Originally Posted by
Chrissy
I wasn't 100% certain if I wanted to go that far.
I know what you mean. They've had the pattern down for awhile now, but getting the stamping to look right on steel when it's supposed to be gold is, I think, not a trivial thing to do on the cheap. Usually they end up looking more shallow, and I don't mean the ones that are obviously laser etched rather than stamped (those are easy). Obviously if it's plated steel, then the plating is actually inverted, with the platinum plating being no plating on the fake. Unplated stainless steel is a subtly different color than platinum or rhodium plating, but this can be hard to evaluate in photo, obviously. Cheap two-tone nibs often have sloppy boundaries (hard to color inside the lines), but unfortunately, one cannot count on the genuine nibs to be be perfect.
I'm sure they could make formidably accurate nib copies if they'd just resort to using genuine gold and comparable plating. But I think that would raise the manufacturing cost by a few tens of dollars, at least.
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