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A mere week after the Atlanta Pen Show and tragedy has struck! Yesterday, somewhere between Sunday service, the grocery store, and home, my pen case disappeared. The case contained ALL FIVE of my favorite pens and, despite hours of frantic searching and hoping, the case is nowhere to be found. The most ironic thing is that only two days before, I photographed my EDC haul and admired my love of stainless, chrome, and matte black, toying with the idea of one day submitting a photo to be featured in Edjelley’s Weekly Loadout. Then, as I gazed lovingly at my collection, my inner voice of sensibility remarked, “It’s probably not a good idea for you to carry ALL of these pen with you. You can only write with one pen at a time anyway. What’s the purpose of walking around with $150 worth for fountain pens in your purse?!” And with that realization, I resolved to retire, at the very least, my Pilot TOW (with its Mike Masuyama tweaked nib) to my writing desk where I normally enjoy using it most. Nevertheless, in the immortal words of Alice (Wonderland), “I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.” After a day of mourning, I have finally reached the final stage of grieving, acceptance, and I realize that while this is a somewhat costly lesson, it is most certainly a lesson learned. Now begins the gradual process of replacing what was lost. Of all of the pens, the one that I am most grieved about losing is the Pilot TOW, even though it wasn’t the pen that I used the most. I purchased this pen from speerbob a few months ago, and he gave me a ridiculously awesome deal on it because there was an issue with leaking around the grip section. It is going to cost me more to replace the pen from his current new-old stock than it what I originally paid plus the work that Masuyama did to get the nib to write as smoothly as I like. It was a pen that I’d been drooling over for a while, but once I received it, I was disappointed at how it wrote. Then, once Mike tweaked it, I fell in love all over again! *Sigh* I should probably be more distraught about the TWSBI Mini or the Esterbrook Dollar Pen H (a recent purchase) since these are the most expensive of what was lost, and even more so since the TWSBI is truly the pen that I use everyday. And the Metropolion was my first fountain pen, well-loved, well-used. However, for whatever reason, the TOW had the most sentimental value. At any rate, ‘tis gone, ‘tis gone, and life must move on. So please join me in bidding farewell to my favorite pens: a TWSBI Mini Classic EF-nib, a Pilot Metropolitan Black Zig Zag, an Esterbrook Dollar Pen H, a Retro 51 Tornado Stealth and, finally...my beloved Pilot TOW with a “Masuyama-ed” F-nib. I hope that whoever finds this gorgeous stash of writing instruments wields them with love and care.

Selling used pens from one's collection - is it profitable or loss making? Many people here own quite a few FPs. That's why FPN is called a nuthouse, right? Quite a few will sell some of their pens off to acquire their grail pen or for other reasons. What I'm curious about is, whether they lose money doing so or whether collecting pens, hold on to them for a time, and then selling them is actually making some profit. What kind of experiences regarding this can you share? For a starter, I bought some pens with a good reputation, just to see me selling them shortly after, because I made a wrong decision. The pen was too short/thin for my hand, the NIB not so comfortable for my writing style as expected, too heavy to hold for a long time and so forth. In quite all the cases I sold the pens, I lost some money, the best case being I would come away plus/minus zero. Am I the only one 'wasting' money for his pen addiction or are there serious collectors out there who know what they do and sell when the prices went up for some (rare) pens and such they make $$$? Your thoughts?