Kimberly Ballpoints 3

Following up on my last post on Kimberly Ballpoints, here is the promised third and final installment . The pens below are a bit different to the other previously cleaned and restored in that they cover three groups of the original Kimberly’s that I have not previously shown ~ Ladies, Gold, and Boxed.

——- * ——-
The following advertisement, featuring New York fashion designer Hattie Carnegie,  is from 1947, and focuses on the ladies version of these pens.

Below are the three pens – a ladies blue, standard black (both with silver bands – 4.95 model), and a 14K gold filled version.  Cleaning involves removing the messy refills which have often clogged up the barrel and cap.  Cleaning the insides and polishing the outsides.   Be careful to not get too aggressive with the 14K wash, as it will begin to rub off with too much polishing.  I recommend maybe a short bath in an ultrasonic cleaner and a gentle rub down with a jewelers cloth.

Finished products below, both closed and posted.  I refill these (as previously mentioned) with carefully trimmed Cross Ballpoint refills.  The blue is probably the brighter blue, marketed as Blue Gabardine in the advertisement above.  Marketed to women was through advertisements such as Ms. Carnegie’s, comparing it to a tube of lipstick, as opposed to the darker more traditional colors, marketed through ads with Humphrey Bogart and Fred McMurray, comparing the pens to cigarettes.

Finally, I have one pen in my collection in its original box and price sticker. This one is the darker green version with the less expensive chrome band and the $4.95 price tag is still visible on the barrel.

My favorite aspect of the box is the cover, which shows some of the brightest (and harder to find) colors available to the model.

Finally, as an addendum, I recently picked up 5 advertising Pockettes, highlighted and promoting the El Rancho Vegas Hotel.   Interestingly, this was the first Hotel/Casino built on the Las Vegas Strip (1941).  It was destroyed by fire in 1960 and never rebuilt.  Somehow, these survived.   They are another example of how Eversharp used this line of pens – to businesses to promote their product, and to thank clients.   Note that the bottom pen is a bit different in configuration than the others.  It is actually a later model of the original, with a smaller cap ring.

This is my third Eversharp Pockette post.  Thank you for allowing me to deviate from the Fountain Pen theme occasionally.  As we hunt for fountain pens, we can’t help but run into their less expensive cousins – cousins that contributed to the Fountain Pen’s demise.

Bogart Ballpoint

After the last post that I wrote about a blue Kimberly Pockette (dated March 4, 2013), I decided to hunt down a 1948 Humphrey Bogart ad for the same pens. This pen was a dubonnet red version, so then I decided to hunt one of those down to match the advertisement. As these are not terribly popular and there are no refills available (see solution below), this was easy to do.

Below is a photograph of the Pockette after I took it apart.  You can see that not only was I able to find the dubonnet colored with the gold filled band and clutch ring, but one with the chrome band/ring.  I have also shown the old refills that were used in these pens.  They are no longer available in usable form.  So, I have experimented and found that Cross refills (shown below with the blue caps) as well as Penatia branded work quite well, when trimmed to the same size.

While looking for the above pens, I came upon black and light green pens, and an advertising version.  Here they are shown, with their dried out refills.

Not a lot of work goes in to cleaning these.  I simply put each part through a bath in an ultrasonic cleaner to remove any dried ink inside the caps and barrels (the refill ends are prone to a bit of leaking).  I then proceeded to polish all of the externals.  The orange promotional pen, probably dated a bit later than these original Pockettes,  has a cheaper plastic and required a bit more work to remove some stubborn stains.

Once cleaned, I measured and cut the new Cross/Penatia refills and cut them to fit each barrel.  The resulting pens are below, measuring 3 3/8 inches closed and 4 3/4 inches posted.

The photo below shows all of the lot completed.  From top to bottom –  Dubonnet red with gold band, Black with chrome band, Dubonnet Red with chrome band, Green with chrome band, and promotional (these came in a wide variety of colors).  The green pen may in fact be a “female” green, as it is a bit lighter than reflected below.  As mentioned in my previous post, and as outlined here, the Pockettes came in male and female colors.

The promotional pen features wording ~ IDEA Advertising by Vernon, Newton, Iowa.  Interestingly, Vernon Advertising is a large employer today, still located in Newton, Iowa – just east of Des Moines.

Individual photos of the “Bogart Ballpoint”..

Finally, some fun with Pen Photos ~   Below I used Mac Collage (free), Instagram, and PicFrame to produce these fun images.  After a while, I get tired of just the same old light tent photos.  Makes the pens look more interesting….

These pens, not fountain pens, are nonetheless useful today, as they were in the 40s and 50s.   Easy to throw in a backpack, pocket, or purse.  I have run across a few more interesting variants, and will restore them over the next few days and post some further photos as finished…