I purchased this last week, as a slightly late birthday treat for myself – it’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally arrived – a piece that I’ve been trying to find for nearly a decade to add to my collection! With its addition, I can finally say that one part of my pen collection has finally been completed!

The Backstory – And a Very Long Wait

Writing has been my greatest hobby for as long as I can remember. In one form or another, I’ve been writing for nearly 30 years. I find it fun, and relaxing. I love the freedom to literally create whatever I want – characters, settings, scenarios and ideas, story-arcs and adventures of almost any possible…or even impossible…description. Nobody can tell me that it’s impossible, or ridiculous, or stupid, or that it can’t be done, and you’re only held back by your own imagination.

My deep love of writing meant that, from a very young age, I always had a great interest in fine writing instruments. Fountain pens have been my weapon of choice when it came to the physical act of writing, ever since I was seven, and ever since then, I have barely touched a ballpoint.

Along with writing came my equally fetishistic love of history and antiques! This meant that, alongside fountain pens and dip pens, I soon developed a fascination with writing accessories and desk accessories – inkwells, blotters, letter-openers, bill-spikes, pen-cleaners, and any other strange, weird, whimsical doohickeys which I could use to make my writing experience more enjoyable.

I don’t remember exactly when I started getting interested in the famous Montblanc No.149. I was a teenager when I first spotted it, and decided that I wanted one! It was my dream throughout my schooldays to have one. That said, anything Montblanc is expensive, and being a simple student meant that there was no way I could afford one – certainly not at retail prices!

I spent years reading and researching, looking at photos and watching videos and auctions. Even when one did show up, I was always outbid, so I never thought that I’d be able to own one.

That is until last year, when I scored a Montblanc 149 in a box lot of other pens (all of which I’ve now sold). Out of this treasure trove, I kept the 149 as my prize! While the price for the box of pens was fairly high, it was still less than half the price of a brand new 149, so you can imagine how cheap the pen was, once you averaged out the cost among all the pens in the box!

Being no fool, naturally I examined the pen on an almost atomic level before bidding on it, to make sure that it was real. Montblanc products are among the most faked items in the world, alongside luxury handbags and Rolex watches!

The Montblanc No.149 Matching Desk Set

During all my years of looking at what fellow collectors have jokingly described as “pen porn” on the internet, I was made aware of the fact that the Montblanc No.149, as famous as it is, was only one part of a larger set of items! This was when I discovered that there was actually an entire set of desk accessories that went along with the pen, and that they were all designed to match.

Given how long it took to buy the pen, I didn’t have any great hopes that I’d also be able to buy the set that goes with it. However, I managed to score both the inkwell, and the desk-pen base relatively easily – not something that I was ever expecting! They were being sold secondhand, and I was able to get them for a good price.

The next piece to add was the blotter. Or, at least, I could dream about adding the blotter, because even a cursory glance at all the various eBay listings told me that it would cost a small fortune! Even at its cheapest, it would still be several, several, several hundreds of dollars, and many times, it was well over $1,000!…and that didn’t include extremely high postage-costs due to overseas shipping! Not even a secondhand No.149 cost that much! The more I looked at it, the more I began to think that perhaps this was a piece that I’d never be able to get – the chances of buying one for under $1,000, or even under $500, seemed impossible!

As my latest birthday approached, I started browsing eBay rather absent-mindedly, wistfully looking at all the stuff on sale, and typing in just random combinations of words to see what would pop up on the screen – stuck in lockdown over the coronavirus, I didn’t have much else to do! And it’s fun to see what kinds of things you’d like to have as a birthday treat, even if you can’t afford them, right?

That was when I spotted, by pure chance, a group-lot of vintage Montblanc items up for sale. For some reason, the wording of the listing meant that it had never popped up in any other search until now. I clicked on it just out of curiosity. The opening image in the listing was very misleading, which is probably why I never noticed it before, but when I realised that part of the lot was the blotter that I’d wanted for so long, I started paying much more attention! The asking price was fairly high, but pretty reasonable, for a group-lot of Montblanc things! Just one of the items in that lot sells for $1,000 brand new! Out came the calculator, and I started number-crunching to see just how much of a bargain all this stuff might be, and whether it was really worth it!

It took me all of half an hour to decide that it was a worthwhile price. When I realised how many other people were checking out the listing alongside me, I decided not to wait! I knew that it’d be years before another chance like this ever came along again, so I bought it, as a birthday treat for myself!

Yes, the price was fairly high, but I consoled myself in the fact that I could sell the other items in the lot for a healthy profit, and keep the blotter for my collection.

How Old is the Montblanc Meisterstuck Desk Set?

Honestly, I don’t know. I haven’t found any solid documentation giving me start and end-dates. I believe that this particular style of desk set was manufactured in the 1990s, based on what little information I could find, but that’s about it.

Is this the only type of Montblanc desk set out there?

Oh, certainly not! There’s at least five, which I’ve been able to identify. Their details are below:

First, there is the solid glass “Lalique” set, with inkwell, blotter, and pen stand, made of beautiful cut glass, and which is named after the famed French glassware designer, Rene Lalique.

Next comes the black resin and acrylic “Meisterstuck” set with goldtone trim, which is designed to match the look, styling, and materials of Montblanc’s most famous pen – the Meisterstuck No.149. This is the set that I’ve been collecting.

The third set which I’ve identified is the sterling silver “Solitaire” set, with an inkwell, pen-stand and blotter, which is identical to mine, but with one major difference – that the trim is sterling silver and gold, instead of black resin and gold. It’s quite striking, actually!

There’s a black resin and polished brass set from, I believe, the 1960s or 70s, which I’ve seen at various places online, and finally, there’s also a set covered in black leather, which is Montblanc’s latest offering when it comes to desk accessories. The various elements for this set are currently available from the Montblanc website (and other, Montblanc-affiliated dealers and stockists).

The sets are not all consistent, and there are minor differences between each one, in terms of what’s included in them, the finishes, and shapes and styles. These are all the Montblanc desktop accessories sets which I’ve been able to identify. There may be others out there which I’m yet to see, but those are all the ones which I’ve been able to definitively identify.

So, is your set complete?

Believe it or not – but – no! The full set is actually five pieces, not four!

The last piece is a matching paper-knife or letter-opener, again in black resin, clear acrylic and gold-plate. However, in all my years of hunting and searching, I’ve never seen it! I’ve never seen it on eBay, I’ve never seen it at auction, at flea markets, pen shows, pen shops…I don’t even know anybody who owns one!

The only reason I know it exists is because I saw it included in a photograph of the full and complete desk set in a very old auction listing online somewhere, but I’ve never seen it for sale. It seems to be something so rare that nobody has one, “not even for ready money!”, as they said in ‘The Importance of Being Earnest‘.

The last time I saw a Montblanc-branded paper-knife of any description for sale on eBay, the asking price was over $1,000…for a paper-knife…and it wasn’t even the one that goes with my set! So, I don’t think I’ll ever be adding one to my collection…not that I’d use it, even if I could, so it’s probably just as well!

The Montblanc Meisterstuck Rocker Blotter – A Closer Look

Since the blotter is such a rare item, I thought it’d be good to write about it in detail, and try and give as much information on it as I can, for anybody else out there who might be trying to buy one! I’ve never been able to find very many detailed photographs of the blotter, and like I said earlier, there’s almost no information about it online anywhere!

I guess that’s what happens when something’s as rare as this. But first…

What is a Rocker Blotter?

If you watch a lot of period dramas, old movies, or if perhaps you’ve visited the museum-homes of famous authors, then you might’ve seen one of these things sitting on a desk somewhere. They used to be extremely common.

The purpose of a blotter is to soak up or absorb excess ink on a written page by a fountain pen or dip pen. Since these pens use liquid, water-based ink, it may take some time to dry – especially if the paper is not especially absorbent, or if the line laid down is particularly wet or broad (for example, in various styles of calligraphy). In instances where you can’t, or don’t want to wait for the ink to dry naturally, you rock the blotter back and forth across the wet ink to dry it faster. The excess ink is absorbed by the sheet of blotting-paper affixed to the underside of the curved blotter base, and the writing on the page is now dry.

Blotters were extremely common throughout the Victorian era, and lasted well into the 20th century. The heyday of the blotter ended in the 1950s when ballpoint pens started replacing fountain pens, but there are still plenty of companies out there which manufacture blotters, and there are many craftemen and woodworkers who produce them for people looking for brand-new rocker blotters for their desks. Apart from modern luxury blotters like those made by Montblanc, the J. Herbin ink company also manufactures blotters and blotting paper.

Anyway, back to the Montblanc blotter…

The blotter, like the inkwell and pen stand, is covered in Montblanc’s well-known, glossy black resin – the same substance used to make its famous pens. The edges are trimmed in gold plate, and the main body, or base of the blotter is smooth, transparent acrylic, much like the pen stand, and inkwell.

The slip of blotting paper that fits underneath the blotter is cut to size, and then folded and slipped into the two tabs or ridges on the ends of the underside of the blotter, and are simply held in by friction. In this instance, it’s better to use thicker, or double-folded blotting paper, rather than thinner paper, since thicker paper will hold more securely.

I want one! Where to Buy!?

Oh boy…

Getting a set like this is not easy. And not just because of the potentially, very high prices involved.

No.

The reasons why it’s not easy (difficult, but not impossible) are because of the following:

One – the set was a limited edition. My research says that they were only made for about 10, maybe 15 years. So that means there’s a limited number out there. This set is no longer manufactured by Montblanc.

Another reason is that this roughly ten-year gap was at least twenty years ago, in the mid to late 80s, up to the late 1990s. So if you want to buy the set, you have to buy the pieces individually, and they’ll all be secondhand.

Thirdly – because the set is vintage, and a limited edition, the prices could be extremely high. I’ve seen asking-prices on eBay for the various elements of the black resin and clear acrylic desk-set, of over a thousand dollars…for EACH piece. And while I don’t doubt that they might possibly be worth that (or something close to it), due to their age and relative scarcity, it’s a lot of money for most people to cough up, and that also makes them tricky to find.

The one good thing about these desk accessories is that, unlike the pens – nobody is faking these. They’re so rare that the chances of finding a genuine one to use as a model from which to make fakes, is very difficult, so, given their rarity, you can be sure that if you find one on eBay, or elsewhere, that it will be the real deal. Provided that the price is something you’re willing to pay, you can buy them with confidence, which is not always the case with Montblanc pens, which are among the most faked items in the world.