Love it when the internet produces gold:
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Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is from the year 1977. It has 52.10.15 written on it, showa 52 =1977
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Yes! Been waiting for someone more knowledgeable about Japanese notations to chime in here. I think you nailed it—these brochure pages look to have been produced in May of “Showa 52,” which is 1977 (as @RPD indicated).
I’m surprised about the following:
- Pilot’s famous urushi lacquer finish costs more than the sterling silver (page 1)
- The stainless steel etched Elite series was on the lower end of pricing
- The gold-plated specimen on page 2 originally retailed for ¥10,000! In today’s money, that’s insane
- The HB-200BK must have been released in the 1970s! It’s one of the few Pilots I don’t have, and I rarely see it come up for sale (one just closed on YAJ for ~¥13,000).
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Is this the oldest (known) Pilot catalogue that contains mps?
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It’s the oldest that we have, but I have to believe Pilot was making printed materials earlier in the 1970s.
(I’ve never seen a catalog reference any of their executives that are roughly parallel to Pentel’s offerings from 1969–1980).
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Are there any higher resolution copies located somewhere? Would like to zoom in more.
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Dunno—I got these from the Fountain Pen forums 
On reddit?
I’m curious about the original poster. Sometimes people upload downsized images to keep bandwidth from being taxed. Maybe they’ve got better copies. On FPN, there was this guy named stan who used to conduct these great sales deals on Japanese writing instruments (2008~2010) and he had catalog photos from various brands.
It was on FPN, not Reddit.
Thanks. Yeah, I though these had looked familiar. I’d seen them back in 2021 when Stan first posted them. Apparently he got them from an unnamed source on the Internet somewhere, perhaps a Japanese writing instrument blog…
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Another hb200bk on mercari now
[メルカリ] 【廃盤 極希少 レトロ】70年代 PILOT シャープペンシル 0.5mm ￥21,000
https://jp.mercari.com/item/m62705860803
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Saw this one—¥21,000 is extremely wishful thinking.
I thought the one on YAJ that went for ~¥13,000 was nutty, but this piggybacking makes perfect sense given that result.
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