What’s your grail pen?

[collectorofmanythings]

Hello!

 

Just very interested in what your grail pens are.. no matter if it’s $50 or $10,000, I would be very interested to hear your responses.

 

W. H. Major

 

(My grail pen(s) [can’t choose one!] are the Waldmann Tuscany (18k Gold nib), Pineider Avatar UR Deluxe, Conway Stewart Duro (modern), and the Pilot Custom 823)

[TgeekB]

Sorry but I don’t have one. 

[mizgeorge]

I also don't really have one, but if I were to lust after a pen, it would doubtless be vintage, and probably already owned by someone on this board

[The Mustard]

Still early in my voyage of discovery on vintage pens but if I were to answer this now it would be a MB L139 with short window. Not sure about gold vs steel nib though and still in the very early stages of understanding flex nibs and if I want one or not - need to get to grips with my Pelikan 1000 first, when I first used it I thought there was something wrong with the nib as it was so much broader than the ‘M’ on the nib indicated and was as bouncy as a trampoline. As I say, a lot to learn, but of course that’s the fun part...

[silverlifter]

Easy. The green one...

 

 

[Karmachanic]

An Ebonite Unobtanium MII.

Failing that I'll happily accept a MB139 OB in my Xmas stocking.

[jchch1950]

MontBlanc 149 with calligraphy nib.😋

[ENewton]

The pen that I thought would be perfect for me, but that I doubted I would ever find at a price I was willing to pay, was a Parker 51 in the Plum color and the Demi size.  Fortunately, I found one a few years ago, thanks to Teri Morris of Peyton Street Pens.  

 

Since then, I have bought other pens to serve different purposes.  Some have more interesting nibs than my Plum, but the Plum remains my favorite pen overall.  

 

I especially love the nibs of vintage Parker pens made in England.  A pen with an English Parker nib and a short, stubby body made of Purple Heart wood would be my fantasy pen.

[PAKMAN]

Early on it was the Yard-o-Led sterling Grand Victorian which I got 10 years ago, later it was the Visconti LE Ti Skelton which I picked up about 3 years ago.

[Tseg]

Every time I acquired my "grail" the honeymoon would soon end and off to the next.  After about 3-4 "grail" acquisitions. moving me into the 4-digit ($$) range, my pen acquisition habit ended abruptly like a Monty Python movie and now I just write with all the pens I have.  The good news is a ticked a lot of boxes with my several-dozen pens so rotating them is keeping me engaged.

[inkstainedruth]

My grail pen is a Yard-o-Led Viceroy Victorian (standard size) after seeing Pakman's  VV Grand in a thread when I first joined here.  But that's also the "when I win the lottery" pen -- and I do worry a bit about the weight, even then (but the Pocket size ones are problematic in that they don't apparently take a converter, and that's a dealbreaker for me).  

I blame Pakman....  But they really are just such BEAUTIFUL pens. 

My other grail pen would be a full size Parker 51 Plum Aero, but since I have the Demi size one I haven't been looking all that hard.  Other (former) grails are pens that I've been able to acquire over the years; most recently a French Blue Safari -- I got it for a good price because it wasn't NOS (and didn't really pay that much more than retail on a NEW Safari would have set me back), and the bite marks on the back of the barrel are hardly noticeable.... 

I do have a couple of nib grails though: an Esterbrook 9312 italic and an Estie 8440 Superfine Cartography.  The 9312s are almost never for sale, and the only 8440s I've ever seen cost as much as nearly ALL my Esterbrooks combined (and that was JUST for the nib unit -- not even on a pen...).  Mostly I want the 8440 because I promised my husband one of the red J pens, once I got it re-sacced.  And he'd get his choice of nib (one of the advantages of vintage Esterbrooks).  But since he's "Mr. Bic Fine-Point" I fear that nothing else would suit him.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

[maclink]

One of my grail pens was a Conid Bulkfiller.  I now have a regular as well as a Minimalistica.  Both aren't ideal, although I managed to find a Bock nib housing designed to fit a Sailor 1911L nib and now have one in the Minimalistica.  Great Combo, but I've experienced better writing, though not in an overall pen that I'd consider a grail.  I actually prefer a MontBlanc 146, overall, to the Minimalistica, although I enjoy both.

 

I no longer see a Grail pen in a picture or out there that I haven't tested and hope/expect from the images and descriptions that it is a must get because x.  I've had so many 'let downs' or 'very short FP love affairs' for me to consider one as a must have or one that I seriously long for.  My grail is an experience and I may well stumble upon it one day from an unboxed experience or from a modified FP experience.  

 

My next stop will likely be a Pilot Justus.  I like the concept of an adjustable nib and the Pilot nibs, as with Japanese nibs, are usually very well tuned/adjusted.  Some of my better experiences of late have been with less expensive pens.  I used to fantasise about the Yard-o-Led, but then it got repeatedly mentioned in the heavy pens thread.  I'm not one for a heavy pen.  

[ASCIIaardvark]

I used to hunt for the Zerollo Duo Color - I like the complex mechanism & option for 2 nibs with 2 ink colors. It wasn't produced in large numbers, and is fragile so not many survive; I've not seen one in person -- so seems like a true quest to get that Grail.

...But I decided it'd be too fragile for EDC and probably doesn't have enuf ink for me.

 

 

Now my Grail quest is to make a pen I like more than anything I currently own.

I think it'll be several more years of work before I even make it into my top 10 pens 😅

[genedan]

Namiki Yukari Nightline Moonlight Raden

[Paul-in-SF]

I don't think I have an actual grail pen, in the sense of something that would be the object of a long and difficult quest. If I knew of a pen that was both rare and also extremely desirable for other reasons (probably mostly esthetic ones, but it also has to function), that would be a good candidate. So mizgeorge's response is the one that resonated with me the most.

 

On 5/5/2021 at 7:51 AM, PAKMAN said:

Early on it was the Yard-o-Led sterling Grand Victorian which I got 10 years ago, later it was the Visconti LE Ti Skelton which I picked up about 3 years ago.

This seems to be a good lesson: if you want to lust for a grail pen, don't actually acquire it. 

[langere]

I used to have a lot of grail pens.  Then I got them and it was okay.  Just okay.  Now I don't worry about grail pens anymore, but instead just try to use the pens I have (over 300).  

 

The thing is that when I am finished with a load of ink with one pen, I am already thinking about the next pen I should use.  In Covid times, I am using pens less and the computer more, so I have about 30 pens waiting to be inked the first time.  That's good enough for me.

 

Erick

[txomsy]

The one I'll probably never get because of price (and likely limited availability): the Montblanc with Calligraphy bespoke nib.

[Detman101]

19 minutes ago, txomsy said:

The one I'll probably never get because of price (and likely limited availability): the Montblanc with Calligraphy bespoke nib.

That's my grail pen too...which I will also probably never get.
At first I thought I could ask for it for my 15year anniversary with my division...nope, I'd still have to put over $1000 on top of the gift amount given.
So yeah...that's never gonna happen. I'll just stick with my normal flex pens...lol.

[sgphototn]

While I understand what is meant by 'grail' pens, I find it fairly useless except for sellers to entice buyers with a form of exclusivity. 

 

I use two terms. A basic pen, in that any pen that can retain ink, writes reasonably well, doesn't leak, and is reliable and doesn't take much money to purchase. These pens can easily be purchased for $30 or less.

 

Instead of grail pen, I use the term luxury pen. It does what a basic pen can do, only costs more.

 

If a pen was truly a grail pen, there would be no need to buy another - you've bought it, now use it. 

 

I like luxury pens, whether a YOL, Ranga, Italix, Lotus, even my Pelikan M1000. But 'grail' pens have a way of not turning out to be grail pens in the long run as 99.9% of 'grail' pen buyers can attest.

 

Investing in the term 'grail' pen most often leads to disappointment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[inkstainedruth]

3 hours ago, sgphototn said:

Instead of grail pen, I use the term luxury pen. It does what a basic pen can do, only costs more.

I think I may disagree with you slightly on terminology.  Because I have pens which cost WAY more than the Plum Demi 51 cost me.  And let's face it -- for most of the population anything that cost more than a BIC Crystal or a Zebra rollerball is going to be considered a "luxury".  Heck, when I got my first Parker Vector (replacing a couple of Parker Reflexes) I felt completely extravagant -- I'd just paid NINE DOLLARS for a fountain pen (the Reflexes had been $6.95 apiece at Staples).

But then, I don't have a lot of "luxury" pens.  The most expensive pen I own is the M405 Stresemann -- and I saved money by getting it from Rolf Thiel at Missing Pens (so I didn't have to pay the Chartpak markup and he didn't have to charge me VAT).  And I look at some of the really beautiful maki-e pens, and drool at the artistry -- and then remind myself what urushi is made of and and just walk away.

For me, half the fun is the hunt, and I have a lot of pens which I got great deals on at estate sales or in antiques stores.  Not to wave some baseball bat of a snooty pen in someone's face in a game of one-upmanship; if anyone wants to play that game with me, I've got the $22 US Forest Green 51 Aero -- two bucks at an estate sale and the other twenty on getting some work done on the EF nib so it wasn't scratchy.  And the 50¢ Parker 41 (another estate sale find). 

I did a spread sheet on prices of the pens I own (including factoring in stuff like repairs and postage and such).  And I own a whole lot more pens that cost under $80 -- INCLUDING that Plum Demi 51 -- than cost more than $150.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

ETA: Been using the M405 Stresemann today -- so far, it's been to do the morning pages journal entry, and to color over the bar code on some political spam flyer that also had "REFUSED -- Return to Sender" written on it before I swing past a mailbox... Pelikan 4001 Brilliant Black is supposed to be somewhat water resistant, right?