Rotring Germany

[leadholder]

I recently stumbled upon an ebay auction and subsequently the redesigned Rotring website (looks very nice / modern) which looks as though the flagship Rotring models have been and are being reintroduced and made in Germany again. This seems like amazingly good news, so I wondered if anyone else had some news on this that they wouldn't mind sharing. I contacted the particular seller on ebay who confirmed that Rotring's stuff (namely the 600 mech pencil) is indeed being manufactured in Germany again and that Rotring is introducing new models over the next year. They didn't specify which models though.

 

Sounds great to me!

 

Edit: Just to clarify:

I'm referring to the old style 600 with the full writing on the barrel (Rotring 600 / 0,5mm) and not the version with just 0.5 written on the barrel as seen on the Made in Japan versions of the past few years.

Edited June 7, 2013 by leadholder

[chad.trent]

Let's keep our fingers crossed that they start making the 600 FP again.

[MisterBoll]

I got one of the new 600 pencils. Works wonderfully. You can get them from Jet Pens.

[soum]

Fantastic news! I own four Rotring fountain pens and two pencils - all of them Freeways. I'd love to add a few others, specially, the 600.

[Nibbly]

I picked up a Rotring 600 at a local flea market Friday afternoon, talk about a heavy fountain pen! This thing is all metal, hexagon shapped with a stainlees steel medium nib. Must weigh half a pound or if you're Scottish, half a stone maybe.... I'm not sure I want to hang on to this one...

[JLS1]

  On 6/10/2013 at 12:34 AM, Nibbly said:

I picked up a Rotring 600 at a local flea market Friday afternoon, talk about a heavy fountain pen! This thing is all metal, hexagon shapped with a stainlees steel medium nib. Must weigh half a pound or if you're Scottish, half a stone maybe.... I'm not sure I want to hang on to this one...

 

It IS all metal: part of the charm of Rotrings is how your hand gets a serious workout while you write!

 

That said, if you find you don't like it, put it up for sale on the FPN classified: you'll probably be surprised at how quickly it sells. Rotring has their fans on FPN, myself included...

[iamchum]

lucky bum! rotring 600s are in pretty high demand these days, built like a tank they are about as tough an FP as you will find in the history of FP manufacture did you get the lava or silver one?

[hari317]

Is this it?:

 

http://www.rotring.com/en/

[bmwboris]

I remember those pens-built like a tank apparently (I never tried one unfortunately)

 

They came with either a steel or 18kt gold nib.

 

Which was the smoother nib-did anyone try both?

[leadholder]

Looks like they're still made in Japan, according to Rotring themselves. I emailed support about it and just received a reply (took about a week). I've got one on the way from a seller on ebay, so I'll report back as to how it differes from the plain barrel models.

[Ecrite]

Now all we need are the rest of the set. Regarding this Rotring series - the 800 has a gold working end and is retractable; the 600 is all metal in black matte or silver; the 500 is plastic but the hand grip is metal and the 300 is in plastic including grip. They are all shaped alike in hexagonal style to prevent rolling off a slanted drafting table for example. In the set are the Mechanical or Drafting Pencil, Roller Ball Pen, Ball Point Pen, Tripen and Fountain Pen. The Tripen is not hexagonally shaped though but round.

 

We have yet to see the Fountain Pen, Roller Ball, Tripen and Ball Point pens re-introduced. Let us hope soon.

Edited June 14, 2013 by Ecrite

[OnePenGuy]

So, what I wanted to know is if there's been a change in ownership recently. For a while (and you can verify it from archive.org if ya want), Sanford had control of rotring (and you can see the change in the website from May to September of 2001 for some evidence of it - though I forget the history, but I think it was in '98 when rotring was bought). And Newell-Rubbermaid bought Sanford and its family of pen companies as you can see in this archived page from 2000. Nevermind, I found the history of the acquisitions again here - Newell-Rubbermaid bought Sanford in '92, and Sanford bought rotring in '98. What I thought was goofy (maybe a half dozen years ago?) was when the rotring 600/Newton had a (pretty drastic, imo) change in its look, and then later (at least when I noticed it), Parker unveiled its Facet, which seemed just a variation (the number of "facets" or sides of the barrel changed) of the "new" Newton...

 

But now, at the Newell-Rubbermaid site, there aren't any other mentions of Sanford (besides in its history), yet you can see NR still owns Sanford's fam of pen companies (including Parker, Waterman, Uniball, Papermate and rotring). And then at the Sanfordb2b site, there's no mention of rotring. Also silly to me? Why does NR get its hands into stuff in which it isn't familiar? I mean, I understand it from a profit side of things, but does their ownership direct how the various pen companies do business, or are they left to be innovative, and then just have to give a portion of the income to NR?

 

Anyway, did Sanford sell its interest in rotring, and NR bought it directly?!? Or are the websites not up-to-date? Or did some other sort of change in ownership happen, which gave rotring the license or ability to market its 600 series again?

 

Well, just something I was curious about, since I had gotten a few emails from a bunch of online pen stores which announced the return of the rotring 600 series and rapidpro instruments. Like, somehow, they've finally been given permission again to sell what people have liked. Lo siento for the tangent; just curious if some business changes (like Sanford selling rotring directly to NR) has brought back rotring products (or allowed new stock to be produced once more).

 

[The Blue Knight]

I really wish they started to make fountain pens again. I am rotring fan and i think that rotring 600 lava looks amazing I just can't afford the high prices they now sell for (pre- Newell Rubbermaid pens) i hope they introduce the 600 fp again, I would be content If only i had it.

[leadholder]

  On 6/15/2013 at 4:54 PM, OnePenGuy said:

So, what I wanted to know is if there's been a change in ownership recently. For a while (and you can verify it from archive.org if ya want), Sanford had control of rotring (and you can see the change in the website from May to September of 2001 for some evidence of it - though I forget the history, but I think it was in '98 when rotring was bought). And Newell-Rubbermaid bought Sanford and its family of pen companies as you can see in this archived page from 2000. Nevermind, I found the history of the acquisitions again here - Newell-Rubbermaid bought Sanford in '92, and Sanford bought rotring in '98. What I thought was goofy (maybe a half dozen years ago?) was when the rotring 600/Newton had a (pretty drastic, imo) change in its look, and then later (at least when I noticed it), Parker unveiled its Facet, which seemed just a variation (the number of "facets" or sides of the barrel changed) of the "new" Newton...

 

But now, at the Newell-Rubbermaid site, there aren't any other mentions of Sanford (besides in its history), yet you can see NR still owns Sanford's fam of pen companies (including Parker, Waterman, Uniball, Papermate and rotring). And then at the Sanfordb2b site, there's no mention of rotring. Also silly to me? Why does NR get its hands into stuff in which it isn't familiar? I mean, I understand it from a profit side of things, but does their ownership direct how the various pen companies do business, or are they left to be innovative, and then just have to give a portion of the income to NR?

 

Anyway, did Sanford sell its interest in rotring, and NR bought it directly?!? Or are the websites not up-to-date? Or did some other sort of change in ownership happen, which gave rotring the license or ability to market its 600 series again?

 

Well, just something I was curious about, since I had gotten a few emails from a bunch of online pen stores which announced the return of the rotring 600 series and rapidpro instruments. Like, somehow, they've finally been given permission again to sell what people have liked. Lo siento for the tangent; just curious if some business changes (like Sanford selling rotring directly to NR) has brought back rotring products (or allowed new stock to be produced once more).

 

Yeah, it sounds like a complex situation and I've wondered pretty much the exact same thing. Could it be that Newell-Rubbermaid is US and Sanford GMBH is Germany?

[Nibbly]

  On 6/10/2013 at 1:40 AM, iamchum said:

lucky bum! rotring 600s are in pretty high demand these days, built like a tank they are about as tough an FP as you will find in the history of FP manufacture did you get the lava or silver one?

 

Sorry about not getting back to you sooner. This past week and this week has and will be consummed with visits to doctors as it is the 8th year after I was originally diagnosed with bladder cancer. Cysticscopy was Friday and every thing looks clean. I have a CAT scan in the morning, oh, I forgot, I tore all the ligaments and the minscus in my left knee 5 weeks ago and Wednesday morning I finally get in to see my orthapedic suregen, then finally my Oncologist on Friday afternoon. Somewhere in between all of that I need to get an appointment with my GP.

Anyway, back to the Rotring 600... it,s an older silver one complete with the dial up nib indicator. The bad news is that it has a few scratches, hardly noticible ones, on the end opposite the nib. Which in my mind lowers the value of the pen. After cleaning it, I loaded Noodler's Apache Sunset and it writes waaaaay too dry, so I flushed it and loaded PR Sherwood Green and found that Sherwood Green is actually capable of real shading, whoda thunk?

[attika89]

Just a note on the pencils.
As I know the pencil what comes from Rotring itself is the same as the one made in Japan (the one on the bottom). They did not change anything, except that it has the full lettering on the barrel. But of course correct me if I'm wrong.

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6146/5933482054_3c24c5f73a_b.jpg

 

 

Nibbly, sorry to read you have such things going on

My steel nibbed 600 is more on the drier side and wrote a bit too dry with some of my Diamine inks, but with J.Herbin Perle Noire it is great.
Your's might be just a bit picky like mine.
Or maybe just needed an other flush...

Edited June 16, 2013 by attika89

[Nibbly]

  On 6/16/2013 at 10:51 PM, attika89 said:

Just a note on the pencils.

As I know the pencil what comes from Rotring itself is the same as the one made in Japan (the one on the bottom). They did not change anything, except that it has the full lettering on the barrel. But of course correct me if I'm wrong.

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6146/5933482054_3c24c5f73a_b.jpg

 

 

Nibbly, sorry to read you have such things going on

My steel nibbed 600 is more on the drier side and wrote a bit too dry with some of my Diamine inks, but with J.Herbin Perle Noire it is great.

Your's might be just a bit picky like mine.

Or maybe just needed an other flush...

 

Well, when you get older (read ancient) your body just starts breaking down more often, I just try to take it the same way I take paying my taxes.... I also found Diamine inks to be intolerably drty writing, as a result, I am down to just one, Brilliant Red which is a real misnaming, as it is very orangish, almost like merurochrome....

Edited June 17, 2013 by Nibbly

[elysee]

  On 6/16/2013 at 10:51 PM, attika89 said:

 

http://farm7.staticflickr.com/6146/5933482054_3c24c5f73a_b.jpg

 

 

 

I have the Rotring 600 -- both silver and black -- in ballpoint, 0.7 mm pencil, and 0.9 mm pencil but I must admit that I have never taken the pencils apart. ; )

 

I bought one set (but not matching in color) during graduate school as they were affordable for a poor graduate student as well as strong enough to be able to handle rigors of the zippered pen case riding in the backpack full of books, notbooks, and folders filled with paper. They have been great for use while teaching and, even now, look brand new. I like the weight and balance of each -- great for a lot of writing and grading.

 

I might be interesting to get matching fountain pens and rollerballs. For the fountain pen and rollerbal, do the caps twist on the pen when capped or does the cap stay fixed tightly in place when capped?

Edited June 18, 2013 by elysee

[attika89]

  On 6/18/2013 at 3:36 AM, elysee said:

 

I have the Rotring 600 -- both silver and black -- in ballpoint, 0.7 mm pencil, and 0.9 mm pencil but I must admit that I have never taken the pencils apart. ; )

 

I bought one set (but not matching in color) during graduate school as they were affordable for a poor graduate student as well as strong enough to be able to handle rigors of the zippered pen case riding in the backpack full of books, notbooks, and folders filled with paper. They have been great for use while teaching and, even now, look brand new. I like the weight and balance of each -- great for a lot of writing and grading.

 

I might be interesting to get matching fountain pens and rollerballs. For the fountain pen and rollerbal, do the caps twist on the pen when capped or does the cap stay fixed tightly in place when capped?

Yes, they are famous for their durability. It was love for the first sight for me. I bought one I started college. I was just staring at the fountain pens because of the price, but I got lucky

 

The cap on the fp (and the rb) snaps onto a metal ring what has some tabs. Those tabs keep the cap in place, so it won't rotate. This also means that you can only put the cap on in a matching way to the barrel.

http://www.kephost.com/images4/2013/6/18/a1_2013_6_18_g8qu9ydxps.jpg

[Dillo]

Hi,

 

I was corresponding with someone from Rotring recently, and yes, they are still owned by Sanford. I also asked if they were planning to introduce any fountain pens again beside the Artpen range, and they told me that was classified information, so I guess we have to wait and see.

 

In the meantime, I still enjoy my two Rotring fountain pens and a multi pencil.

 

Dillon