Search the Community

Or: Did your first pen influence your current collection? Expanding a little from the ongoing school pen thread, do you think your earliest fountain pen experiences, at school or elsewhere, shaped your current pen preferences? What’s the primacy effect? As I understand it - actual psychologists out there, please correct - we remember and attach greater importance to the first in a series. So, in the case of pens, our first pen, if we liked it, creates a template for what we think of as a pen, and what pens we like. So, the questions are:1. What was your first pen?2. Did you get it at an impressionable age?3. What pen or type of pen best represents your preferences today?4. What similarities, if any, do you see between the two? My answers:1. Sheaffer Imperial II Deluxe with a touchdown filler (I believe).2. Yes, around 10 years old.3. Post-war Italian piston fillers.4. Similar appearance, superficially similar filling systems. My first pen clearly influences my collection today: - It was black with a silver cap. Most of my pens are black with silver caps. - It was a touchdown filler. I seem to have a thing for plunger-type pistons. (Yes, I know the touchdown mechanism is totally different, but as a child I thought it filled on the upstroke, with interesting results. )On the other hand, the Sheaffer was a nail and I prefer semi-flex if I can get it. How about you? Can you trace any direct influences between your first pen and your current collection, or have you broken free of your programming?