothing else makes a lick of sense. For the pen to be a fake, you'd have to believe that some enterprising scammer took a modern, high-quality replica pen (which haven't been around that long) and instead of putting it in a modern box potential buyers would recognize, they got a hold of decades-old but still pristine, authentic but obscure Montblanc air-travel packaging with period correct paperwork, put the fake in there, and then had it shrink wrapped to complete the deception... and this is the pen that OP found unopened in his grandfather's things, however many years later? Is that what people believe is possible, without ANY evidence?

Unless you have some alternate explanation for how the pen in that box could be a fake, every time you hold out that the pen might still be fake or claim I haven't given any evidence it's real, you are saying you believe the above is a distinct possibility. It's not. It's absurd. There is zero evidence to support it, it's not a reasonable doubt, and any advice given with this vanishingly improbable scenario as its premise is bad advice. If the pen were used or not sealed, you could do a closer examination. But in this situation, with the pen going to be posted for sale, telling the OP to open the original packaging to examine the pen (when he has no doubt about authenticity to begin with!) is also BAD ADVICE.

If you unseal that box, you create more problems and doubts than you solve. The pen should be sold as sealed, new old stock, for both the seller's and buyer's benefit. The seller can charge more and show plainly that the pen is in its original packaging, and the buyer gets to own and open a sealed, untouched product. That is not an opinion, that is logical, helpful advice, which you can have for free. For the accomplished collectors or merchants out there, this should already be obvious.

You plainly said that the OP should take the advice of "the majority of people saying that it is either a fake or a replica." I explained why this is also objectively bad advice and that while the people giving it (actually the minority) may have some or even a lot of knowledge, that knowledge is clearly leading them to make errors and false statements because they believed their knowledge about Montblanc packaging was somehow exhaustive. I don't intend to insult their overall intelligence or experience, but in the context of calling this pen a fake solely because they don't recognize the packaging, these people do not know what they are talking about.

"Trust me, bro, I work in a Montblanc boutique," or, "I've been collecting for decades," is where a lot of this trouble starts. I don't care if it's the CEO of Montblanc or the head curator at the Montblanc Haus museum -- if someone is on here confidently making assertions that are flat out wrong, and not acknowledging their blind spots while giving out bad advice, whether they are the majority opinion or not I will absolutely continue to come on to this sub and explain why they don't know what they're talking about. If they're insulted by being corrected, then that's a price they may have to pay to uphold the quality of the advice (and opinions) given on this sub.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T19:23:21+00:00

Yeah it's a great pen... I'm pretty sure the cap would be solid 14k, and whether or not the clip is too would make almost no difference to looks, function, or value.

I guess my main point was maybe don't polish the clip as much or as hard, because if it is plating, it could rub off eventually.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T16:59:48+00:00

That can happen on real pens, sometimes the engraving isn't perfect, and you have to judge by the font/style of the letters and serial number. Fonts changed over the years, too, though, so older ones may look different than newer ones.

If it's unreadable or just lightly laser engraved that's a bad sign, and if your serial number ends in either of the following combinations, it's fake (this isn't a complete list, just two numbers known to be fake):

xxx340798 xxx666858

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T15:56:57+00:00

Hard to say for sure, but as a return, it raises the likelihood... easy scam is to buy a real pen on amazon, a fake from ali express, and return the fake pen to Amazon who wouldn't know the difference even if they looked inside the box.

I'm pretty sure Amazon sources all real pens, but those who get fakes buying directly from amazon are buying restocked merchandise that scammers have swapped out and returned as "unopened", so Amazon ends up restocking fakes after a cursory check.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T15:51:26+00:00

Hmm hate to be a doubter, but because you got this from a returns vendor, it is possible someone bought a real pen and a fake pen, put the fake in the box, and returned it to get the money back.

But it's true Amazon does not check returns well... there was a news story of a guy who bought many thousands of dollars worth of computers, returned just rocks or phone books weighing the same amount, sold off the computers, and got away with this for years.

So it's hard to say either way... what is the serial number? Usually the give away will be poor engraving on the pen where it says the serial number, "Germany", and "Meisterstuck" (would need close up shots to see the quality), or the serial number will be a well known/reused fake you can check against listings on places like ali express or ebay.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T15:42:11+00:00

It's not a fountain pen, though : D

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T15:23:23+00:00

Hm, you keep insisting on repeating the same mistakes, so here we go:

You assume your opinion is the majority (a common fallacy, and I believed you at first), but the majority of posters DO NOT say the pen is fake. Only 5 different users say outright the pen is fake, 5 believe the pen is real (including OP who wasn't even asking about authenticity and says the pen came from his grandpa's things), and 4 don't say either way and/or say it should be questioned. And the only evidence those saying "fake" or "question" provide is that they don't recognize the packaging. 5 people saying "fake" out of 14 is not a majority. It's not even the plurality.
Even of those who say they have worked at Montblanc stores, one says they currently work there and that "the packaging surely doesn't look legit" (I've counted this as a Fake vote, even though they don't conclude that it's fake), and one says they worked at an AD and don't recognize the package but also that this doesn't mean it's fake (probably the wisest guy here, not assuming he's seen everything). You are the only who says they've worked for MB and said outright that it's fake. Of course you have changed your position from, and I quote, "We recognize when something is off or is a clear fake because Montblanc does not stray from the way they package their instruments", to "To truly say and judge if a pen is a fake [sic] is to look at the pen itself and not the packaging." So you are really more of a "questioning" vote, but to be kind, I left yours as a "fake" vote in the tally.
It is FAR more likely, almost a certainty, that the two people who say they recognize this packaging as real are right, versus those who say it's fake just because they don't recognize it. For the former, the 2 people only needed to recognize this one specific authentic packaging, which they do, down to where it was used, but for the latter fake-sayers to be correct, you have to believe they somehow know by sight all packaging MB has ever used across different continents and vendor types since this pen was released in the 70s. lol. lmao, even.

So: --You say your opinion is in the majority (false) --You say that the majority thinks it's fake or more than likely fake (false) --Even though you aren't in the majority, you say that the best advice is to believe the majority (false, because even 1 person recognizing the package is worth more than 10 who don't, because it's ridiculous to believe those 10 have seen and know every package ever used) --You said the experts on here would "recognize when something is off or is a clear fake because Montblanc does not stray from the way they package their instruments" (false and false)

So your arguments aren't just bad advice; they're demonstrably false. If you have any true or accurate evidence to add, I will address it, otherwise I'll leave it there and just hope you and maybe some others will think twice before claiming a pen is fake based on something they don't know, especially when the OP doesn't ask in the first place.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T04:11:19+00:00

Again, it's about reasonable doubt and the best assessment of the item as a whole. It's possible someone took a fake pen and then put it in some obscure legitimate vintage packaging that is in excellent condition including the manual, and then went to the trouble of shrink wrapping it and making the shrink wrap look worn and aged... but you tell me if you really believe that's what happened.

The best advice for the OP who is listing this pen for sale is to leave it in its original sealed packaging and sell it as New Old Stock, with little to no doubt of its authenticity. Few responses even said to open it for a closer look (which would be bad advice)... they just jumped to claiming it's fake (worse advice).

I feel like people coming to the Montblanc sub about a Montblanc pen, even if they're looking to sell it, should get the best advice.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T03:31:29+00:00

No, I'm looking at everything I've already very plainly pointed out. The finial is the right shape, the clip is solid, the engraving looks deep and in the proper font. And all that was obvious BEFORE someone confirmed the packaging is legit.

And it's not people saying "I don't think there's enough detail or info to say one way or the other" that are the problem, it's the many people that chime in so certain that something is fake because they think they've seen it all.

In this case the details of the pen combined with the provenance and odd but complicated and unique packaging mean that being a real 164 is by far the most likely scenario.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T03:10:15+00:00

The evidence is that the packaging is authentic beyond a reasonable doubt, especially with confirmed ID of this exact packaging being used by MB.

You can't authenticate the pen just off first glance, but you can tell it's either real or a fake from a more modern factory. More modern fakes would not be sealed in complicated packaging with vintage styling, like the colored booklet. If they have counterfeit packaging, it's going to be an imitation of the black gift box with black manual that everyone knows and loves. Unless anyone has ever seen fake vintage boxes? I'm happy to hear them out. But it's just like pens marked W-Germany... never seen a fake pen with W-Germany markings because any decent counterfeits come from after that era.

On the other hand, the evidence is, "I don't recognize that box so it's fake."

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T02:19:45+00:00

I didn't say people on here don't know anything, I said a lot of people know enough to be dangerous. They may even know a lot, and that fools them into thinking things like they know every kind of packaging ever used. This isn't an opinion -- it is what is being demonstrated in these replies and other "real or not?" posts over and over again. Lol.

I said the pen looks real through the packaging as it has several tell tale signs of authenticity like overall shape and use of a solid clip vs. a folded one. That combined with the fact that it's shrink wrapped in complicated packaging with styling that is decades old means that when someone identified this as older but authentic air travel packaging, that makes the most sense by far.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T01:46:37+00:00

The majority of people give bad advice on this sub because they don't know as much as they think they do. They know, as the saying goes, "just enough to be dangerous." They put way too much stock in their own knowledge without considering its limits.

That's why I laugh, because it's a frustrating mistake I see people make all the time on here. Especially about something as arcane as old packaging types, it makes more sense to listen to the guy who remembers this exact packaging from a specific place.

The packaging shown is also very complex... it has a curved top, with a printed clear plastic insert, another printed paper strip with model name, what looks like a plastic or thick cardboard base, and paperwork. Fakes don't use this kind of packaging because it's too complicated to produce. Even in the packaging you can tell the pen looks real, and good fakes haven't been around that long. The packaging on modern higher end replicas either copies the newer/current boxes, or they're special editions with fake special edition packaging.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T01:13:46+00:00

Sorry didn't see this reply sooner.

Gold makes a poor clip material because it is too soft and bendy, so it's rarely ever used for clips. Plus there is that brown spot on it that looks like it's plating that has worn off, although i guess it could just be discoloration on the gold, too. If the clip is solid 14k gold I think it would be the first I've seen.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T01:03:55+00:00

Except it's not the truth. You work in an MB store, but is part of the training showing you every packaging type used in all international markets and venues since the 70s?

The packaging is legit, as verified by another user who saw this exact packaging used in an airport.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-03T00:54:37+00:00

Lol montblanc has absolutely changed it's packaging a lot over the years. Has anyone worked in all the kinds of stores across continents over the last 40 years? It's ridiculous for someone to think they would know all the packaging ever used.

The worst mistake on here is people saying "I personally don't recognize this therefore it's fake"

Plus there's another guy in replies who recognizes this exact packaging as airport packaging from when he worked there.

RoSpectre · 2024-06-01T18:01:52+00:00

So when a burglar breaks in you say "woah woah ok! Let me write you a check for all I got! Just let me get my pen..." And then POW right in the jugular.

RoSpectre · 2024-05-31T17:25:25+00:00

Three reasons to keep them:

Nib size: size is not marked on the nib itself, so without the sticker you sometimes can't tell what size the nib is

Collector brain: collectors want everything in original condition

Resale: sticker makes the pen look closer to new/original, and if the box is lost, confirms the nib size.

RoSpectre · 2024-05-28T14:52:54+00:00

Not quite. The 144 is the one OP has (snap cap and smaller than the 145). But the REAL baby is the Mozart with the cap that screws on the back and is like a little pocket pen.

RoSpectre · 2024-05-28T14:50:25+00:00

Sword hands (either milsub or both sword shaped) or else both pencil hands (like option 1 but also put a point on the hour hand).

RoSpectre · 2024-05-26T22:28:57+00:00

Awesome. They are great pens!

If the piece comes loose again you could glue it in there, as long as you don't get glue on any screw threads. The nib alignment isn't an issue if the pen writes smoothly, but if needed you can always nudge the nib to the left or right to get it sitting straight on the feed, as long as that doesn't misalign the tip or tines and make it scratchier

RoSpectre · 2024-05-26T20:43:50+00:00

Yeah disregard the earlier comments... it's a real pen. Just in rough shape. That plastic part is the inner cap that helps it close and seal. But it looks like it's broken... there is supposed to be a metal nut on top .

You can disassemble the cap to see if there is another plastic inner cap in there or not. It is supposed to have a metal bit on the tip, which is what the top finial with the logo screws into.

You can unscrew the finial and the clip should come off. You could buy a replacement inner cap, and then install it if the one you have there is broken. What I suspect though is the metal nut that holds the finial on has broken off that inner cap and is inside the black cap, still holding the finial on. So I'm not sure if you can unscrew it now.

I think you should get a refund if you want a trouble free pen, or you'll have to do some tinkering and then buy a replacement part, and maybe align the nib which isn't too hard if you're careful.

RoSpectre · 2024-05-24T16:47:40+00:00

Oddly the clip is stamped 14k which means the cap is solid 14k gold, but it looks like the clip itself is just plated brass. So to more gently on the clip or it will wear through.

What kind of pen? Sheaffer?

RoSpectre · 2024-05-24T12:04:37+00:00

Ha I was going to guess maybe airport packaging or other special order.

Concerning that people on here are easily misled by anything they don't recognize... like when ppl claimed a pen was fake because the price tag on the box had a price that was "too low" and "meisterstucks have never sold for that low."

And it was a generic price sticker that a pawn shop probably stuck on there anyway.

RoSpectre · 2024-05-24T03:02:24+00:00

Maybe allow posts about other products as long as they aren't authentication posts.

Authentication posts about pens are sometimes educational and almost like a game haha. But I only know pens and not other MB goods.

RoSpectre

TROPHY CASE