Hotter than Ever

Another geyser, hotter than ever, boiled up from the underwater world of ballpoint pens. As usual, it was started by Milton Reynolds, the Old Faithful of ball-pointism (TIME, Nov. 12, 1945 et seq.).

Reynolds, whose pens retailed for $12.50 before he started cutting prices, had started to bring out his latest models' to retail for $1.69 and $2.69 (at most, it costs him 33-c- to manufacture his ballpoints). So he wanted to clean out his stock of 350,000 obsolete models which retailed for $3.85. He sold the $3.85 pens to a jobber at a price so low that they could be retailed for about $1.

In Manhattan, Macy's grabbed up 150,000 of them, burst forth one morning last week with ads offering to sell them for 98-c- apiece, or three for $2.79. Gimbels, which had been selling the pens for $3.85 only the day before, slashed the price next day to 94-c-, or three for $2.59. (To twit Macy's further, Gimbels snidely pointed out that its own 62 Bollero, "which we consider a far superior pen," was selling for 88-c-.) Macy's, having sold 68,000 Reynolds pens at 98-c- in a day, knocked off 10-c- more. Gimbels went to 84-c-.

At this price, Gimbels sold $3.85 pens so fast that it soon ran out, started dealing off new-model $1.69 and $2.69 Reynolds pens at the same bargain price. This disturbed Milton Reynolds so much that he threatened to sue Gimbels under the Fair Trade Act unless the store stopped price-cutting the new models.

But then Reynolds had a much better idea. Why not keep on making the old models? At week's end, Reynolds frantically began turning them out again at the rate of 80,000 a day. They would sell for $1 or less all over the U.S. Said a Reynolds executive: "We have acres of diamonds right in our back yard." Said Reynolds himself: "It's simply crazy."

With that statement, few would quarrel. What made it craziest was the fact that nothing could stop people from buying ball-points by the thousands, despite the fact that they 1) often failed to work (Reynolds alone got back 104,643 defective pens in his first eight months) or 2) oozed ink all over hands and paper. The ink in some pens even fermented, and blew the balls right out of the pens. But buyers kept right on coming. Said one bemused pen man: "They're like horse players. They figure they can beat the odds--and get one that works."

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