Diplomat Elox Matrix, and Pelikan M205 in white

These managed to miss being delivered either on Pi Day or the Ides of March, even though the parcel was already in Australia Post's hands last Friday.

I've had my eye on the white Pelikan M205 for quite a while now, but by the time I got sufficiently interested (after our first dozen M20x pens), both La Couronne du Comte and Cult Pens — being the authorised Pelikan retailers I trust to offer reasonable prices — had sold out of the colour.

(EndlessPens could have been a candidate as a source, even though I don't think it's an authorised retailer of the brand; but it never seemed to have it in stock, but require pre-ordering that is paid for upfront, and by then its pre-order and shipping policies have become, in my view, increasingly unfriendly since the early days when I bought other brands from it often.)

Amazon has only recently started including items sold by Amazon Germany in its Amazon Global Store listings on Amazon Australia, with free delivery to Australian addresses, and I was surprised to see these pens offered at prices comparable to buying from (now-defunct) LCdC would have cost me, even with the all-year-round personal discount code the shop's owner issued to me. Only for these respective nib width grades, though; which is just as well, because Diplomat's steel EF nibs have been excellent for me by its F nib is a little too wet and broad for my preferences, and I have a whole box of spare/standalone Pelikan M205 steel nibs (in every width grade), because these days it seems to be bit of lottery what you actually receive factory-fitted on a new Pelikan M20x even if the nib nominally matches what you specified in the order.

So, of course I just had to mindlessly jump onto these and lock the offer in.

… and, phew! The tipping on this Pelikan's F nib looks more like the size and geometry of the “first M200 F nib” and not the “second M200 F nib” here.