Are Your Best Pens Also Your Favourites?

[Honeybadgers]

My favorite pen is my mom's old waterman. It's great now that I replaced the nib with an 18k one.

 

My second favorite pen is stupid and annoying, the visconti divina metro. I have to regularly coat the mouth of the section with silicone grease to prevent it from ruining itself.

 

I don't USE my favorite pens all that much because they're expensive and I can't really afford to replace them if I lost them, and working in healthcare, stuff tends to get exposed to a lot of alcohol hand sanitizer.

 

But I do like filling up my MB149 and taking it to class once in a while. But since I switched to my "4 inks per quarter" rule, I tend to only use 4-7 pens each quarter, and like 95% of my writing is mathematical formulas, I wind up only using my super fine japanese stuff or vintage needlepoint flex stuff.

 

I almost wish I had a different major just so I could do more actual writing. I get really tired of writing teeny tiny little exponents and remembering to lower case stuff when I'm writing chemical formulas because I normally print in architects capitals.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Honeybadgers

[SpecTP]

best pens; Conid Kingsize bulkfiller, MB Johnathan Swift, MB Homer, MB 149, Cross Peerless 125, Platinum Kanazawa Fujin-Raijin, GvFC Rhodinert

 

All are excellent writers.. however the one pen that I keep reaching for first is my MB74.

[Betweenthelines]

I would say my best writers are my favorites. For me it comes down to the nib, then the size/feel/balance of the pen in my hand, then the filling system, with materials and looks last. It's why I keep selling my arco pens. They are damn pretty but they don't get reached for the way other pens do. I write most with my two Pilots (custom urushi, 823), Visconti HS and Pelikan ocean swirl, though with the Pelikan that kind of -is- about looks so maybe it's the exception. I expect once I have nibs for it my Conid Kingsize will rise to the top as well. Big well balanced pen, nice nib, large ink capacity = winner for me. So often times my 'nicest' pens get sold because, while they look pretty, they just don't compete with my EDC pens.

[DCirjan]

Not necessarily: I have a beautiful Pelikan 400NN tortoise, but I very often go to my banal M215. Why? I think it has to do with the personal connection I built with the M215 over the years: its like an object my hand recognizes immediately.

[Bo Bo Olson]

A 215 is a completely different pen with it's brass lacquer covered body than the 200/400. It is a heavier pen, so balances different.

 

One can grow less stupid and snobbish if hit over the head hard enough.

Osmia grand steel nibs cured me of being a gold snob. Noobies pick up the silliest and most foolish of myths.

(IMO part of the thought is that a company is going to lazy out with their steel nibs....If a company has no pride to make a good steel nib...then the gold nibs won't be any good either...)

 

I was impressed with regular flex 200's nibs I trans-mailed to a passed pal in England; in some Germans refuse to mail outside of Germany. But I had both a vintage and semi-vintage 400 so didn't need a 200. The 215 had the same fine regular flex nib as the 200 so I got one of them.

 

Ah ya, ended up with three 200's after all.

[Arkanabar]

For me, "best" is defined by utility. Being desperately poor and notoriously stingy, cheap pens that punch above their price class are thus my grail pens. I think that Betweenthelines said it best, that our best writers are our favorites.

If one has several performance characteristics that matter, then one can surpass another in one characteristic, and vice versa in another. Some characteristics are largely fixed (girth, length, and weight all must fall within specific ranges, and I really feel the need for a clip, not a mere roll stop). But others can vary with the situation.

For example, right now, my acrylic green FPR Himalaya is getting most of the love. It's a comfortable, reliable writer, though it sometimes lets a droplet of its current ink loose unbidden. This keeps it from being one of my best writers. I am filling it with Noodler's Bad Black Moccasin diluted 1:1. This is an ink I don't particularly trust, but my wife bought it, along with Midway Blue (which makes me happy) and Widow Maker (a bit too dark and subdued for markup IMO), and three color-matched Nib Creapers. All of them dried out, but only BBM has required more than rinsing to remove; in fact, I expect to need an ultrasonic cleaner. The Himalaya is a pen I know I can easily knock down into component bits and scrub with a toothbrush, and thus do not fear to fill with BBM.

For my Dad, utility was defined by reliability and narrow lines. The epitome of utility was his Parker "51". Also being a function-first man, he of course got his in black with the base Lustraloy cap, and he filled it with Parker Quink Permanent Black with Solv-X exclusively. I still have that pen, and his last bottle of ink. Should the BBM ever get used up, and I wind up in a job where I don't have to fear for my pen, that pen could easily become my favorite.

But then, I also miss using my old Pelikan M200, a workhorse that I will never give up. In truth, I'd sooner give up my M400, which has never written quite as well.

[OMASsimo]

Seriously, there are no "objectively best pens". But there are zillions of subjectively best pens. I have more than a hundred of the latter and they are all my favourite pens. That said, it should be obvious that in my opinion quality doesn't necessarily correlate with price because I'm certainly not a millionaire. My heart beats for vintage pens and I often find them for relatively little money. This year I bought a mystery celluloid button filler from the 1930s for a smacking 1 € and after I restored it, it turned out to be a fantastic pen. My B&M dealer gave me an Osmia 222 from the 1930s in poor condition and strictly refused to take any money for it at all. I restored it and it's among my favourite "best pens". I love that pen to death but I also have about two dozen other outstanding Osmia pens that want to be in rotation. Non of them was very expensive. On the other hand, I love OMAS pens, which might come closer to what others consider an "objectively" better pen. They are as fantastic as my vintage Osmias or vintage Kawecos or vintage nonames and they are in rotation as often.

 

So, I'm inclined to claim that the "subjectively" best pen is the pen you choose most often.