I’m sure everyone who is into fountain pens and inks will find themselves the owner of too many pens and/or inks and/or paper. Personally, I have been forced to face the realities of my addiction not just because I do yearly tally of my spendings. I use my Dudek Block as a good gauge of when my pen herd needs some thinning.
Recently I’ve purchased and ordered two top tier fountain pens from Montblanc and Nakaya respectively. (It’s my first Montblanc fountain pen!) I began the process of culling the lesser used pens from my pen stand. This is in part to make space for the incoming pens of 2017 and also to free up some funds to acquire more pens.
So these pens are up on the chopping block right now.
- Faber Castell Loom
- Lamy CP 1
- Tactile Turn The Gist
- Visconti Van Gogh Starry Night
My only rule is any pen received as a gift will never be sold, instead they will live in cold storage.
Why these 4 pens? I have all 4 for some time (months if not at least a year for some)* but I almost always pass over them to ink up another pen. It can’t be because they are not gold nib pens because I use plenty of steel nib pens on a daily basis. The only way to find out is to ink them up and take them out for a spin. The Faber-Castell Loom is a gift from my aunt, it originally came with a medium nib which was too wet but super smooth. I swapped it out with my Faber-Castell Ondoro’s F nib and sold the Ondoro. That one I sold last year because of the grip section and the faceted barrel. After a week or so with the Loom I found the nib and the pen rather boring. Functionally, there is nothing wrong, it was just kind of regular. Since I didn’t have to decide to keep or sell the pen, it was easy to defer the decision by putting it into cold storage.
The Lamy CP 1 was next. Filling it with the Sailor Jentle Kin Moku Sei, it wrote beautifully. It even has a little stubbish quality in the 14K EF nib. The nib provides a nice feedback that I enjoy. However, I found I wasn’t enjoying the pen body as well. I didn’t want to keep the body but I balk at the thought of selling the nib. Luckily for me, Lamy’s nibs are interchangeable. It’s just a simple matter of swapping the nib out and selling the Lamy CP 1 with another nib.
I had backed Tactile Turn Gist Kickstarter for two pens - one bronze the other zirconium. The bronze that came with the 1.1mm nib was sold a few months after I got the pen. Stub nibs are seldom for me since they are usually too wide for my liking. The one I have left is the zirconium with a titanium EF nib. Now the titanium nib can be tamed with a dry ink but it sings in a different way from gold nibs. I am very gentle with the nib because I was afraid I will spring the nib. I decided that’s no way to live so that is going to go. Also, I found the cap cracked all by itself in the pen stand. After a week of use, the crack turn into a chip. Will Hodges of Tactile Turn will be sending me a new cap once my old one get to him. If you have the same issue, do drop him an email.
Finally, the Visconti Van Gogh Starry Night. This is a pen I’ve purchased during my Italy trip a few years ago. I got the Visconti Van Goh along with a Delta The Journal and Lamy Al-Star Copper Orange. Both of which have since been sold so this is the last pen standing, so to speak. The week of using this pen I re-discovered my love of the pen. The steel is slightly springy and also slightly stubbish in character. This I’m told is hard to achieve for an EF nib. I am on the fence for the Visconti. There is nothing wrong with the pen, it’s just being pass over for no good reason. Maybe it deserves a better home where it will be used? I’ll be keeping this pen for now.
So this is usually how I go about culling my pens especially once my Block gets full. Tell me in the comments, how you decide for your collection!Stay tuned next week for part 2 where I write about where I sell my pens and some tips regarding selling.