Date codes

A lot of people have sent me email asking how to interpret what appears to be some code around the cap band of the Parker 75 pen, as shown below with the code of IA.

Based upon a survey I made on various pens in my possession having such date codes and some information from several people, I was able make the some deductions.  These deductions are not cast in stone.  If you have some pens with date codes not covered, please send me email.

Here is a table for the 1980s and 1990s.

Year

Parker's use of the codes appear after 1979 and is a carry-over from what they had used on previous.  Each year in the 10 years starting with 1980 and 1990 is represented by a letter from the slogan "QUALITY PEN", up to 1993 which was the last year of production.

For the 1980s, the year code is the first letter with the code for the quarter following.  For the 1990s, the year code is the last letter, following the quarter code.

Quarters

For the 1980s, quarters are represented by the characters E, C, L, and I which follow the year code.  Essentially they would simply carve out the segments of the letter E as time progressed through the year.  This allowed them to use the same die to strike these codes.

For the 1990s, the quarters are represent by the Roman numbers III, II, I, and none.

Like the tactic used for the quarters in the previous 10 years, this allowed Parker to use the same die to strike the codes since they needed only to carve out the 'I' as time passed during the year.

Update of Oct 31, 2001

New Parker ephemera in the form of detailed specifications for the capband inscription added after the Columbus Pen Show 2001 brought to light a correction.  It clearly shows that this form of quarter coding using the vertical bars was started in 1987, not 1990, starting with the letter 'P'!  Furthermore, the implication based on this ephemera, is that Parker would need a new form of date coding after 1996 or that the 75 line was going to end by then.  Of course we now know that the family line was ended years prior to 1996.

Examples

Known Anomalies

1980s table

1990s table

Update of Aug 31, 2001

Update of October 31, 2001

I found an interesting internal Parker document that specifies the cap band inscription requirements.  This specification sheet brings to light several things that affirm, correct and raise some implications.

The first item is that we now have actual proof from a Parker document how the date coding used the words "QUALITY PEN" and that each letter encodes a year within a decade.

Second is confirmation that the vertical bars were indeed used to denote quarters.  But what is rather surprising is that this quarter encoding did not start with 1990 as I originally presumed at the top of this page.  Instead it started with the year 1987!

Of course since the first year to use this quarter encoding form is 1987, this implies the document was made prior to that.  My guess is it came from 1986.  This also implies the previous decade's use of quarter encoding E, C, L, and I, might have actually started in 1977 and not 1980.  In fact we do have some supporting evidence of this.  In my update above is a picture of the US sterling grid 75 FP that had a date code of NI from 1979.

One last observation.  According to the table, the last year for this method of quarter encoding was 1996.  So, either the 75 line would be ended by then or Parker would need to devise another method of quarter encoding.

Update of December 22, 2001

Update of December 14, 2003