Is My Coral Lamy A Fake?

[arcadeflow]

The fakes are kind of hard to recognize at first, but you eventually will notice a lot of discrepancies. Did it come with a Z24 converter? Most fakes I saw come bundled with them. Mine came with a converter and no cartridge. All Lamy pens should come with a cartridge (black or blue I suppose) only, if it comes with a Z24 converter, the seller would probably let you know he is bundling the pen with a valuable accessory. Also, the nibs are very different. The fakes have the breather hole of the nib located nearer the tip, and the LAMY engraving on them is harder to read, badly done (mine came stamped twice in different directions). Also the plastic used is more brittle, I manage to break my cap forcing the clip a little bit. But the easiest thing to spot was the Lamy instructions that came with it, it was written "founfain pen". This is typical Chinese mistake, they sometimes misread an F for a T because the people that do these graphics are probably not well educated in English language. Sometimes they even construct their own sentences that are recognizable as not having professional level, it is easy to know that Lamy would never do such mistakes. If you are still not sure, compare the clips, the fakes (and the Safari clones) have clips that are never of the same length, they vary a lot. If it came with a converter, it is very easy to notice the converter is a fake, compare it to your original converter and the "GERMANY" written there will have a smaller font, and I believe the original has a letter inscripted in one of the bumps that click on the section when installed, visible with a loupe. My fake Lamy safari was a nice looking pen at first, but it leaked, did not write well, came with a crack in the clip connection to the cap and was easily destroyed by overextending the cap. I disassembled it all to learn how it was made, and comparing the inside pieces to the original pieces I saw in pictures made me learn they are different indeed.

[HollyGolightly]

Thank you everyone. After writing with it the past few evenings, I strongly suspect my pen is legitimate which is a huge relief. It writes well, did not come with a shifty looking converter, and had a blue Lamy cartridge (I wanted to like the blue ink but I really really don't, go figure.)

 

All this information helped me to figure out what I should be looking for and paying attention to, so thanks to everyone who took time out to reply to my humble, if not a bit paranoid, thread. Many thanks for the wisdom!

[Jamerelbe]

Lamy Blue is a perfectly good, but perfectly bland, blue ink. I bought a Lamy Safari (a charcoal) from an Australian store recently, that didn't sell converters - so until I get around to ordering one from elsewhere, I'm trying to run down the ink in the cartridge and refill it. Given my lack of enthusiasm for the ink, though, I may lose patience and just flush it...

[HollyGolightly]

Lamy Blue is a perfectly good, but perfectly bland, blue ink. I bought a Lamy Safari (a charcoal) from an Australian store recently, that didn't sell converters - so until I get around to ordering one from elsewhere, I'm trying to run down the ink in the cartridge and refill it. Given my lack of enthusiasm for the ink, though, I may lose patience and just flush it...

I got halfway through my first one flushed it because I'm apparently an impatient woman. The other two I had already put into pens I ended up using a syringe to draw out most of and put aside for a rainy day... but considering I have about 10 ink samples waiting to be used up I don't believe that will be any time soon! The blue was too light for my tastes, and as you noted very bland. Ah well, more reason to excitedly explore other options.