How old are fountain pen enthusiasts?

[theblackpen]

My biological age is 25. I act and feel like a 9 year old. In Romania we were asked to use fountain pens for writing that's why I wrote for about 13 years with a Gold Star 707(P51 chinese clone). After the iridium had worn off , I was looking for a nice writing instrument. Google search and found FPN . After a few questions asked I bought a black Pelikan M200. And I was hooked. Looking forward on giving my son his first fountain pen. Hope he likes it. Hope he likes me... :roflmho:

Best,

Mihai

[mikerph]

I'm 58---I got my first taste of fountain pens from my dad's assorted Parker 51's and an occasional Sheaffer Crest snorkel. Those pens are long gone, but I have several "replacements" in my collection. As I stated earlier in another post I got my first good pen when I was 12 and started collecting--I still have it(12K Cross). I used a good fountain pen in the later part of high school and all thru college as well as pharmacy school. As a Pharmacist, I have to write(scribble) quickly and have difficulty using a fountain pen, but I found that I can get by with either a Pelikan M400 or a Pilot Vanishing Point.

[Jerome Tarshis]

I am 72. Tended not to be a proper child when I was a child, and now tend to be a somewhat youthful old man. One way or another, restless to be somewhere else, and not only in age. I've written with a fountain pen since some time in elementary school. We began with pencils, I should think. (But I can't remember.)

 

Formal instruction in handwriting was with a straight pen, also called a dip pen. School ink in inkwells. Moving forward to fountain pens, which would have been Wearevers or Esterbrooks, lever fillers, took place at no particular time I can remember. Have written with a Parker 51 since I was 13 years old, which means I'm going on sixty years of the Parker 51. In recent years I've begun trying other pens, and have an accumulation of them.

 

It started with noticing that the quality of paper had gone downhill since my childhood. Especially since the early 1980s. A single nib width wouldn't suffice to write a good line on every kind of paper that came into my hands. I was a journalist and tended to write on press releases and in spiral-bound college notebooks. Some paper was too absorbent, and would make the line wider than I intended. Other paper was ink-repellent, and made the line narrower than I intended. So now I've got a range of nib widths, from fine to medium/broad.

 

I continue writing with a fountain pen because I find it pleasant and I see no reason to stop. As for explaining my little tendency to collect, I tell myself and others that I'm trying to bring my past into the present. The pens I want are pens that someone like me, whether here in the United States or in Europe or Asia, would have used in the congenial past. But the more pens I try, the more I am reminded that the Parker 51 is my true pen.

 

[Jerome Tarshis]

[is there some way to delete an unintended double post of the same message?]

Edited May 2, 2009 by Jerome Tarshis

[ianmedium]

I am 45 and have been using fountain pens since I was 11 years old. I was advised by a teacher that to improve my hand writing I needed to slow down a bit ( my mind and thoughts were always two paragraphs ahead of what I was writing so my writing was always playing catch-up!) and that using a fountain pen would help with that..It did!

 

And I am forever grateful to Mr Roberts my old English teacher for telling me that!

[Fanatyk]

I'm 20, and I've been writing with a fountain pen every now and then. However I kept losing my pens, so most of the time I wrote with anything I had in my hand. 4 years ago during my travel to China I bought a Parker Sonnet Stainless (original one, not fake ;-) ). Unluckily I lost it after two years. I bought a second one (this time matte black). I still have it, and after a year I started collecting FP's. My Sonnet Stainless was the last pen I lost ;-).

 

Now, after a year since starting my collection I have more than 20 FPs and hardly ever use anything else ;-)

 

Cheers,

Adam

[wormsoldier]

35 here!

[Fountainbass]

I'm 12,375 days old. That comes out to be 33 years, 10 months, and 17 days.

 

Ever since I was in junior high school, I've been very interested in nice pens. I started getting a bunch of Cross ballpoints, and then I branched out to Parker ballpoints. My first experience with a fountain pen was with an Esterbrook LJ "icicle" around this time, and I still have this pen. I didn't know anything about fountain pens, and I thought the Estie was a little messy. I didn't know about ink sacs & stuff like that. I put the Estie away for many years. Almost 2 years ago, I started looking up information about all the old Cross & Parker ballpoints I have. I stumbled across FPN, bought a Cross Century FP from eBay, found a Phileas at Office Depot, and it all went downhill from there. But I have to say it's been a terrific downhill ride!

[mucephei]

Ah, I forgot to add my age...41.

[Silbee]

55.416666666 years: - )

[bsodmike]

Started when I was 8 or so in school with a Parker my Dad gave me. He also gave me his 149 when I was 15 but I never took it to school as I really treasured it, and understood its value.

 

Am 26 now... eek, that makes me less than 4 years shy of 30

Edited May 2, 2009 by bsodmike

[Tom Pike]

I'm 49 for another month or so. Wrote with my first FP at home as a young kid, then used them in third grade on (Sheaffer School Pen). Fountain pens are many things to me, but mostly they're just fun.

 

Great thread. Thanks to the OP for this one!

 

 

Cheers,

Tom

[Yanroy]

I'm 24. I've been using FPs exclusively for about 5 years, but I first dabbled in them when I was probably 12. I'm absolutely stunned at how many people on this board are under 30... I figured we were a very tiny minority of fountain pen users.

[all my hues]

22 yrs old, got into it about 2 years ago when a friend introduced me. I'd always loved writing with good pens (the disposable kind, I mean, like gel pens and such) and fountain pens were awesome!

[pen2paper]

we're like the dodos or the dinosaurs. I often dispair when i see the average age of aficianados at our pen club meetings.

However ink made the heart grow fonder and great excitement when a "new" 12.5 year old f/p fan showed up with his mother in tow.

 

i gave him some freebies, pen mags, a pelikano from my table, though he admired the MB sterling solitairre f/s ;-) Told the mom i would give her at cost, but even that was past budget.

 

So there is hope.

:hmm1: hmmm..mentor, or enabler?

[andyk]

I have 3 ages.

 

My physical age is 49 years old.

 

My body feels about 70 years old.

 

My mind feels about 18 years old.

 

Regards,

Dean

 

 

I was thinking along these lines, except

 

Physical age 52

 

Body age 65

 

Mental age about 14 (most of the time anyway)

 

 

Used fountain pens at school, at least until the 1970s then occasionally from then until about 2005/5 when I sort of became addicted to them and use them more than BPs now.

 

Andy

 

[adamselene]

I will be 61 in June.

 

I am a psychotherapist, and I take notes for 10 hours a day. I started finding nice pens to do this with, instead of free drug company pens, about a dozen years ago.

 

My wife made a big deal of my sixtieth birthday. She was upset that I happened to sign for the package from WorldLux when it came. I ruined the surprise, she said. I explained that I knew she had a pen for me, but that I did not know what kind. I was sure she picked out something great for me, although I am rather picky. I like to use the parker style refills, either the Parker gel or the great Itoya Gel needle point replacement, or else the Parker roller ball, or the Cross Gel roller ball. I was confident she knew that I NEVER used fountain pens, as they all leaked, and were unreliable, and would bleed on the legal pads I use.

 

Then I unwrapped my gift which was a Montblanc Legrande FP!

 

Which I promptly fell in love with. All the bad things that I remembered about FP's as a kid where no longer true.

 

My wife is fortunately used to my being wrong and her being right. And she is very forgiving.

 

Last week, I found a great price on a Porsche Tec Flex FP. And I realized, that for every pen I had prior to my birthday last June, I had acquired the matching FP! (and quite a few as well unrelated to previous pens in my collections).

 

It has been great fun! Also, now would be a great time to stop. I went on a quest, and I have completed it.

 

****

 

(or maybe I could just slow down? Maybe I could not buy anything now, and wait to my birthday and see what I get? Maybe I could....?)

[pen2paper]

I think a matching Porsche 911 would be Perfect to complete your set!

Edited May 2, 2009 by pen2paper

[southpaw]

40 as of a week or so ago.

[Kabe]

24 in just about everty aspect