What Was Your Last Impulsive Pen Acquisition?

[NumberSix]

5 minutes ago, gweimer1 said:

Not  exactly an impulse buy, but I did manage to win 100+ pens at an estate auction this week.  There were MAYBE 6 vintage pens in the bunch, and I was the only one who noticed the Parker 51 Plum...yes, it became mine.   They were in a hurry, so sold by the lot, cases and all.  I have 14 Rotring pens, and a full case of modern pens, including 10 or so Acme Studios pens.
Does anyone have any experience with Acme?  I have to pens with broken threads on the inner cap, and need replacements.   In the meantime, here's a few shots of what I have.  I'm keeping a few, including a Caran D'Ache Ecridor, a Bexley, a Rotring Millenium, and the Retro 51 leather FPH limited edition.  I actually let a binder of Sheaffer and Waterman pens go to another bidder.

 

Nice find!

 

*messages you on Etsy*

 

So, ya got any plum 51s on hand? hehe

 

Nah, I will first spend some time enjoying the Waterman Taperite Stateleigh that I just impulse ordered from you today.  I am a little nervous about the tiny grip section. But it was too gorgeous a pen to not give it a try.

[sirgilbert357]

21 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

My wife just told me to accept your bet and wager my pay cheque; someone has to help pay for my month-long shopping spree that just ended, if I'm not working. 😈

 

LOL. I don't think you have it in you ...but I honestly can't afford to miss a pay check in case you somehow pull it together 😄.

 

So I guess we could wager something of lessor value that won't have my kids asking why the fridge is empty.

 

Edit: and if you lose, I'd propose a much more painful wager: You have to sell off enough of your other pens to pay for what you have incoming!!! OOhhhh, that would SUCK! LOL.

[Paul-in-SF]

As expected, my resolve weakened and I bought a high-end pen at the SF pen show today. I call it semi-impulsive. Here's the boring story:

 

I went around today again to all the tables with expensive pens that had caught my eye yesterday, plus a couple more that I found. Each one was in the range $500-$1000. Then I went and sat down and thought about each pen, and realized I wasn't really interested in it. Lo, right across from where I was sitting was the Nibs.com table, and I realized they had a nib testing station with at least 16 different Nakaya pens where I could try them out in my hand. I did so, and found one I liked, and noted the model name for later use. Then I found out that these testing pens were all for sale, and that's when the impulse kicked in. Do it now, my lizard brain said, the price is lower than you'll ever get again. So I did. I pick up the pen tomorrow before they pack up and leave. Nakaya Naka-Ai Cigar in Toki-Tamenuri. (I think it must be a discontinued model or something, it's no longer on Nakaya's site.)

[gweimer1]

2 hours ago, NumberSix said:

Nice find!

 

*messages you on Etsy*

 

So, ya got any plum 51s on hand? hehe

 

Nah, I will first spend some time enjoying the Waterman Taperite Stateleigh that I just impulse ordered from you today.  I am a little nervous about the tiny grip section. But it was too gorgeous a pen to not give it a try.

 

I think you'll like it.   And it really is nice looking.   It was a surprise in a pile of pens.

[A Smug Dill]

1 minute ago, sirgilbert357 said:

LOL. I don't think you have it in you

 

But I have it in my drawer of surplus items, and in the pipeline of placed and paid for that are yet to be fulfilled.  I don't even know off the top of my head how many new gold-nibbed pens I have stashed away; so even if I ‘need’ a New Pen Day involving such once every so often, I don't actually have to buy more to get that. I have another two dozen or so new fountain pens either coming in the mail, or awaiting order fulfilment if I don't get sick of waiting and cancel those orders with the retailer. I have >450 bottles of ink here of >375 different colours (if not all blacks are considered one colour or not a colour at all, etc.), and easily over 100 new Paperblanks, Peter Pauper Press, Rhodia, Leuchtturm1917, Studio Milligram, Taroko, etc. journals and notebooks, not counting the eight dozen cheap 30-page Muji notebooks with fountain pen friendly paper, and piles of other paper (e.g. several hundred A4 sheets of Tomoe River FP, which I do not fancy).

 

That's why I feel the need to take some time off buying; I spent too much time habitually and routinely watching for what's new, what's discounted or being discontinued, which promotions and sales are on, and working on how to just get over free shipping thresholds or just scrape under Customs scrutiny thresholds‡ for each order or consignment, etc. to “have time” and energy left over to play with and enjoy the massive hoard.

 

I've made zero headway in my cataloguing project for the inks I have; and when I first had a clear idea what I wanted to do there, I had under 300 different inks. That has grown significantly, and therefore the amount of work that would need to be done. So has the list of other things I wanted to test or compare: black inks, the finest (as in narrowest) nibs in my possession, etc. My focus for the past 18 months or so have been too much on building the ‘library’ of what I have, instead of growing the library of what I know about products for my ready access, in case there are questions here that interest me enough to answer or address.

 

In the past two days, I unsubscribed from newsletters from all but two of the retailers (and those two are worth my keeping an eye out on, only because I'm interested in their business in a friendly way), deleted all my bookmarked custom searches, etc.

 

Chances are I'll start distancing myself from forums soon as well. When I started becoming active here, I thought I saw a community that produced and shared more product reviews and comparison, especially for inks but also pens and paper products; that encouraged me to do contribute a few of my own. I must say that, lately, there hasn't been nearly as much of that, except for @LizEF whose drive to continually produce ink reviews every week is just incredible. @bunnspecial, @arcfide, and @InesF contributing their ideas and study about ink properties has been wonderful as well, although I lack the knowledge, skill and resources to respond in kind or emulate what they're doing. But mostly I see consumerist questions about buying stuff, trying to get better value for money, looking for market intelligence, questioning business practices, and so on, instead of just (frivolously or astutely) spending one's money on one's hobby first — largely as an individual pursuit — and then deciding to come to share something with a community that has a common interest in the doing. While I don't particularly want to answer those questions for someone, part of me wants to know whether those answers can be found by my equals and peers; and so I go looking, and then took things one step further and start keeping a close watch on the market as a brazenly opportunistic consumer.

 

I feel that has exacerbated my obsessive character flaws, and encouraged certain behaviours and preoccupations in me on which I think I need to put the brakes.

 

36 minutes ago, sirgilbert357 said:

So I guess we could wager something of lessor value that won't have my kids asking why the fridge is empty.

 

Got any suggestions? 😈

[Carguy]

I got a Wearever Pacemaker with green stripes to go with the red one I already had. I was quite surprised to find it would draw and hold ink. I fully expected to need to change the sac on this one, but aside from a bit of blue ink the feed was still mostly clear, so it hadn’t been used much.

[inkstainedruth]

On 8/28/2021 at 2:57 PM, N1003U said:

How is the dental cabinet coming along?

Sadly, it's not.  I bought new knobs for the drawers over a year ago, and that's as far as I've gotten....  

First it was too hot outside (I don't want to deal with paints or sprays in the house), then it was too cold, then this spring my husband had major surgery, and isn't 100% five months later.  And at this moment, I'm waiting for a storm to go through so I can get the next to last load of laundry in the dryer and the bleach load into the washer (at the moment, both appliances are unplugged).

Friday was one of those days where I ran around like a crazy person.  Yesterday I was a vegetable in front of the TV and the computer (sometimes at the same time).  Today, it was more errand running between laundry loads.  Tomorrow I have to go to the bank and go "Just what is this form you sent me?  I thought I already STOPPED payment on that missing check!" (to the tune of $35 US at that -- and the teller kept blathering about the company that sends out the local sewer bills and borough taxes and I had to tell her THREE TIMES "It's NOT them!  It's the County Treasurer collecting the county property taxes!" (that was when I WASN'T going "WTH" to the IRS about the penalty on the trust fund taxes -- I mailed it (postmarked) on April 15th but they didn't get the check until over a MONTH later(!) and spent 1-1/2 HOURS on hold trying to get a live person instead of their voicemail Hell (and then the guy I talked to apparently told me the WRONG form to file the appeal with...).  My husband thinks that I got ripped off by UPS for paying $5 for the two faxes I sent appealing the penalty; the explanation didn't fit on the form and could ONLY be saved as a .pdf, so I had to say "See attached" and have the explanation on another page (and then had to save THAT as a .pdf before I could email it to my husband to print off, since my computer won't talk to the printer OR scanner at the moment, and I haven't had time to spend hours on the phone with either of those companies OR Apple Support) and I said "They were cheaper than FedEx was going to be...." 

So, painting/staining the new knobs, finding the right size/length screws to attach them, and spraying the metal parts of the drawers with some non-horrible color of Rustoleum have ALL been sort of lower priority tasks....  Once THAT all gets done, then I can start ordering those flocked pen trays to line the drawers with....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[inkstainedruth]

On 8/28/2021 at 4:08 PM, gweimer1 said:

Not  exactly an impulse buy, but I did manage to win 100+ pens at an estate auction this week.  There were MAYBE 6 vintage pens in the bunch, and I was the only one who noticed the Parker 51 Plum...yes, it became mine. 

 

Demi or full size Plummer?  (Enquiring minds want to know! )

Also, what's the filigree overlay pen in the second photo (fifth from the right)?  I've seen that same style overlay on at least four different brans: Waterman, Morrison, Eclipse and I think Townsend.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Paul-in-SF]

On 8/28/2021 at 3:53 PM, Paul-in-SF said:

Nakaya Naka-Ai Cigar in Toki-Tamenuri. (I think it must be a discontinued model or something, it's no longer on Nakaya's site.)

Realized today (again) that this model is a Nibs.com exclusive, having been co-designed by John Mottishaw. 

[kirkwrites]

Most of my pen acquisitions are on impulse. I tell myself I already have too many pens. I browse online. I see another pen I have never tried. I leave it alone for weeks. It sits in the online seller's  wish list area, so I see it next time I log on to shop. Then that same pen starts popping into my Facebook profile and in ads on other sites I visit. I start seeing popups for that same pen wherever I go. It's on my phone. It's on my iPad and in my computer. It chases me down. It hounds me. At some point, I forget about it. I've become numb to its allure. I'm no longer intrigued by it. I no longer wonder how it compares with all of the other similar pens in my outrageous collection. All the ads have vaccinated me. I'm now immune to that pen. I move on.  Later, maybe weeks or even months later. I see the same pen in another online shop. It looks like a good deal. I check other sellers and delivery options. Oh, why the hell not? Free two-day shipping. Next thing you know, there's a delivery at my front door. Two Noodler's Konrad rollerball pens. One is a demonstrator and the other is Galapagos Tortoise. 

 

One question: Is it a fountain pen if the ink is delivered to the paper through a rollerball instead of a traditional nib? It still uses ink drawn from a bottle. I would argue that the Konrad rollerball pen is a fountain pen and pens that use cartridges are not truly fountain pens -- even though they can be equipped with a cartridge converter that allows one to draw ink from a bottle. Once you use it with a bottle of ink, I think the nib is irrelevant. What do you think?

183B402E-99CA-47F3-A5B3-85ACD1BE01D1_1_201_a.heic

[A Smug Dill]

2 hours ago, kirkwrites said:

Once you use it with a bottle of ink, I think the nib is irrelevant. What do you think?

 

I disagree. I think what fundamentally makes a pen a fountain pen is that it has an internal refillable reservoir — whether that's a sac, a tube of hard plastic (e.g. rotary-driven or push-pull converter, ink cartridge), or the cavity of the pen barrel — to continuously supply ink to the nib that is a core element of the pen to remain and be reused, fill after fill of ink. That is what sets the fountain pen apart from the (traditional dip) pen.

 

It's one thing to argue that a nib with an intrinsic moving part, such as a metal ball, to regulate ink flow and/or contact surface onto the page does not stop it from being a nib, as the core element of a fountain pen. Whether the ink reservoir requires a tool that isn't intrinsic to the pen to fill (cf. syringe-filling an empty hard plastic tube, which may have previously been a factory-filled, commercially available ink cartridge, versus eyedropper-filling the cavity of a pen's barrel), and whether the internal reservoir is a replaceable part (cartridge versus sac), and whether the reservoir may be filled by a party other than the pen user (e.g. the factory that makes and sells the disposable ink cartridges), is irrelevant to whether a pen is demonstrably a fountain pen.

[DvdRiet]

2 hours ago, kirkwrites said:

One question: Is it a fountain pen if the ink is delivered to the paper through a rollerball instead of a traditional nib? It still uses ink drawn from a bottle.

 

I have asked myself (almost) this same question regarding the Yookers felt-tip that is a c/c. Same dilemma. At first it went in the pen box, then I took it back out of the pen box, and now I have it back in the pen box. I fitted it with the wider 1.4 tip and decided to put it in the with the other 'specialty nibs'. (It's also a very fun yellow color.) 😂

[halffriedchicken]

On 8/28/2021 at 4:36 PM, A Smug Dill said:

But I have it in my drawer of surplus items, and in the pipeline of placed and paid for that are yet to be fulfilled.  I don't even know off the top of my head how many new gold-nibbed pens I have stashed away; so even if I ‘need’ a New Pen Day involving such once every so often, I don't actually have to buy more to get that. I have another two dozen or so new fountain pens either coming in the mail, or awaiting order fulfilment if I don't get sick of waiting and cancel those orders with the retailer. I have >450 bottles of ink here of >375 different colours (if not all blacks are considered one colour or not a colour at all, etc.), and easily over 100 new Paperblanks, Peter Pauper Press, Rhodia, Leuchtturm1917, Studio Milligram, Taroko, etc. journals and notebooks, not counting the eight dozen cheap 30-page Muji notebooks with fountain pen friendly paper, and piles of other paper (e.g. several hundred A4 sheets of Tomoe River FP, which I do not fancy).

I feel like if I were ever to visit your house it would be better stocked than most brick and mortar stores in terms of variety of pens, inks, and paper. 

 

On 8/28/2021 at 4:36 PM, A Smug Dill said:

if not all blacks are considered one colour or not a colour at all, etc.

I wonder about that too since black is technically not a color and it is not on a color wheel as far as I know. It makes me wonder if black fountain pen ink is a color only when it's actually not pure black.

[A Smug Dill]

53 minutes ago, halffriedchicken said:

I feel like if I were ever to visit your house it would be better stocked than most brick and mortar stores in terms of variety of pens, inks, and paper. 

 

My mother-in-law said the same about my stash of unworn snowy weather and outdoor clothing. She and my father-in-law were going on an Alaskan cruise (quite some time ago), and pulled us into a shop when we were out together one day, to look for some suitable garments for him. I said I'd bring over some new jackets and base-layer garments in his size that wouldn't fit me any more since I lost 10kg from when I ordered them, and he could look through them to see if there's anything he wanted to take on the cruise.

 

The following week, I brought over a 90-litre duffel bag crammed full of stuff, all brand new, in Large size (when I've been mainly wearing Medium for a couple of years by then).

 

So, my obsessive compulsive buying of good quality and/or interesting items is not confined to the fountain pen hobby; but it has simply been my main focus in the past couple of years.

[halffriedchicken]

5 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

My mother-in-law said the same

Gotta say that's really impressive. I think I would be in more trouble if I ever bought that many clothes for using up all the closet space. At least I know where to go for ink and such if there's a Zombie apocalypse. You know if LizEF were your neighbor, she could do one ink review a week for seven years!

[gweimer1]

On 8/29/2021 at 6:04 PM, inkstainedruth said:

Demi or full size Plummer?  (Enquiring minds want to know! )

Also, what's the filigree overlay pen in the second photo (fifth from the right)?  I've seen that same style overlay on at least four different brans: Waterman, Morrison, Eclipse and I think Townsend.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

It's a full-size Parker 51 Plum.

That other pen is a fake overlay.  It's some modern, unknown brand, that has an embossed outer shell, with the black painted in between what looks like an overlay.

[inkstainedruth]

22 hours ago, gweimer1 said:

That other pen is a fake overlay.  It's some modern, unknown brand, that has an embossed outer shell, with the black painted in between what looks like an overlay.

Too bad.  But at the same time, they seem to have done a nice job mimicking the overlay design, at least by my eye. 

Now I'm really curious about that pen, even more so than before.  Because the manufacturer did seem to make an effort to make it *look* real, at any rate.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[gweimer1]

1 hour ago, inkstainedruth said:

Too bad.  But at the same time, they seem to have done a nice job mimicking the overlay design, at least by my eye. 

Now I'm really curious about that pen, even more so than before.  Because the manufacturer did seem to make an effort to make it *look* real, at any rate.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

I will probably have it with me at the Ohio Pen Show.

[inkstainedruth]

Is OPS actually happening?  I hadn't heard.  I know that Terry had finally snagged another site for it, but then lockdowns happened last year.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[sirgilbert357]

On 8/28/2021 at 6:36 PM, A Smug Dill said:

 

But I have it in my drawer of surplus items, and in the pipeline of placed and paid for that are yet to be fulfilled.  I don't even know off the top of my head how many new gold-nibbed pens I have stashed away; so even if I ‘need’ a New Pen Day involving such once every so often, I don't actually have to buy more to get that. I have another two dozen or so new fountain pens either coming in the mail, or awaiting order fulfilment if I don't get sick of waiting and cancel those orders with the retailer. I have >450 bottles of ink here of >375 different colours (if not all blacks are considered one colour or not a colour at all, etc.), and easily over 100 new Paperblanks, Peter Pauper Press, Rhodia, Leuchtturm1917, Studio Milligram, Taroko, etc. journals and notebooks, not counting the eight dozen cheap 30-page Muji notebooks with fountain pen friendly paper, and piles of other paper (e.g. several hundred A4 sheets of Tomoe River FP, which I do not fancy).

 

That's why I feel the need to take some time off buying; I spent too much time habitually and routinely watching for what's new, what's discounted or being discontinued, which promotions and sales are on, and working on how to just get over free shipping thresholds or just scrape under Customs scrutiny thresholds‡ for each order or consignment, etc. to “have time” and energy left over to play with and enjoy the massive hoard.

 

I've made zero headway in my cataloguing project for the inks I have; and when I first had a clear idea what I wanted to do there, I had under 300 different inks. That has grown significantly, and therefore the amount of work that would need to be done. So has the list of other things I wanted to test or compare: black inks, the finest (as in narrowest) nibs in my possession, etc. My focus for the past 18 months or so have been too much on building the ‘library’ of what I have, instead of growing the library of what I know about products for my ready access, in case there are questions here that interest me enough to answer or address.

 

In the past two days, I unsubscribed from newsletters from all but two of the retailers (and those two are worth my keeping an eye out on, only because I'm interested in their business in a friendly way), deleted all my bookmarked custom searches, etc.

 

Chances are I'll start distancing myself from forums soon as well. When I started becoming active here, I thought I saw a community that produced and shared more product reviews and comparison, especially for inks but also pens and paper products; that encouraged me to do contribute a few of my own. I must say that, lately, there hasn't been nearly as much of that, except for @LizEF whose drive to continually produce ink reviews every week is just incredible. @bunnspecial, @arcfide, and @InesF contributing their ideas and study about ink properties has been wonderful as well, although I lack the knowledge, skill and resources to respond in kind or emulate what they're doing. But mostly I see consumerist questions about buying stuff, trying to get better value for money, looking for market intelligence, questioning business practices, and so on, instead of just (frivolously or astutely) spending one's money on one's hobby first — largely as an individual pursuit — and then deciding to come to share something with a community that has a common interest in the doing. While I don't particularly want to answer those questions for someone, part of me wants to know whether those answers can be found by my equals and peers; and so I go looking, and then took things one step further and start keeping a close watch on the market as a brazenly opportunistic consumer.

 

I feel that has exacerbated my obsessive character flaws, and encouraged certain behaviours and preoccupations in me on which I think I need to put the brakes.

 

 

Got any suggestions? 😈

 

Honestly, I don't. And I doubt a friendly wager would make a difference, LOL.

 

You either will or you won't. You said yourself your shopping behavior is habitual and routine. In general, a person has to decide they WANT to change before they CAN change that kind of situation. Based on what you described, it seems like you are on that path to change. 

 

I honestly wish you the best, man. I don't know your situation, but if you've decided to change, I fully support you. I think it would be a positive change and hope you get something beneficial out of it.