I received an email from Cliff Derbins, son of William Derbins, the man responsible for the Spanish Treasure Fleet 75. Cliff shared some personal memories and pictures of his father's activities pertaining to this limited edition 75.
William Derbins was Parker's VP of Marketing from 1964–1969. He became inspired in the mid-1960s when he read an article in National Geographic about Kip Wagner’s treasure hunting adventures and the discovery of the sunken Spanish galleons off the coast of Florida. Derbins had the novel idea of making limited edition pens from some of the recovered silver from the treasure fleet.
After repeated phone calls, Wagner finally agreed to a meeting and Derbins flew to Florida to meet Wagner accompanied by a product manager. Here's are photos of that fateful meeting (Wagner has the short white hair), used with permission from the Derbins family (please respect their copyrights!)
Note the pen in Wagner's hand. Take a guess what model Parker that might be? The shape and black gripping section with nib should be good clues. :-)
It took a couple of days before Wagner committed to the idea. With only a signed promissory note as a guarantee, he allowed Derbins to take a large bag filled with “pieces of eight” back to Janesville.
Derbins later told his son that, as he was leaving for the airport, Wagner looked at the two Parker men and said in a salty tone, “I hope you two bastards are honest.”
In his book Pieces of Eight Wagner wrote about this deal with Parker and Derbins —
One offer that did [pan out], however, was from the Parker Pen Company. They put out a line called the Parker 75 — a solid sterling silver pen, "personally tailored to write your own way." It sells for $25. One of their brighter young public relations people came up with the idea of a special allotment of these pens molded from our 1715 fleet silver. They made us a handsome offer for 4,000 ounces of silver, to be melted down from worn pieces of eight, and we accepted. They made up 4,000 pens from this with special inscriptions saying they came from the Spanish galleons, and put them on the market for $75 each. I understand they made a big hit with executives and with men who have everything else. We certainly realized considerably more out of melting down these silver pieces than I did years ago when I gave away so many trinkets I had fashioned from melted cobs.
The honesty question was put to rest by the last sentence in the above excerpt.