RIP pens

[The-Thinker]

What is the most expensive pen that you have ruined or lost? Share your sad story!

[langere]

No way am I going to share those stories!  Sorry!

 

Erick

[Karmachanic]

Thankfully a club I have yet to join.

[jchch1950]

the worst memories are from some Italian celluloid pens that crumbled by themselves😡.

[dftr]

I have lost 2 pelikans. One was a white 200. It was in my car and i brought my car for some work. Days later. It was missing. 
 

the other was a pelikan cafe w italic nib…  I put in in a pencase. Somewhere it was misplaced in my office never to be found again…. 
 

 

[Estycollector]

Both '42 Parker 51's alive and well. 

[askwyatt]

We have a fan of horror stories here . . .

 

Luckily I've survived unscathed. 

[inkstainedruth]

Lost a Pelikan M200 Café Crème and another pen (and the zipper case they were in, somewhere in a hotel in Southern Ohio or Northern KY).  And of course by then that model wasn't available anymore.  Finally, a couple of months later, tracked down a used one on eBay, but the IM nib on it was a firehose (the first one had a B nib that had a bad case of baby's bottom, and skipped no matter what ink was in the pen, until I got it to a nibmeister at a pen show).  Spent half of the Triangle Pen Show that year trying to find a replacement B nib for the second pen, and then a couple of months later it TOO disappeared.  I keep thinking it somehow ended up in a storage tub in my LR but have yet to find it.    And of course now?  The ones I've seen on eBay are WAY too expensive, or from overseas vendors that I don't have a good feel for.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[A Smug Dill]

The FA nib on my first Pilot Custom Heritage 912 disappointed and frustrated me so much, I pulled the nib out and snapped it with my fingers. That's probably the most expensive pen that I've ruined to the point that it can't be used as a writing instrument any more; but I wouldn't call it a sad story for me, other than just money down the drain.

 

[Inkysloth]

My first Lamy 2000. It was the first pen I spent a chunk of money on, and was in daily use. 

I still don't know exactly where I lost it, and still live in hope that it may turn up somewhere in the flat (very unlikely now). I rented a sub-unit in a shared art studio and think I must have left it there. I don't like to think of someone there swiping it, but it's the most likely explanation. 

As soon as I had enough saved I pounced on a new one, which I then sold when the blue Bauhaus Edition 2000 came out, and I've learned not to leave nice pens in any shared space! 

[Bo Bo Olson]

As luck would have it none*** lost or stolen.....how ever a very pretty one decided to fall apart, just so.

 

The big one a Boehler mdl 76 a medium large pen.. 1938 the Boehler brothers split their firm Osmia.

Herman Boehler continued using Osmia numbers.

The BCHR 76 died unexpectedly with no warring at only 85 years...or four-five years ago. Cracks started and continued.

The small one Mdl 53  with the fancy clip is still good.

 

I can't complain, I did get a good bargain, and have been able to show them off for much of a decade.

 

** One should always have one's name engraved with 'gold' or something to stand out. It was a lesson I learned from 4th grade to 10th grade. Every year my new fountain pen and my new Jotter were stolen. Had my folks been rich enough to engrave my Shaffer School pen or the Ugly metal capped Esterbrook or my Wearevers I'd never been forced to buy a Venus......which was luckily stolen.

[fullfederhalter]

I've only lost one decent pen, and I lost it twice.  It was a MB Meisterstuck ballpoint in bordeaux resin.  I bought it used with a cracked cap which I had MB replace.  After a year or so of use, it disappeared, only to be found about two years later in a pocket of a rarely used suit bag.  It was a short-lived reunion.  It disappeared once again, and I have no idea of how or when.  (One of the disadvantages I have found to having and using many different pens is keeping track of them.)  I clung to the hope that it would turn up again as it had before, but that was over ten years ago, and I'm sure it is gone for good.

[JosephKing]

1) I paid for a Blue Wancher True Urushi to commemorate a special occasion.  I waited 2 months, then contacted Wancher to find out the status.  They said "just a little longer".  Waited 2 weeks, and they said they'll find out from the artisan.  The next day, I get an email that they can't give me a blue one right now, would I like black or red?  No thanks, the blue is important, I'll wait.  A couple of days later ask if there is anything I should be concerned about, and get told that the stormy weather makes it difficult for them to make me a blue pen. Ok, fine, I'll take the black.  "So what kind of nib do you want?"  Will your 14K gold fine write the same line width as a Falcon soft fine?  Yep! Nice!  2 weeks later... Writes like a broad, is scratchy, and hard starts.  Can you guys fix it? Sure. Pay to send the nib back, a month later, it writes like a medium, is still scratchy, and still hard starts.  FINE! You want to write broad, let's write broad!  Sprung the nib in a full flex fit of fury.

 

2) Pilot Vanishing Point dropped from desk height.  It was retracted, so no worries, right? Wrong!  Landed knock side down, which extended the nib, then it somersaulted into a double back handspring for a perfect 10 performance winning a bent gold medal... errr... metal.

 

3) Paid for a special sea gull nib from Jeremiah at Monty Winnfield.

It's been over a year and I still haven't even received an email response since I paid him.  "Hey Jeremiah, can you please let me know where I am in your queue?" *crickets* times 6.

 

4) Conklin All American in ebony wood with dark metal trim and a black nib.  Ooooooh, fancy!  So fancy that it needed to show off it's magnificence with a hole designed into the cap.  What?  Yep!  It couldn't stay wet overnight.  I don't need a  beauty queen taking up space in my drawer, so those fancy ebony wood clothes got chopped up, literally, and glued as a section on a TiScribe bolt.  Thick wood section on a metal pen... Nice!

 

And the best part: that fancy black nib makes the Wancher gloriously stealthy.

 

Full circle.

[Bo Bo Olson]

Joe, you make me and more than likely many others feel lucky, with your unluck.

[JosephKing]

3 hours ago, Bo Bo Olson said:

Joe, you make me and more than likely many others feel lucky, with your unluck.

I'm happy you find value in these stories, Bo Bo. 

 

I am grateful for them exposing me to all sides of this hobby; it makes the overall experience feel wonderfully organic and "human".

And the freedom that comes with letting go of my expectations... I'd say these little niggles were a bargain price for that.

[65brix]

I overheated a nice Duovac that I was trying to restore. Still couldn't get the vac assembly out!

[N1003U]

As I confessed elsewhere in this forum, some years back I caused the death of a beloved black/GT Pelikan M1000 when I neglected to remove it from a jacket pocket before the jacket was sent to be dry cleaned. Unfortunately, the cleaner also did not note the pen in the pocket, and the pen did not survive the cleaning process. The cracked, deformed, and bent/broken remains were not a pretty sight. 

 

 

 

[tubular]

My first loss (partially retrieved) was the MB 146 my father gave me when I was young.  I took it to college with me and one day dropped it on its head.  The nib was unrecognizable when I picked it up.  I took it to a pen shop (not a very good one, but I didn't know) and asked the very old German man there if he could fix it.  He went at it with clueless violence and made it (of course) worse.  Eventually my father took  it to an authorized MB repair place, where they replaced the nib.   I could write again, but the new nib was nothing like the original.

 

Second loss:  I took my favorite little MB (I have no idea what it was--maybe a minor Meisterstuck?--but I  adored it) to a part time job with me one day and left it overnight at my desk.  It vanished.  No Montblanc since has ever given me so much pleasure.

 

As a brand new young faculty member, I let a colleague who assured me he was a fountain pen person himself use a pretty little Parker of mine (not sure what model; in those days I wasn't all that aware of differences among them).  He took it, tried to take the cap off, and, when It wouldn't come and before I could stop him, wrenched the cap off and broke its threads.  Utterly unrepentant, he then proceeded to bear down with it on a piece of bad paper in a way that must have wrecked the nib.  But the pen was finished.  If I had known more about where to take a damaged pen it might have been saved, but I didn't know.

Edited January 23, 2022 by tubular
Missing word.

[kazoolaw]

One fell swoop:  Montblanc Le Grand rollerball and 149 both gone, P-F-F-F-T.

[N1003U]

2 hours ago, kazoolaw said:

One fell swoop:  Montblanc Le Grand rollerball and 149 both gone, P-F-F-F-T.

That is very sad...