Redeemed Pens

At First Glance Here's a good-looking fountain pen. The name is Garant Alkor. Garant was a pen manufacturer in the former East Germany (DDR) in the 1950s. Some of their pens were identified as late as the 1960s. Beyond that, sadly, very few pen factories survived globally, and among those who did, there are even fewer who still manufacture fountain pens. This "Alkor" is considered the top-of-the-line model. There are the Nilor and Silor models (and maybe others that I'm not aware of) which are smaller.  It's quite a big vintage pen, clocking at 5-3/8 inches (or 136 mm) capped. The "girth" (barrel diameter) is about 13 mm, and the cap diameter is 14.6 mm at the widest part. Far from being small and skinny. Here it is with fellow German piston fillers from around the same era, the Montblanc 254 and the Pelikan 400: As you can see, it is quite big compared to the Pelikan, and the Montblanc. The material is plastic, but I can't say that it feels like cel