Introducing Pen Agora

[penwash]

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4229/35155187891_dafd42777c_c.jpg

Pen Agora (https://penagora.com) is a place where you can:


Record your collection. Track your pen collection, your handwritten treasures, and also your spending.
Hunt, seek, window-shop, drool over, and finally buy your dream pens.
Sell your pens easily, quickly, and keep track of your communications without the pain of using a system that is not originally designed for commerce.
Pass your pens along out of the goodness of your heart with give-aways and "Pay It Forwards"


What's in a name?

An Agora is a center of commerce, political and artistic activities in ancient Greek cities. Let's forget about the political part of it because I have no intention to go there. But Pen Agora (penagora.com) is where we -- pen and stationery people -- can build a place that is our own. Your inputs will shape Pen Agora, and although it's still a "baby" in terms of features, with your help, it will grow into a cool place for us. Try that with generic markets like eBay or Amazon or Craigslist (which I love, by the way, but there is very little hope for me to tell them to change things to work better for me as their customer :) ).

Check it out and thank you for your support!
And if you have any questions, give me a shout at support@penagora.com

[Drummergeorge]

No advertising. This is a website to buy and sell, if we let one person do it, then the Porn adds will be here, like they did with other groups.

[penwash]

No advertising. This is a website to buy and sell, if we let one person do it, then the Porn adds will be here, like they did with other groups.

How does telling a Pen forum about a new online market for Pen community lead to Porn?

If you have been here long enough you would have seen established online pen shops announce their new stuff here. Have that lead to Porn also? If not then I don't get your statement.

If not in this subforum that is for trading, where should I put this announcement?

[mandrbeck]

Sounds interesting. (Not the crazy porn statement). I'll be sure to check it out. You can never have too many pen resources!

[Bisquitlips]

I, for one, appreciate knowing about Pen Angora!

The moderators are wise enough to know what is porn and what isn't. I will leave it to them.

[Jon Szanto]

No advertising. This is a website to buy and sell, if we let one person do it, then the Porn adds will be here, like they did with other groups.

Without sugarcoating it: that's one of the dumbest things I've seen in a long time, but I bet that is simply from being a somewhat new member.

BTW, FPG was NEVER primarily a place to buy and sell pens. That is a fairly recent change, mostly because the owner is almost completely hands-off.

[DavidtheGnome]

I'm happy to learn about pen agora through this forum.

[kevmid]

Thanks very much for posting that Will, big effort to create something like Pen Agora and hope it takes off

[mtbkrdave]

Getting a DNS error when I try to visit... Looking forward to seeing the site once it's back on the air!

[penwash]

Getting a DNS error when I try to visit... Looking forward to seeing the site once it's back on the air!

The site has had close to 500 hits today. So it could be a glitch on a DNS server somewhere.
Please try again. Here's the link again for your convenience: https://penagora.com

[sgtstretch]

When trying to build my collection, I'm forced to upload an image. This is ok for pens and stuff, but seems a little overboard for inks.

[penwash]

When trying to build my collection, I'm forced to upload an image. This is ok for pens and stuff, but seems a little overboard for inks.

Thank you for your feedback.

Another member who also record their ink collection uses the official picture of the ink bottle from the manufacturer and said "Thank you for forcing me to upload the image, so I can remember it months from now". :)

I think a visual cue especially for ink will be useful on any system that catalogues them, don't you think?

[Jon Szanto]

Will, I seriously, seriously doubt I'd use a remote location to build a database of my pens and stuff, but I do have to ask: what kind of security things are in place?

I figure that, with a significant collection, it isn't unlike jewelry: if someone had access to looking at all the stuff some person had, it wouldn't be too hard to locate source/location and make a hit. If I were to ever consider a site like this, I'd have to be assured that it had bombproof security in place. Just a consideration.

[penwash]

Will, I seriously, seriously doubt I'd use a remote location to build a database of my pens and stuff, but I do have to ask: what kind of security things are in place?

I figure that, with a significant collection, it isn't unlike jewelry: if someone had access to looking at all the stuff some person had, it wouldn't be too hard to locate source/location and make a hit. If I were to ever consider a site like this, I'd have to be assured that it had bombproof security in place. Just a consideration.

Jon, that's a valid concern. First off, let me clarify that the My Collection feature of Pen Agora allows only the owner of the collection to see their own information, it's a tool to record collection, not to publish them.

Now, so far the new users of Pen Agora told me that they are happy to find a place to record their Noodler's inks purchases, Kawecos. I told them that they can also record scans of handwritten letter that they want to save for the future. I myself use the My Collection feature to catalogue the unique and weird pens that I'm not planning to sell :)


Now, about security. I am not going to detail the security setup of Pen Agora in a public forum like this. That is a no-no in any enterprise-grade secure systems. So you (and others) are welcome to send me an email at redeempens@gmail.com and I will tell you at a high level how all of my systems (not just Pen Agora) are protected in 3 aspects: Physical, Cyber, and Vigilance. If you really want to know the next level of details, you would have to be sitting in front of me in person and sign a couple NDAs and then I will decide if I am going to trust you or not :)

To answer your question indirectly, Pen Agora is not born out of a bored geek's laptop, coded during lunch breaks (well, I am a computer geek and I code during lunch breaks, hahaha). It is suffice to say, even a "super-collection" of pen records are not the most valuable things that my systems have ever dealt with, not, even, close.

[KrazyIvan]

Just to touch on security, if it's online, there's no such thing as bombproof security. Anything can be breached given enough time.

[Bisquitlips]

I did join the site and did some stomping around in Pen Angora.

I love the simplicity of it and one of the thoughts that came to me is that Pen Angora has its place in the pen community. Again, just my thoughts.

In my opinion the pen community occasionally needs new avenues to open up like Pen Angora. We have had the ones that we have had for years. Auctions, pen classifieds, pen listings, quarterly mailing lists, and so forth are truly wonderful and deeply appreciated, but I do really like seeing some guys get together and spearhead something new that we can use in several different ways. Not just to sell and trade, but to track and database our collections and the fact that stationary is included are great features and cost nothing. And I have to say that the percentages the moderators are asking for selling are very well within reason. 2 and 3%!!??? And free for anything $74.00 is free!??! I am not seeing greed here.

I am not affiliated with Pen Angora in any way. Just a member of this pen community that appreciates who we are and the quality of people that are here.

I will give it a chance.

[penwash]

Bump 1 out of 3.

Like and Follow Pen Agora on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/penagora/).
I'll post featured listings.

[FrozenPen]

Site feedback
- add category tags the seller can select for common features to support as complete a description as possible. It'd cut down on unnecessary questions. E.g. Nib type: XF, F, M, Italic, Cursive, etc. | Nib material: Steel, 14K, 18K, Unobtanium, etc.