Platinum 3776 Sai!
For those following the postal adventures of this pen: it arrived today safe and sound.
I've sort of been bitten by the 3776 bug, so when Pen Chalet had their black Friday sale, and they listed 3776s in their email... I *ran* to their site on that Friday and started frantically clicking to see if any of the models I didn't have were on sale. I have no idea *how* I did it. But for one blinding second the 3776 Sai with a Medium nib (B and F didn't work) showed as $132! AND they were offering a discount code for every order which took another $19 off the price, making my shopping cart say $112.20. You can imagine how fast I checked out, terrified one of you folks would buy that puppy out from under me. I have to assume it was some sort of one off deal or Easter egg for the day, because once I'd safely checked out and went back to try to reproduce the price, I couldn't. The cheapest that Sai would show for was $179.
I was convinced I'd get an email saying their system messed up and the deal wasn't valid. Instead I got a shipping notification. And after the package dropped off the face of the earth for three days it finally arrived... And it's a Sai all right!
This pen is *not* easy to photo so bear with me. I need to pull out my real camera gear but I'm too tired for that atm.
The box is simple, white, very understated.
Inside there is a luscious purple lining, the pen, a little information sheet about the Sai (and the lake it is modeled to honor), a converter, two carts, and a stamp. If the stamp said: "Written with Platinum 3776" or something I'd use it. But instead it boasts about writing with pigmented ink. It's just... odd. Anyway.
If you aren't a fan of demonstrators do not buy this pen. Seriously. Don't. This is about as demonstrator as they come, the clarity of the material is amazing. My Pelikan M200 clear demo looks as semitransparent as its colored siblings next to this pen. When they say that they wanted to capture the crystal clear waters of lake Sai, they weren't kidding.
The only ornamentation is the limited edition number etching at the top of the cap. I have #2974 of 3000.
(It is gray and stormy today so the light is awful and these pictures are soft and blah. Sorry!
The barrel isn't boring, the inside of the barrel is beveled, or cut like a jewel. Hard to describe but makes it really sparkle.
(Sorry, that photo really doesn't do it justice at all. Totally failed to get good photographs today. If the sun comes out tomorrow I'll haul out the real camera.
Unlike all the other 3776 line it has no cap band, no ornamentation at all other than the clip and the numbered engraving. I'd have liked a cap band, partly because I really like the band on my other 3776s, but also because the cap band covers up the *threads.* But the whole point of this pen is simplicity, so they went without. The slip and seal cap is very visible here, the converter, the nib. All the guts are right there to see. I haven't inked it up yet but the ink will be nice to see in the converter. I'd love to make this an eyedropper but Plantinum (and Nakaya) use metal on their inner sections so I won't be doing that.
However, I *am* going to finally break down and buy a painted converter. This pen is just begging for one. I'll post more later, but wanted to share, there isn't a ton of information out there about the Sai, so wanted to make a review available.
The only problem? Now that I own umm... 4 Platinum 3776s and 1 of the lake line... I'm umm, gonna have to get the rest of the pens commemorating the lakes around Mount Fuji, I mean otherwise it'd just be incomplete, right?My husband officially hates Pen Chalet. (Just kidding, he just rolls his eyes and goes and builds another computer.)
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Re: Platinum 3776 Sai!
Originally Posted by earthdawn
These converters come apart pretty easily so I'm wondering if I couldn't swap the metal bits...
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