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Pattern |
Completely smooth, devoid of any pattern. |
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Material |
Sterling Silver |
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Availability (model #) |
Fountain pen (#205-000), BP (rare) and pencil. The ballpen shown above appears to be a prototype as there are no markings on it. According to the another BP owner, there appears to be a different version of the BP that uses a twist mechanism similar to that found on the Premier series, instead of cap-actuation as the above BP.s |
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Price |
$25 in 1967, $15 for the pencil, $40 for the set; |
According to Parker marketing documents, "This pen doesn't mean anything to anybody ... except you. This magnificent pen can be engraved with a record of all the important occasions in your life. A personal pen like no other in the entire world."
As this pen was completely blank and devoid of any pattern so that it could be engraved with a record of important events in the owner's life. It sounded good from a marketing perspective, but the reality unfortunately was that fingerprint smudges and surface scratches would appear from even its casual use.
To make things worse, it is rumored to have been difficult to engrave in the intended manner without putting dings or dents into it, especially at the edges of the words being engraved. Perhaps Parker was never quite able to solve this problem, which resulted in the Keepsake being quickly discontinued. Today it is a very rare piece especially in pristine condition, free of any engravings except for US presidents.
Apparently it really never was marketed heavily, being test marketed only in the Chicago vicinity. Instead, Parker used these as retirement gifts for their employees, inscribed with their names and contributions to the company.
This model was also offered with the Nieman-Marcus brand, the only other known Keepsake variant. Engraved near the open end of the cap was the scripted logo that is the trademark of the brand.
An interesting fact about this model is that it was often used as a commemorative. Some of these were:
Fountain pen used by Secretary of State William P. Rodgers to sign the Vietnam Peace agreement on January 27, 1973 in Paris, France. But while Mr. Rodgers use the FP, the other signers were given T-1 soft-tips to sign the agreement.
A vermeil version was used for the signing of the 1990 and 1991 nuclear disarmament treaties known as START and Test Ban.
Parker employee services awards, such as retirement.
These were
later models past the normal production period and were characterized
by dished tassies instead of the original flat tassies.
Rumor has it that several of these unengraved pens were sold during
the 1999 Parker auction when the Janesville, WI Arrow Park facility was
closed.
Take a look at a Keepsake prototype and the interesting differences to the production version. And here is the normal users manual for this pen but with a distinctively different cover page.
Other prototypes include:
Papers included with the Keepsake were:
Here is a Keepsake with a plaque containing an inscription with President Ronal Reagan's signature and the Presidential seal.
Here is a Keepsake with another US president -- George Bush, Sr.
Tiffany prototype Keepsake FP which was never released. More pictures can be found here.
As we see from the above information, several US Presidents used Keepsakes. None were more enthusiastic about his Parker 75 than President Richard M. Nixon who used it to sign many documents during his administration. Click the picture below to read the story.
