What Was Your Last Impulsive Pen Acquisition?

[AmandaW]

3 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

I've fallen again!

So you are fallen to the extent of two pens and 40 notebooks (that we know about...) Doing well! Any ink? 

 

I'm visiting this thread to confess to impulsively ordering two Wing Sung 3003. One orange and one blue because I don't have those colours in Preras. Just curious because they seem to get plenty of praise in assorted threads on and off for a few years and are still available for very little. Why not, I thought...

 

 

[maclink]

16 minutes ago, AmandaW said:

So you are fallen to the extent of two pens and 40 notebooks (that we know about...) Doing well! Any ink? 

I had impulsively bought an Aurora Optima with flex nib but was ‘luckily’ informed that it would be made to order with a 40 day minimum wait. This was enough for me to request a refund. 

 

However, being a Lamy fan, I soon replaced the Aurora impulse with ordering a Lamy scala.  It actually makes for a nice EDC. Also have a Narwhal Nautilus on the way. 

 

Ink? Yes….  Pilot blue/black. 

[Bikerchick]

2 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

I'll just have to trust the inscription on the nib face. The steel nibs for the HongDian 1841 are two-toned, whereas the gold nibs for the model are all yellow-gold in colour and clearly marked 14K, according to the product's marketing images.

I'm assuming you mean this listing? It is the only one to list the pen as "Hongdian 1841 Fountain Pen ,14K Gold Nib Wine Red Resin Classic Writing Instrument with Metal Pen Case" in the description.

 

I hope that the seller did make a mistake in their price and that you do get a gold nib. If you don't, it may get tricky to win a dispute though, since the nib is listed as iridium when you pick the color:

 

 

 

[ParramattaPaul]

Not my last, but possibly my next acquisition may be another Conway Stewart Churchill. 

 

One cannot have too many Conways -- Onotos for that matter. 

[maclink]

38 minutes ago, ParramattaPaul said:

Not my last, but possibly my next acquisition may be another Conway Stewart Churchill. 

 

One cannot have too many Conways -- Onotos for that matter. 

 

He said it. I don’t have a Conway Stewart or an Onoto pen though I have looked at them. 

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, Bikerchick said:

I hope that the seller did make a mistake in their price and that you do get a gold nib. If you don't, it may get tricky to win a dispute though, since the nib is listed as iridium when you pick the color:

 

Thank you for your concern! It was indeed that listing, and I selected the middle option, which has since been greyed out (as there was supposedly only one unit left before I placed my order).

 

It's not working out, though, although that is hardly a surprise:

 

and I don't expect any seller to go through with a sale on which they he/she would lose money outright; but I do hate it so when AliExpress sellers ‘ask’ the customer to initiate the cancellation of such orders, instead of cancelling it on their end for reason of not having stock it originally purported to have (and let the reason be logged in the system against the particular seller's track record), and/or in such a manner that allows the customer to leave negative feedback if he/she chooses to in the face of the order being unilaterally cancelled from the sellers' end.

  

3 hours ago, AmandaW said:

So you are fallen to the extent of two pens and 40 notebooks (that we know about...) Doing well! Any ink? 

 

Alas, yes.

 

Oh, and there's also a pen that's being sent directly to a PO Box on the other side of Australia.

[Bikerchick]

23 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

Thank you for your concern! It was indeed that listing, and I selected the middle option, which has since been greyed out (as there was supposedly only one unit left before I placed my order).

 

It's not working out, though, although that is hardly a surprise:

 

and I don't expect any seller to go through with a sale on which they he/she would lose money outright; but I do hate it so when AliExpress sellers ‘ask’ the customer to initiate the cancellation of such orders, instead of cancelling it on their end for reason of not having stock it originally purported to have (and let the reason be logged in the system against the particular seller's track record), and/or in such a manner that allows the customer to leave negative feedback if he/she chooses to in the face of the order being unilaterally cancelled from the sellers' end.

  

 

 

That really blows, Dill. What would happen if you refused to cancel it on your end and insisted they did on theirs?  Or is it not worth the hassle? 

[A Smug Dill]

3 minutes ago, Bikerchick said:

What would happen if you refused to cancel it on your end and insisted they did on theirs?  Or is it not worth the hassle? 

 

The seller can simply wait for the dispatch countdown to expire in 9 days and trigger an automatic refund. Or, worse still, they can provide a valid tracking number without actually dispatching anything, and so in the event that I don't receive my order in 75 days or some such, I can then raise a complaint in the system and demand a refund. (AliExpress's system won't let me do that any sooner.)

[IlikeInksandIcannotlie]

1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

Oh, and there's also a pen that's being sent directly to a PO Box on the other side of Australia.

To the same friend who received the GvFC ink?

 

[A Smug Dill]

6 minutes ago, IlikeInksandIcannotlie said:

To the same friend who received the GvFC ink?

 

 

Well, yes; she forwarded my share of the contents in that shipment to me already, along with some other goodies. Given the pens she has been 'impulsively' buying lately, I saw one she might like (having bought one myself a while back) with multiple units offered at a surprisingly good price by a seller from whom I've bought many times before; but as the available units started dropping quickly, I thought I had better secure one for her while I could, in reciprocation.

[ParramattaPaul]

45 minutes ago, A Smug Dill said:

 

The seller can simply wait for the dispatch countdown to expire in 9 days and trigger an automatic refund. Or, worse still, they can provide a valid tracking number without actually dispatching anything, and so in the event that I don't receive my order in 75 days or some such, I can then raise a complaint in the system and demand a refund. (AliExpress's system won't let me do that any sooner.)

It sounds like AliExpress is not a highly reputable company, and one with which I won't want to patronise. 

[NgunnawalJack]

[brokenclay]

On 10/11/2021 at 12:35 PM, NgunnawalJack said:

Burgundy Kaweco Sport

 

 

1 hour ago, NgunnawalJack said:

 

 

A budding Sport collection?

 

Nice colors!

[Paul-in-SF]

I've been getting better at talking myself out of pens lately, which is all to the good. However I fell hard for a Wahl-Eversharp Pacemaker in brown, a color I've never seen before, although I knew of its alleged existence, and at a very low price. Since it had a Buy It Now price, I did so quickly lest it be snatched from my grasp, only to discover the reason for the low price - it has the beginnings of crystallization at the end of the barrel. (The seller was very straightforward in his listing about this, and probably would have let me back out if I had asked, but I took my medicine like an adult.) I don't actually mind, I have one other W-E pen (Doric in Gold-Silver Shell) that is similarly afflicted on the cap, and it has survived 2 or 3 years in my possession so far, stored in open air, without any further noticeable degradation. And who knows, I may find another barrel for sale someday, somewhere. 

[awa54]

On 10/28/2021 at 11:49 AM, Bikerchick said:

A little Montblanc 342 with gold nib. My very first Montblanc too! Asked a friend for advice on it, she said it seemed like an OK deal, so I bought it 3.5 seconds later.

 

 

 

Is that the "real" MB version of the Monte Rosa student/budget pens?

 

 

 

 

 

And on the impulsive acquisition side, I'll cop to having bought a Pilot U200 that's a restoration project at best, for too much money...

the hope that it might turn out to be an easy rehab, somehow outweighed the reality that it's likely just another parts pen

[A Smug Dill]

8 hours ago, ParramattaPaul said:

It sounds like AliExpress is not a highly reputable company, and one with which I won't want to patronise.

 

AliExpress is like eBay. It doesn't sell any product as a retailer, or even ‘membership’ or service subscriptions in the mould of eBay Plus or Amazon Prime directly to retail consumers. The behaviour of particular sellers is the problem; I'd had the same sort of thing happen to me as a buyer on eBay, as well as Amazon Marketplace.

 

Generally AliExpress has been pretty good when it came to resolving disputes in the buyer's favour, when the seller is clearly in the wrong and/or the product is defective or not as described. It's just that it takes a long time before the platform will let the buyer lodge a complaint about non-delivery, which I think is not unreasonable given the current state of international post or shipping by the cheapest possible methods. That said, … I usually document problem transactions and product defects pretty well and convincingly, and I can annotate evidence collateral in both Chinese (if rudimentarily) and English to make my points perfectly clear, even if AliExpress's dispute resolution team may not all have the best English comprehension skills.

[AmandaW]

8 hours ago, ParramattaPaul said:

It sounds like AliExpress is not a highly reputable company, and one with which I won't want to patronise. 

 

I'm a Very Nervous Nellie when purchasing online because I've been scammed (by an FPN member sadly) and had my credit card fall victim in a big way (in no way my fault, admitted to and fixed by the bank eventually), yet I use AliExpress with all due care. Things are usually less there than ebay and I find more choice. I did have an order be not in stock at recently, but I chose to cancel it myself immediately and received my refund within a few days so it hasn't spooked me. If I get stuck being unable to read the details in a listing in a listing: I ask here and there has always been sage advice.

 

 

10 hours ago, A Smug Dill said:

Oh, and there's also a pen that's being sent directly to a PO Box on the other side of Australia.

 

[goodpens]

Pilot Kakuno EF. 
Excellent nib. Can’t believe I didn’t try it long ago. $10 well spent. 

A friend saw it a few days ago, tried it, loved it. So now I have another ordered so that I can penable her for her bday.

[inkstainedruth]

LOVE the term "penable"!

Are you getting your friend ink for the pen as well?

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[NgunnawalJack]

22 hours ago, brokenclay said:

A budding Sport collection?

Possibly.  😝 

I certainly like the 2 I have.  They are both F nibs and write well, although differently.  The new white one has a wetter nib and writes with a slightly broader line.  I see what people mean by inconsistencies with nibs in Kaweco Sports, but for less than 20€ the difference is not sufficient to worry about.

I  really like the fact that I can put them in my jeans pocket and not have to use a shirt pocket or the collar of my T-shirt.

They are everyday tools for me and not for the shelf or display box.

And perhaps I’ll get another so I can have another colour inked.

 

Edit: The Lamys will join the others I have in my pen drawer. They were a bonus in the deal.  40€ for everything in the picture from another fanatic, and none of the pens had been inked.