Parker Premier Monochrome Black PVD Review

I feel like Parker pens don’t get much love unless they are of a vintage status, but I’ve long had an eye on the Parker Premier all black design and was happy to take up an offer from our friends at Goldspot to do a review of this loaner from them.  Pen boxes always remind me of coffins for some reason, I’m not a particularly morbid person, but this always jumps out at me and the Parker Premier is no exception to this rule, and being all black it kind of reinforces that weirdo mental image for me.  Anyway, lets take a closer look, and again thanks to our friends at Goldspot for offering up this loaner for review, you can find it right here on their website if you are interested.

So as I mentioned, the Parker Premier Monochrome Black PVD is an all black metal fountain pen which is for me a big personal favorite in terms of aesthetics.  Its also got a very distinguished and pronounced brushed finish which I think looks pretty amazing. The box (or aforementioned casket) has a nice cloth covering over the fairly heavy cardboard stock underneath it, and is adorned with some nice sturdy ribbon pull tabs.

Heres one more quick look in the box of the Parker Premier Monochrome Black PVD.  You can get a better look at all of the ribbon pull tabs, the instruction booklet, and the snugly cut foam insert to keep the pen safe and sound.

The band on the cap shows the Parker brand and logo, and you can see the nice deep ridges along with the nicely detailed lines of the brushed finish that extend beyond the bands of the cap itself.  The cap takes about 1 and 3/4 of a turn before its fully closed or open, however if you want to post the cap, it simply presses onto the back of the pen relying on pressure and friction to stay in place.  No issues with feeling loose when posted up there either, it attaches pretty firmly.

On the flip side of the cap of the Parker Premier Monochrome Black fountain pen you can see the same deep groves on the band and the word “France” printed which indicates where the pen was manufactured.

The top of the cap of the Parker Premier Monochrome has the same deep grooves along a band that wraps around the very top of it, and the insert on the top has a nice circular ring pattern on it.  Also, you can see that getting super close macro-style shots shows all of the tiniest dust and particles that can be found on this pen or any pen I guess. 🙂

Some of the above close up shots of the Parker Premier onochrome Black required quite a bit of extra lighting to get some of the details, but it also gave the pen a more silver look so here is a bit more of a natural looking picture to capture the true color.  You can also see here one of the only minor things I don’t like about this pen, which is an issue on all Parker pens I’m sure, and thats the clip.  That middle part, what would be the shaft of the arrow is pretty slim and although I wouldn’t call it flimsy, its certainly not super strong.  Considering I actually broke the clip on a Pelikan M205, this does give me a little bit of concern, but overall that doesn’t outweigh my overall enthusiasm for this pen.

The nib on the Parker Premier Black Monochrome Black is an 18K gold nib thats plated with Ruthenium, which if you didn’t know has avalue of $190 per oz as of the time I researched this review a few days ago.  At the beginning of the year though it was only worth $40 per ounce, so the nib on the pen is worth about 375% more today than it was at the beginning of this year, not a bad investment!  Lots of fountain pen nibs have frilly and ornate decoration on them, but I kind of like how Parker takes a more structured and simple but elegant approach with the design on this nib.

The dimensions and weight of the Parker Premier Monochrome Black fountain pen are pretty substantial, not huge but definitely a good solid feeling and bold size pen in the hand.  As someone who likes to write with the cap posted, I also like the fact that this pen comes in at just over 6″ long when writing that way. It feels just a hair top heavy in that state but not at all in a way that caused any writing fatigue for me with it even in longer writing sessions.  The nib on this pen had a very minor toothy feeling to it as I wrote, which didn’t bother me any as the pen never skipped a beat or left any white spots in its path and actually wrote a bit on the wet side for me using the Noodler’s Q Eternity ink (find it here on the Goldspot website) which is a nice blue black ink to go with this beautifully dark bodied pen.  You can find the Parker Premier Monochrom Black PVD Fountain Pen here at Goldspot and while you are there check out all of the other color versions of this pen, its a very striking looking pen in person and if you have the funds for it, I’m certain it would be a very enjoyable and welcome addition to your set of writing tools! Thanks to the folks at Goldspot for making this available for the review!