Reasonably priced pens.

[datainadequate]

Would you say that the al-star is worth the extra over a safari? I have the vista, but all the others looked a bit kiddy to me.

The AL-star feels a bit different, a bit cooler to the touch. I slightly prefer the glossy plastic Safaris, including the Vista. The matt finish Safaris are my least favourite. YMMV

[Woody]

It's the greatness of the hobby. I could use a Safari or a Sheaffer prelude till the cows come home. I like eye droppers though and some Edisons and FC's are great for that. Esterbrooks are just plain fun. I've moved along to stubs and line variation for fun and I'm really enjoying it. The best pen is your pen. You don't have to break the bank.

[RocketRyan]

I really like the prelude, I was surprised by how much. It now lives clipped to my work diary.

[inklord]

It's the greatness of the hobby. I could use a Safari or a Sheaffer prelude till the cows come home. I like eye droppers though and some Edisons and FC's are great for that. Esterbrooks are just plain fun. I've moved along to stubs and line variation for fun and I'm really enjoying it. The best pen is your pen. You don't have to break the bank.

Yeeeeeaaah!

[jar]

It's the greatness of the hobby. I could use a Safari or a Sheaffer prelude till the cows come home. I like eye droppers though and some Edisons and FC's are great for that. Esterbrooks are just plain fun. I've moved along to stubs and line variation for fun and I'm really enjoying it. The best pen is your pen. You don't have to break the bank.

But fortunately you can break the bank too. There is a far larger, far brighter range of fine pens out there today than at any time in history. There are the best of the old pens, those that withstood the test of time, the new pens that are just starting to get filtered and the glorious loverly pens that take months to make and months to save for.

[RocketRyan]

I love the high end stuff to look at, but feel if I spent £3k on a pen I would have unrealistic and in truth unreasonable expectations. Where as when I got the lamy vista with a 1.5 italic nib I wasn't expecting much, and ended up feeling like I'd got a real bargain.
Maybe that's just the way I'm made, always rooting for the underdog lol.

[EHV]

It would be lovely to stay this way. I started out thinking like this but fairly quickly went down the path of diminishing returns.

Initially there was "sticker shock" when I looked at pens greater than $300US but at this point, that figure is at $1000US and after starting to look at Nakaya's, this number is likely to change very soon. This happened to me with mechanical wristwatches as well.

I love the high end stuff to look at, but feel if I spent £3k on a pen I would have unrealistic and in truth unreasonable expectations. Where as when I got the lamy vista with a 1.5 italic nib I wasn't expecting much, and ended up feeling like I'd got a real bargain.
Maybe that's just the way I'm made, always rooting for the underdog lol.

[carlc]

It would be lovely to stay this way. I started out thinking like this but fairly quickly went down the path of diminishing returns.

Ain't this the truth!

I suppose it's called a slippery slope for a reason.

[Scooby921]

I love the high end stuff to look at, but feel if I spent £3k on a pen I would have unrealistic and in truth unreasonable expectations. Where as when I got the lamy vista with a 1.5 italic nib I wasn't expecting much, and ended up feeling like I'd got a real bargain.
Maybe that's just the way I'm made, always rooting for the underdog lol.

I think the level of unrealistic expectations starts a lot lower than £3k. At a certain point you stop paying for a nib and start paying for a work of art or a unique mechanism. With a little work just about any nib can be tuned to write very well. After that it's how the pen feels in your hand and the visual appeal as you write with it.

It would be lovely to stay this way. I started out thinking like this but fairly quickly went down the path of diminishing returns.

Initially there was "sticker shock" when I looked at pens greater than $300US but at this point, that figure is at $1000US and after starting to look at Nakaya's, this number is likely to change very soon. This happened to me with mechanical wristwatches as well.

Same boat. After buying a couple $300-$400 pens I find myself considering $1000 pens. I already made the Nakaya splash. It falls into my comment above. With a Nakaya you are buying a piece of art. It's handmade and beautiful, but it doesn't write 3x better than a Platinum 3776 Century with effectively the same nib.



It all comes back to what your income will justify and what you want to collect. If the goal is to collect great writers then one need not spend more than $300 to access most of the best nibs on the market. If the goal is to collect unique works of art then you'll find yourself spending 3x to 10x as much per pen.


If I were a collector and wanted great writers I would have a case full of Sailors and Pelikans. Alas I don't really collect. I tend to buy art and unique mechanisms just to try them out. I usually sell pens along to the next person so I can fund my next purchase. I have owned 23 so far, and have sold or given away more than I currently own.

[RocketRyan]

I suppose it's lucky for me I'm not a huge fan of Nakaya's. I get the sentiment though, I adore the Visconti Van Gogh range of pens. I find the finish on them captivating.

[Hasaf]

I have both a pilot metropolitan, a low end product in their line, and a pilot vanishing point, a bit close to low-mid level in the line. I realize it is not the best A-B comparison because the entire pen is a different design; however, I do notice that the vanishing point is a significantly better writing pen. I notice that my, similarly prices, Cross Townsend, is also a better writing pen than several others that I have.

I haven't used any truly expensive pens. However, I do notice a difference between the ~$20 grade pens and the ~$100 pens.

[EHV]

But at some point, you will hit that mark of diminishing returns. Your VP writes better for you than the Metropolitan but go to a Pilot Custom 823 and that may be a hair better than the VP, (or not for some) but then go to the Namiki, (Pilot) Yukari, a most amazing artistic feat at many times the price of the VP or 823 and.....does it write that much better, (meaning many dollars worth better) than the VP or the 823??? Not likely.

Diminishing return....for the writer.

I have both a pilot metropolitan, a low end product in their line, and a pilot vanishing point, a bit close to low-mid level in the line. I realize it is not the best A-B comparison because the entire pen is a different design; however, I do notice that the vanishing point is a significantly better writing pen. I notice that my, similarly prices, Cross Townsend, is also a better writing pen than several others that I have.

I haven't used any truly expensive pens. However, I do notice a difference between the ~$20 grade pens and the ~$100 pens.

[jar]

But at some point, you will hit that mark of diminishing returns. Your VP writes better for you than the Metropolitan but go to a Pilot Custom 823 and that may be a hair better than the VP, (or not for some) but then go to the Namiki, (Pilot) Yukari, a most amazing artistic feat at many times the price of the VP or 823 and.....does it write that much better, (meaning many dollars worth better) than the VP or the 823??? Not likely.

Diminishing return....for the writer.

That really depends on how limited you consider the experience of writing. If it is simply the lines on the paper than I may be able to see your point. But if you include the whole experience, the feel of the pen, its balance, its smells, the joy you get from just looking at it, the care that went into its creation; then it may well be that it is the VP or 823 or Metropolitan that exhibits diminished returns.

[RocketRyan]

I suppose that's true, it's down to individual taste as much as anything. If you love bright colours a metro pop might be your favourite, and a mont blanc 149 might be a bit dull in your eyes. This all goes some way to explaining my obsession with reasonably priced pens.

[Monkey]

And that'd be why I have two animal print MRs and a collection of Jinhaos, haha. I lust after the superbly expensive, too, but if they look nice and write well, I'm happy. Oh, and I don't own a single solid black pen. :P

[Jacoby190]

For me it's about what design might catch My eye which can range from the simple and elegant to the elaborate and bit garish

After outward looks comes the materials it's made out of. I like celluloid pens over resin or lacquer most of the time, which can jump the price up a bit. But even if the barrel, grip section, and cap materials aren't as expensive, if the nib is made of gold then you are going to jump up in price as well.

I like gold, rhodium plated gold nibs or palladium nibs over steel. Now your talking more money just for the nib materials let alone any others.

These nibs perform the best for my writing experience, but I also love to vary my collection. I have pens that range from $50 MSRP to $2000 MSRP. And if you can shop around amazing deals can be had


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[RocketRyan]

To be fair I find steel nibbed pens suit my grip of iron writing style better than gold ones except for the gold nibbed sonnet I have, but then that doesn't really have e any flex, it's more like it has a shock absorber. Soft but not much travel. That pen probably flatters my awful writing the most... But it just doesn't excite me. First world problems I suppose.

[BrynRedbeard]

I know exactly what you mean.
I'm also quite curious about nib grinding, I'd quite like to buy a load of cheap pens (probably heroes) and just mess about with hacking the nibs about. I have done it with one that didn't write, it's now an italic/stub type nib writes like a dream. I think it was basically luck though.

Yes, you are definitely an engineer! From one engineer to another.

Cheers

[matteob]

You are spoiled for choice with vintage pens: lots under a hundred bucks. As for new pens well a TWSBI ECO takes a lot of beating as a day to day pen. You can get a Platinum Century 14k nib pen new for $60 direct from Japan on J-Subculture: lovely pen, terrific value. Any Indian ebonite pen from ASA, Guider or Ranga with cartridge/Converter and German Schmidt or Jowo nib are great value. Finally at the bottom are Jinhao pens. An X450/750/159 is yours for a few bucks on ebay and they are no shoddy pieces of crap either: solid metal body, decent enough nibs and easy to upgrade too because they tqke a #6 nib and are friction fir. My 759 with a bock fine steel nib and a Schmidt converter is my daily carry about

[amk]

I have found my tolerance for paying up has increased, partly owing to enablers in my family who have bought me some rather lovely Pelikans and Bexleys. I have some very nice pens indeed, including quite a selection of Pelikan 400 and m400s.

However, I still have my collections of Waterman Forum, Kultur, Laureat, and Expert, and pick up new additions if I see them. Maybe I'll sell the Forums some day, but the Laureats and Experts stay. In fact it can be quite fun collecting the lower end pens like Kultur, as they were not catalogued, so you can sometimes run across one that you've never seen before and didn't know existed. And they are good pens, with good nibs.

As matteob says, you're also spoiled with vintage pens. I've bought some great pens 'in the wild' and am learning to restore them; so far, nothing too technical, just resacking, finding nibs for a few nibless pens, and polishing up. I'm now focusing on collecting different celluloid patterns, and while just occasionally I end up paying £40 or so for a Gold Starry that has a celluloid I haven't seen, a lot of my pens come to me for a handful of euros from ebay or car boot sales. That's certainly one way to go, though there is a slippery slope once you've heard about the Baignol Tank or the Pullaman Meteore...

Indian pens too are delightful and do not cost a great deal. I have quite a few. It's worth paying the extra to get them with Schmidt or Jowo nibs and the cartridge/converter option - if you like to use them as eyedroppers you can still do so.