Vintage Genuine Chouinard Lost Arrow Piton SIGNED by Conrad Anker

Description

A GENUINE VINTAGE CHOUINARD LOST ARROW PITON
SIGNED by Conrad Anker
This is an ORIGINAL 1960s-1970s CHOUINARD STEEL LOST ARROW PITON SIGNED BY CONRAD ANKER.
THIS IS AN GENUINE LOST ARROW THAT SAYS LOST ARROW, NOT A BLACK DIAMOND PITON. The Diamond C logo was not used on the Lost Arrow pitons.
We collect old Climbing Gear and have asked Conrad Anker, who is one of the greatest and well known Twentieth and Twenty-First Century American mountain climbers, to sign a few original Chouinard Steel Pitons. We have a few Genuine Vintage Steel Lost Arrows pins, plus a few Steel Angle Pitons. We currently have a ''buy it now'' listing on ebay for the Lost Arrow and Angle Pitons, Signed by Conrad Anker. Chouinard Pitons were made from the 1950s to about 1989. After that Chouinard sold the hardware part of the business to his employees and changed the name to Black Diamond. So the pitons that Conrad signed were made before 1989. He signed them at one of our meetings after the year 2000.
Why sign an old piton?  Why not? If an author or climber signs a book, you have to open the book to see his signature. With a piece of Signed vintage climbing hardware, such as a real 40-60+ year old Chouinard Piton, it is something you can put on your desk or shelf and see every day. And your friends can drool over it too!
A Signed piton also makes an excellent gift. Nobody before us has ever asked a Mountain Climber to signed vintage gear. We are the first, and probably the only, retailer selling this unique piece of climbing history. To be clear, Conrad Anker did not use this piton on a climb. We obtained it from another climber when he was selling us his collection of books on climbing.
Conrad Anker has often signed books for our bookshop, primarily the book he wrote about his climbing Mount Everest and finding the century old body of George Leigh Mallory in 1999.
Conrad Anker is personally one of the most soft spoken and unpretentious world class American climbers. We meet with Conrad periodically, and if we have some books or pitons that we ask him to sign, he always makes time for us.  Conrad Anker is a real real old school gentleman, what used to be called a mensch.
If you want to know more about who Conrad Anker is, google him. He has a nice entry on Wikipedia. He has also been profiled in climbing magazines, such as Alpinist, Climbing and Rock and Ice. Conrad's Wikipedia entry has many links to books and magazine articles by and about him.
This listing is for one piton. You can purchase more than one if you like. We used either silver or black marker, whichever shows up better. Old Chouinard Pitons had a black, oily finish when new to protect them against rust. We cleaned our pitons with solvent before they got signed, so the signature would last longer. Generally we used rubbing alcohol or naptha as the cleaning agent. Alcohol is also good for cleaning phone and computer screens and eye glasses. Almost all ''eye glasses or electronic device screen cleaner pads'' use alcohol and a piece of cloth. We use tissues or wash cloths. We also use alcohol to clean soiled or dusty book dust jackets. Good stuff!
The condition of this piton is listed as ''used.'' The piton in the image actually looks new. If we send you a used piton it will be lightly used. It is not rusty, bent, damaged or very scarred from many poundings. It may have been used a few times and may have a few scars, mostly in the top edge where the piton is bent, or the head where the hole is, from being hit by a piton hammer. If still in use it would have a long life ahead of it if it was still on your rack.
We are Chessler Books. Since 1984 we have been the leading bookseller of Climbing Books in the USA, perhaps the world.
We sell used, new and collectible mountaineering and polar books, signed books, narratives, history, photo books, guidebooks, maps plus vintage climbing gear, everything. Please Google us, Chessler Books, to see the thousands of other unique climbing related new and vintage gear and books that we have. We currently have in stock pitons that are signed by Fred Beckey, Tommy Caldwell, and possibly a few by Lynn Hill.
Also click on the link on this page to see our other listings on ebay. We have been a seller on ebay since 1998, with over 12,000 positive feedback ratings.
We were a rock and mountain climber, and started before it was a popular sport. Our first climbs were in the Shawangunks in New York in the early 1960s. We have climbed in the East Coast mountains, the Adirondacks and White Mountains of New Hampshire, and Katahdin in Maine. Most of the NY and New England climbs were winter climbing, and technical ice climbing.
We lived in California during the 1970s and 1980s and climbed a lot in the High Sierra, and nearby states in the far west and southwest. We have also climbed in the Alps in France and Switzerland, and in the Caucasus in the old Soviet Union. We now live in Colorado and even have some rock climbing crags on our own property!