High-end Chinese FPs?

[cubic archon]

eBay tends to be a good route for buying Chinese pens (though there are forgeries around...) I can't find anything for "Qibao" on a quick search, but perhaps it is transliterated with a different spelling.

[Bo Bo Olson]

The iridium tipping is made in Germany that allows any one who buys iridium made in Germany to stamp made in Germany on the nib, be it made in China, France(never happen), the US or Antarctica.

[cocojj]

I love my Duke Blue Spider pen. It's in my top 2 favorite and most reliable user pens alongside the TWSBI, and I don't even like hooded nibs, LOL. It was less than $15 though, not high-end. I would probably hesitate to shell out more than $50-100.

 

The problem I find with Chinese pens is that other than the Parker look-alikes, they are often rather heavy, especially their caps. I actually learned to prefer not to post (used to post ALWAYS) because of my Chinese pens. But even without the caps, some are still heavy (e.g. a Hero I have). At first I liked the solidness and heft, but after using other lighter pens it is now a negative for me.

Edited March 21, 2011 by cocojj

[nardo800]

Duke pens are certainly not made in Germany, but I remember them claiming that they started a small joint venture with the German company Staedtler to prototype things like nibs, feeds and converters that were of inconsistent quality in their original line. Mostly though, I think it's just for the purpose of saying that their pens come with "German Engineering".