A Parker Lucky Curve "Big Red" NON-Duofold. Plastic pen with "Medium" imprint

Click on Pic at left for large image (and will have to hit your "magnifier" as it fills more than a vertical screen on many monitors)  

I just picked up an interesting 1920's Parker "Big Red" sort of pen.   Is it a Duofold Senior with anomalous (NON "Duofold") imprint? Or, is it a red  Duofoldesque Lucky Curve (itself thus anomalous and certainly uncatalogued) that looks quite like a Duofold? 

Here is some information about 1920's plastic Duofolds, about Duofold-like pens without "Duofold" imprints, and about this pen in particular.

1) non-Duofold imprints are known on otherwise Duofold style pens (often have non-DF nibs along with the non-DF imprint)

2) Green non-DF-marked  "Lucky Curve" pens otherwise like DF  are known to have been advertised without the Duofold name. I believe i've seen similar Lapis and maybe Yellow pens, although we can but speculate as to whether they too represented a hypothesized test marketing of "scary new color" before allowing the "venerable Duofold name" on the pen. I've never seen a red before, though one book on Duofold does show some imprints of this general sort (lacking "Duofold").

3)  IIRC, all the lucky-curve-sans-Duofold imprints so far cited are of the "small" variety, as one would expect since the progression from Large to Medium to Small imprints took place during the Hard Rubber era (pre-plastic) and since the pens we discuss are plastic.

4) The actual pen under discussion is Canadian, which tweaks the game a bit, as often we recognize that Canada did not always follow Parker USA "rules", but this finding does not obviate the question as to the significance of the imprint variation, as one still wonders- in either country- what is suggested by the finding of a non-DF "Sr-DF-size non-DF  Lucky Curve"

5) The actual pen under discussion has a larger imprint that the other non-DF-imprinted pens of this sort. I must pull up some pens and/or images to decide if it is utterly different from typical "Medium" imprint or if it represents "simply" a Medium imprint sans "Duofold". In any case the medium-ness of the imprint raises new questions as one would not expect a medium-size imprint on a plastic pen, though perhaps here the Canadian origin of the pen has something to do with this second anomaly.

So, was the pen ever meant to be a Duofold?  I don't know.

At what passes for my stage of collecting (and I know others share this trait), finding pens that surprise can be as much or more fun than "just" finding big, glitzy or even valuable pens.  Anomalies offer a peek away from the main sequence of collecting.  I don't ascribe high dollar value to this pen, but that it packs a constellation of findings that I have not before seen and cannot readily find in texts, adds charm to the game. Speculation as to significance no doubt is part of the fun.   Should it turn out this finding is more common than I expected... so be it ;)