Remember those? Platinum Preppies?

A few years ago, there seemed to be much attention paid to the Platinum Preppies over at fpn. Caught up in the enthusiasm, I bought a half-dozen at least and filled them with different inks, but I was still in the phase of trying to carry fewer pens, not more, so that experiment ended with my giving away most of the Preppies.

I kept two.

These two always had ink in them. I rarely remembered that I had them. I mean, I knew I had a couple Preppies in the pen cup, but... you know... it was the junk-drawer equivalent of a pen cup.

I don't remember when I filled these two pens with ink -- one I'm using as an eye-dropper, the other has a cartridge. Was it two years ago? A year ago? It was a long time ago for pens to lie dormant with ink in them.

I took them out tonight to see if they would write (expecting that they would, cos I have left Platinum Carbon Black in a Preppy for a hundred-seventy-two years (or one-and-a-half), and it wrote freely as soon as the nib touched the paper. That was back when I still had several Preppies, and the only hard-starter in the bunch had Noodler's Polar Blue. That's all I remember.

As expected, these two Preppies wrote without problem, as if I'd inked them yesterday. I identified one ink as Sailor Rikyu Cha, and the one in the cartridge? It's a blue, blue-black, not sure if it's Platinum or a blue that I had a sample of or what.

Aesthetically, the Preppy is no Nakaya. "I know Nakaya. I own several Nakayas. Nakaya has been my favorite pen for a few years. You, Platinum Preppy, are no Nakaya."

But for performance? I don't know if Nakaya can compete with the Preppy, cos I can't imagine leaving a Nakaya unused for even a week much less a year. But it's nice to know that if I want a sample of ink, I can use the Preppy in lieu of a vial, if I were out of vials.