At What Age

[lbr218]

21. I just got into the hobby last summer.

[FPStudent]

Last year when I was 17

[Ravenlunatic]

About 5 years ago, so 50 years old. The way I've been acquiring them, I seem to be making up for lost time.

[Romagno]

3rd Grade - about age 7. Sheaffer school cartridge pen.

[Romagno]

deleted - duplicate

Edited March 7, 2013 by Romagno

[Epistler]

My brother (15 years older) handed down to me a slender Mont Blanc when I was 16. It was my only FP for 18 years or so.

I think that I didn't start to use it a lot until college when I really took up letter writing to keep up with distant friends.

I still have that pen, though I haven't used it in a few years. Have been paying with more novel friends lately.

[mejdrich]

First year of college, for regular use... An MB 144... Probably tried a few before, maybe dip pens in elementary school, but I really don't remember... (1987/8)

Edited March 7, 2013 by mejdrich

[Pengrump]

A cheap lever filler that my father gave me when I was 7 or 8 (to keep me from trying to steal his grown-up pens)was my first fp. That fell apart almost immediately, so I had to wait until junior high school to join the Sheaffer cartridge pen craze when I was 12.

[Runnin_Ute]

My first one? A cheap Sheaffer that came on a card hang tag from a 7-11. I was probably 8-12 years old. It was a cartridge pen. Made a mess, mom & dad made me get rid of it. Then not until I was in my early 40's. I bought my first as an adult sometime between 1998-2003. (and my second)

[pienaar]

I think around 10 and I still have the pen.

[sajiskumar]

when I was in 3rd or 4th Grade, may be at the age of 8-9.

[Bo Bo Olson]

November in 4th grade '58...the day of B&W TV with ads for the Snorkel. We had crummy cloudy wet windy no good for recess weather outside...it was after all a big day in our school career; we were no longer little kids, we were big kids, allowed to use a fountain pen. The teacher was my first battle-Axe.

 

What ever pen it was was a lever pen...more than likely a Wearever. It was not a pretty Esterbrook.

 

Expensive cartridges had not reached the lower classes yet.

 

In the long run it did not matter, there were pen collectors back then too...which is why you had your name engraved if you was wise and rich.

No pen survived the year in my possession.

[richardandtracy]

At age 8, May 1973, when I first went to boarding school. Not a nice experience as the pens we had to use if we didn't have our own were the Platignum school desk pens. Horrible pens & I badgered my mother into buying me a proper pen 6 weeks later, which was a Parker 17 Lady.

 

Regards,

 

Richard

[marcelo]

Good question!

 

At 39. Four years ago.

[humsin]

I was about 3 when I had my first fountain pen; it was a Cross with a retractable nib. The mechanism broke pretty soon.

 

Then it was a bright orange cartooney Inoxchrom.

 

First proper fountain pen was the Waterman Expert that I got when I was about 10; that was "too precious" for everyday use. My EDC pen back then was a Cross Matrix.

 

Took a few years of sabbatical from fountain pens until Gr.11 when I began to use my Waterman Expert every day.

 

Since then I have become completely immersed in my fountain pen collecting!

[Gerd W]

Seven years old. New Pelikan 120. Still remember the feeling.

[queenofpens]

12, and in 6th grade, which I will publicly admit was in 1961.

 

Apparently, I attended school in one of the last public school systems in the United States to teach fountain pens and they dropped the requirement sometime between me and my younger sister, 3 years behind me in the same school system

 

Mama was not thrilled when she got the school supply list for my 6th grade year and saw that I had to have one of the little Schaeffer cartridge pens that sold for about a $1.00 back then. I am a messy adult and was even messier as a child. But rules are rules, so she got the required pen for me.

 

I loved it and continued to write with those Schaeffer pens all the way through graduate school - although I ruined a few nibs before I learned to do a careful nib adjustment. I was very bothered when they were finally discontinued and I had to search for a new brand of every day pen - that was how I accidentally got started as a pen collector ;-)

 

Now that I'm a grown-up, I use bottled ink as much as I can. I don't think either my mother or my adult daughter approve of messy me using bottled ink. But, too bad, I'm a grown-up now and they can't stop me.

[dsolmei]

I started using a fountain pen at age 26. By a stroke of luck, I received a Pilot Varsity which I then proceeded to use to write a research paper. It was the most freeing writing experience I ever had. Made me a convert.

 

I still have the Varsity. I take the feed out and refill it with J. Herbin Violette Pensee. Such a lovely writer. I like it far more than the Metropolitan that I own.

[mmahany]

23 years old, October 2011, and it was a Parker 51.

 

I was older than many of you.....something I have never said and probably never will say again on this website LOL.

[Fernan]

When my parents considered I was old enough to take good care of it... nine years old, as a gift, for Xmas. Of course, they were wise enough to know that this pen wouldn't last. It was a school pen, a Waterman I believe. I too had been using dip pens before then.

 

Three years later, I got another one, as a gift again, at the start of high school: a PFM 1. I still have that one. It's currently one of the three pens that I use on a daily basis. Filled with vintage Waterman ink from the early 1940s.