Wearever Sterling Silver Overlay Cartridge Fountain Pen 1969

by Jim Mamoulides, November 29, 2024

Wearever Sterling Silver overlay cartridge fountain pen 1969

The Wearever Grail Pen

This is a pen that is often described as the “Wearever Grail Pen” and like many uncommon pens it has a bit of folklore attached to it. There are Wearever collectors who have or hope to have one. Hopefully I can clear up some of the story of this pen, but there are things that are just lost to history. I’ll present what I could find and try to fill in the rest with my best guesses.

This is a specialty version of one of David Kahn, Inc.’s Wearever cartridge fountain pens from the 1960s. It looks like a 5 1/2 inch long cartridge version of a black plastic Wearever Supreme fountain pen with a sterling silver filagree overlay. The base pen is a black cigar shape with a black section, a stainless steel nib, and a clip and cap band that appear to be polished steel. Slipped over the cap and barrel are sterling silver sleeves decorated with leaf and vine pattern cut outs. Only the barrel sleeve is stamped STERLING. The nib and clear “C-Flow” feed are the same unit used in the Wearever Saber cartridge pen. At the time a Wearever cartridge fountain pen with twelve cartridges could be had for one to two dollars. These sterling overlay pens were a special order made for F. W. Woolworth’s 90th Anniversary Stockholders' Meeting.

The presentation box tells the date and purpose story. The Wearever Woolworth 90th Anniversary pen was delivered in a dark color hard cover clamshell presentation case in a cardboard sleeve box. The presentation case is similar to a 1950s Sheaffer Snorkel presentation case and is designed to hold one pen with an elastic loop, strongly suggesting there was no matching pencil.

Imprinted on the presentation case top is:

Commemorating Woolworth’s
90th Anniversary
Stockholders' Meeting
May 21, 1969
Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Imprinted on the red satin interior lining above the pen:

This fountain pen is a replica of the pens bought from David Kahn, Inc. by Frank W. Woolworth in 1908 and sold in his stores at 10 cents each.

David Kahn, Inc. manufactured approximately one million of the original for the Woolworth stores, and being one of Woolworth’s oldest suppliers, still manufacturers fountain pens found on Woolworth counters today.

David Kahn, Inc. has manufactured over 100 million pens selling up to $1.00 for Woolworths.

Woolworth’s 90th Anniversary Celebration

The pens were made to commemorate the F. W. Woolworth Company’s 90th anniversary and were to be presented at the 57th annual stockholders' meeting held in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in May 1969. The city greatly anticipated the event and planned its own Woolworth Founder’s Day celebration the same month. The local Woolworth store changed its historic signage to the company’s new corporate look. The stockholders' meeting itself had two events. Tuesday evening, May 20 was the Founder’s Day Dinner held at the Host Town Motel with a guest list of 180, including directors and officers of Woolworth, Lancaster civic leaders, state and local government officials, and business, educational, and religious leaders. The stockholders' meeting was held on Wednesday morning, May 21 also at the Host Town Motel.

Wearever Sterling Silver overlay cartridge fountain pen 1969

Frank Winfield Woolworth opened his first Woolworth store in Utica, New York on February 22, 1879, as "Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store," and it was a failure. Undeterred, he moved his stock south to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and opened the first successful Woolworth store on June 21, 1879. The store opened with $410 of inventory and first day sales were $127.65. Lancaster was chosen for the anniversary because of that successful start and was part of a plan to regionalize the stockholders' meetings to get the board closer to the shareholders in each sales region. The company previously held every stockholders' meeting in Watertown, New York from the first one in 1912 to 1965. The decision to regionalize the meeting meant the 1966 meeting was in San Francisco, Chicago in 1967, and Atlanta in 1968.

At the time of the 1969 stockholders’ meeting, Woolworth operated 4,897 retail stores, including 92 Woolco department stores and 873 Kinney Shoes stores around the world and had annual sales of $1.9 billion, more than double the sales of 1958. There were 1,137 stores operating in the UK. Company plans for 1969 included adding almost 200 new stores and expanding into the food service business with 10 new Harvest House cafeterias and 53 additional in-store restaurants.

On the agenda for the Wednesday stockholders' meeting was a proposal by New Yorkers Lewis G. Gilbert, his brother John, each holding 432 shares and John C. Henry, holding 100 shares, out of the 28 million shares outstanding, to restore a fixed dollar pension ceiling and limit stock option plans, which the board opposed. The stockholders also were to consider increasing preferred stock from two to seven million shares. A slate of twenty-three directors were to be elected.

Speakers at the Tuesday night dinner included Robert C. Kirkwood, chairman of the board, Lester A Burcham, president, Keith Spalding, president of Franklin and Marshall College, and Lancaster Mayor Thomas J. Monaghan. Samuel Slaymaker of the Slaymaker Lock Company of Lancaster was asked to represent the eighty early suppliers to Woolworth since the first stockholders’ meeting in 1912.

Could Lancaster host such a large meeting?

Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1970 was a city of about fifty-eight thousand people about eighty miles west of Philadelphia. It was on the Pennsylvania Railroad line, so accessible to business travelers by train.

Postcard of the Host Town Motel with a 1976 postage cancel date

The Host Motel opened in 1962 on a nine and a half acre lot on 30 Keller Avenue behind and across the tracks from the Lancaster Pennsylvania Railroad Station. Originally planned for 200 rooms, the number eventually changed to 193. The name was changed in 1966 to the Host Town Motel, which remained until 1986. The plan was to build the “largest and most luxurious” motel in the area. The building was U shaped with two story wings and a three story center, equipped with banquet facilities that could host a thousand guests, several shops on the property, and an 800 car parking lot with a pedestrian ramp connecting it to the train station. The motel certainly appeared large enough to handle the out of town guests and catering for the stockholders' meeting. The landscaped lot had two swimming pools, a playground, three tennis courts, and basketball, handball and volleyball courts. It had a separate “cabana club” on site. The motel, then known then as the Country Hearth Inn, closed February 15, 2012.

Why David Kahn, Inc.?

David Kahn, Inc. was a significant supplier to Woolworth over at least sixty years. Being able to make a million ten cent pens for Woolworth in 1908 and maintain a positive supplier relationship over that many years earned the company an invite to create this gift pen.

At the time of the stockholders' meeting, David Kahn, Inc. was located about 60 miles north of Lancaster in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania. The family owned company was established in 1896 by a Latvian immigrant and is long associated with the Wearever brand name to the point that the brand outshines the company name. Kahn, the namesake and chairman of the company, died at the age of 84 in 1958, and was succeeded by his son, Julius as president, his second son Samuel was secretary, and his son in law Harry Yager was vice president and treasurer. The company had a 100,000 square foot factory in North Bergen, New Jersey that they were outgrowing, so in 1967 the company built a new factory on Highway 61 in West Brunswick Township, Pennsylvania near Deer Lake. The large one story factory was to have 500 employees in a 150,000 square foot facility, representing a $2 million annual payroll. The build celebrated the 70th year of the company. David Kahn, Inc. had already opened a manufacturing plant in Mexico City in 1957, employing there about 300 people.

Specialty work continued to be done in North Bergen, New Jersey for some time during transition. Average production at Deer Lake was 1.25 million pens a week. As of 1969, the company made retractable ballpoint pens, stick ballpoint pens, fiber tip pens, ink cartridge pens, mechanical pencils and fountain pens. Three generations of the family had been involved in managing the company and it remained there in until acquired by Dixon Ticonderoga in1987.

Questions to answer

What were the original pens made in 1908 by David Kahn, Inc.? A strong statement appears in the lining of the pen box. This is a replica of a ten cent retail price pen David Kahn, Inc. manufactured about one million of for Woolworth’s. What would that original pen look like? I believe the early date and low selling price points to it being a simple hard rubber eyedropper filling pen with a sterling silver or plated metal filagree overlay. It would be made as cheaply as possible to hit a cost that would make a selling price of ten cents profitable. Maybe the company had some drawings of the original pattern and copied it for this pen’s overlays. I just don’t have any early company information to validate that.

United States Trademark registration 267,704 for “WEAREVER” registered February 25, 1930

Were the 1908 pens branded as Wearever pens? The earliest use by David Kahn, Inc. of the “Wearever” brand I could find is in U. S. trademark registration 267,704 for WEAREVER, printed vertically, applied for on February 15, 1929 and registered February 25, 1930. The claim is the trademark was in continuous use since 1918. I doubt the original 1908 pens were branded Wearever given that original use trademark date. Perhaps they were store branded pens, a common practice with large retailers at the time.

How many of the Wearever Woolworth 90th Anniversary pens were made? I’ve repeatedly seen and heard that “less than 100 were made.” I believe this is pure speculation and is in error. Let’s look at the composition of the stockholders’ meeting and the Tuesday night dinner. I think the pens were part of a gift package, similar to what you might see at the Oscars, and were presented only to dinner attendees. The meeting organizer would need to know how many gift packages to put together, who they were for, as they may have been personalized, when people were arriving and leaving, who was staying where, and so on. I’ve planned senior executive meetings myself and everything is made to measure. A stockholders' meeting of a publicly traded company (listed on the New York Stock Exchange as symbol Z from 1912-1997) might have any number of unplanned attendees, regardless of attempts to control that. Who would make a gift package for an unknown number of attendees? I think it’s reasonable to think that about 200 total were made, specifically for the invited Tuesday dinner guests, so there would be enough for the gift packages with some extras.

Why wasn’t Julius Kahn invited? It does appear that he was not, as he’s not mentioned anywhere in the local papers. It would have been a short trip from Deer Lake or even New Jersey. It is clear that Samuel Slaymaker of the Lancaster based Slaymaker Lock Company was asked to be the representative of all the early Woolworth suppliers. That decision was probably because of limited seats at the dinner. He’s local, so he was picked.

Identification Guide and Features:

Wearever Sterling Silver overlay cartridge fountain pen 1969

Based on the packaging, this was a specialty version of one of David Kahn, Inc.’s Wearever cartridge fountain pens from the 1960s. It resembles a black plastic cartridge version of the Wearever Supreme with a sterling silver overlay. These were probably only made for the 90th Anniversary Woolworth’s Stockholder’s Meeting, making them a special order item that may not have been made before or since. It was probably only made in black and probably had no matching pencil.

• Solid black plastic cap and barrel
• Black plastic nib section
• Polished stainless steel clip stamped WEAREVER near the top
• Cap band may be polished stainless steel
• Cap and barrel have sterling silver filagree overlays
• Barrel overlay is stamped STERLING near the nib section edge
• Cartridge filler
• Threaded cap
• Stainless steel nib stamped WEAREVER down the middle, MEDIUM on one side, and 8363 U.S. on the other
• Clear “C-Flow” feed
• About 5 1/2 inches long capped and 6 1/8 inches posted
• Retail price, is unknown, and probably was a negotiated special price item
• Packaged in clamshell box with red satin lining with imprints on the top and inside
• Clamshell box only has one pen loop, so probably no matching pencil was made

Performance

I’ll admit I was pretty excited to find one of these pens since I had never actually seen one in person. The price was right, and the pen appeared to be in good condition, so I clicked “Buy It Now” and a few days later it showed up, carefully packed. Knowing I was buying a Wearever and having had a LOT of them over the years, my expectations were pretty low that it would be an exceptional pen, and I was not disappointed.

This black plastic with Sterling Silver overlay Wearever cartridge fountain pen is a standard size, about 5 1/2 inches long capped and 6 1/8 inches posted. In spite of the additional weight from the metal overlay, it’s not too heavy in the hand. I don’t know why, but it feels bigger than I expected.

Wearever Sterling Silver overlay cartridge fountain pen 1969

Before I talk about writing with it, let’s get the fit and finish out of the way. The pen looks pretty good in the hand. That’s before taking the cap off. Like the very many all-plastic Wearever Supremes I’ve had over many years, the cap is overly tight and is difficult to unscrew from the barrel. Were they all like this new? I bet not, but decades later the plastic has probably shrunk just enough to make taking the cap off annoying.

Unlike many Wearever Supremes, the clip and cap band are quite secure. A closer look at the cap band and the edges of each overlay reveals why. There was a liberal use of glue to keep things in place and there is clear glue slop everywhere.

The overlays look nice enough from a distance. They have an interesting leaf and vine pattern filagree that works well on the pen, but a closer look shows really rough edges to the cutouts that frankly look hurried or sloppy. On any other branded pen, it would be embarrassing. Two things would make the pen look better. Eliminate the cap band, bringing the cap overlay all the way to the edge of the cap and make the cutouts cleaner. The barrel overlay appears to have its edge painted black, which was poorly done and some of the silver shows through in places. Why paint the edge black?

One last nit. It’s really hard to polish. I found that even after a lot of work, there were spots, especially around the clip, that I could not get shiny and black free. I may have to spend a little more time on a better strategy.

I did not have a full Wearever cartridge (who does?), so I dip tested the pen. The firm medium nib writes exactly like the one on the late 1950s Wearever Pacemaker. Firm, reasonably smooth and pencil-like on paper, with an even line. I could see using a dull syringe and refilling the cartridge if I wanted to use it.

These pens are uncommon. I hate to say rare, but I’ve only seen very few ever offered. I believe only about 200 were made, about double what I've heard and read online. If you really want one, buy it! Just don’t expect it to be high quality fit and finish. Is it the grail pen of Wearevers? Yes, but there are other Wearevers that I like better.

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References

Advertisement, The Sacramento Bee, Sacramento, California, September 4, 1969, page 51

“Controversial Investor to Attend Woolworth Parley” Lancaster New Era, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, May 17, 1969, page 4

“David Kahn Dies At 84; Rites To Be Held Today” The Record, Hackensack, New Jersey, May 19, 1958, page 9

“David Kahn Was Devoted to a Wide Range of Charities” by Marvin Duskin, Des Moines TribuneThe Jersey Journal, Jersey City, New Jersey, May 19, 1958, page 4

“Deer Lake Plant Hosts Sales Meeting” Pottsville Republican, Pottsville, Pennsylvania, December 14, 1967, page 9

“Host Motel to Open for Limited Business in February” Lancaster New Era, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, February 02, 1962, page 20

“Host Town coming down” by Tim Mekeel, LNP/Lancaster Online, May 31, 2012

“Keller Ave. Tract May Be Site Of Motel” Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, March 24, 1960, page 1

“Lancaster To Have Big Role In Woolworth Celebration” Sunday News, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, February 23, 1969, page 32

“New Deer Lake Plant To Make Pens, Pencils” Pottsville Republican, Pottsville, Pennsylvania, January 31, 1967, page 1

“Pencil Plant Employs 400” Pottsville Republican, Pottsville, Pennsylvania, January 28, 1969, page 18

“Wearever Pens Expects to Hire 500” The Call, Schuylkill Haven, Pennsylvania, February 2, 1967, page 1

“Woolworth Marks 90th Birthday Here” Lancaster New Era, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, May 20, 1969 page 23

“Woolworth’s Outlines Major Pa. Expansion Plans at Meeting Here” by Charles H. Kessler Lancaster New Era, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, May 21, 1969, page 39

“Woolworth To Mark Founding Here Tues.” Intelligencer Journal, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, May 16, 1969, page 43

“World’s Largest Pen Maker” The Jersey Journal, Jersey City, New Jersey, September 6, 1962, page 5

United States Trademark registration 392,370 for “WEAREVER DIP IT” filed May 6, 1937

United States Trademark registration 267,704 for “WEAREVER” applied for on February 15, 1929 and registered February 25, 1930