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The New Postal Senior Reservoir Pen


blackbug67

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The New Postal Reservoir Pen

A fountain pen review

 

 

I hope this review will be of some value to the reader. A photo of the pen can be seen at the following link.

 

http://www.richardsp...stal/senior.jpg

 

 

First Impressions – 9.0/10.0

I was drawn to this pen for three reasons. First, I like vintage pens, second, I love contemporary pens and third, it is a flattop, transparent body, bulb filler in basic black with gold trim. I first saw this pen on Richard Binder's web site and knew I had to have one.

 

When the pen arrived, it was in a blue Bexley box with warranty card, Binder blotter and a card stating that the nib had been "Binderized" for smooth writing. In the box it looked great, so let's take a closer look.

 

Appearance & Finish – 9.5/10.0

The fit and finish are certainly adequate but it lacks that solid feel expected of a large pen. The pen felt smooth with no noticeable lip where the blind cap meets the cap or the filler cap meets the body. The cap band and clip are well polished and are attached in a craftsman like manner. No surprises here!

 

Design/Size/Weight – 10/10

When I lifted the pen from the box I was surprised how light it is or how heavy it isn't. The pen is 5 3/4" long, capped and ½" in diameter, which suits my hand perfectly. The design copies the old Postal Pen Company's original work but , isn't that the idea?

 

Nib Design & Performance – 10/10

The nib size I ordered was the broad and that is what I got. I didn't measure the line width since this can vary with paper quality and choice of ink. The nib requires almost no pressure to lay down a fairly wet line. I would call it an 8 out of 10. Writing with this nib is very smooth.

 

The Filling System – 8.0/10

This was my only disappointment with the pen. I filled the pen half way with Private Reserve Tanzanite and wrote a few lines before putting the pen down for the night. Next morning, the ink reservoir was empty! I removed the cap and found the missing ink. It would seem that the bulb was only loosely attached allowing ink to flow freely. A bit of orange shellac solved the problem and the pen has been fine since. For certain, this pen holds a lot of ink!

 

Cost/Value – 9.0/10

Overall, this pen offers decent value for money spent.

 

Overall Opinion/Conclusion – 55.50/60.0

Overall, I would recommend this pen to anyone who appreciates vintage pen design coupled with modern materials and manufacturing methods. There may be other pens for this price that I will want more, but I'm certainly not sorry that I bought the New Postal Reservoir pen. I will probably keep it for a long time and will use it frequently.

Edited by blackbug67

Lawrence R Witter

blackbug67

 

"The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, the' assay so hard, so sharp the conqueryinge" - Geoffrey Chaucer

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Sounds great. Too bad no photos or writing samples. :P Seems odd that they'd let it leave with a loose filler bulb too. Oh well. At least it was an easy fix.

 

Sorry about the bulb being loose. We surely missed that one. When we Binderize the nib, we remove it from your pen and put it in our tester pen. We do this so as not to ink your pen before you get it----- so we weren't checking the bulb fillers per say.

 

Obviously we will immediately start checking all new shipments for bulb seal before Binderizing the nibs when we get another batch in.

 

Thank you for bringing this to our attention.

Edited by framebaer

Sensitive Pen Restoration doesn't cost extra.

 

Find me on Facebook at MONOMOY VINTAGE PEN

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Thanks for the review! :thumbup: I'm glad you reviewed the broad nib as that's the one I'm leaning toward.

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Just got my amber Senior Postal a couple days ago. Definitely a great pen! Some random notes:

 

  • Nib is pleasantly bigger than I imagined from Richard Binder's photos. My fine steel nib writes very smoothly.
     
  • Holds plenty of ink. Only filled it half-full for now.
     
  • My bulb hasn't come loose, so hopefully blackbug67's case is an isolated incident. There were a few tiny pieces of sliced rubber around the bulb, presumably from the manufacturing process, that I had to blow away.
     
  • When operating the cap, there's a slight resistance at two points when screwing/unscrewing. Not sure if this means the cap is slightly out-of-round, or if this is by design to help the user know how much more to turn. Quickly unscrews in just 2 turns.
     
  • Wonder if a translucent breather tube would match the pen better than the current white tube.
     
  • Filling instructions started at step number 8 instead of step 1... though the steps are listed in the correct order.

 

-Mike

Edited by michael_s
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I think the white tube works well with the red pen, but the white is a bit jarring with the yellow. That's what I recall from seeing both separately at the Raleigh show.

 

I didn't notice any resistance in the cap screwing on the model I handled, but I did feel something very similar with the blind cap. I almost thought I had misaligned the blind cap but backed it off and found out that it wasn't that. It just had a hint of resistance at one point.

<a href="Http://inkynibbles.com">Inky NIBbles, the ravings of a pen and ink addict.</a>

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I think the white tube works well with the red pen, but the white is a bit jarring with the yellow. That's what I recall from seeing both separately at the Raleigh show.

 

I didn't notice any resistance in the cap screwing on the model I handled, but I did feel something very similar with the blind cap. I almost thought I had misaligned the blind cap but backed it off and found out that it wasn't that. It just had a hint of resistance at one point.

 

Thanks for the additional observation! My blind cap works smoothly. Despite the white tube, the amber barrel nicely matches the gold-colored furniture.

 

-Mike

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We searched and searched for a supply of the right kind of tubing in a color other than white -- we wanted black as in the original Postal -- but none was available unless we wanted to pay a prohibitive charge to have a large lot of it custom made. We didn't want to impose the significant additional cost on the purchaser, so we went with the white.

sig.jpg.2d63a57b2eed52a0310c0428310c3731.jpg

 

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  • Filling instructions started at step number 8 instead of step 1... though the steps are listed in the correct order.

Yeah, that's what I get for composing the instructions in Word instead of a real page layout program. The instruction sheet is half an 81/2"x11" sheet of paper; I set up a two-column table for the two copies of the instrux. I'm not a Word geek, and it never occurred to me that Word would continue the numbering of the list items when I pasted the text into another table cell. Silly me.

 

I looked at Word's help, and it's fixed now. The 20 or so funky copies out there will become collectors' items, so hold onto 'em, folks!

sig.jpg.2d63a57b2eed52a0310c0428310c3731.jpg

 

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My new Postal pen writes well and enjoyably. The cap did screw on and off a little rough so I put some silicon grease on the threads and it seems to be fine now. Someone asked for a writing sample, so I am attaching a sample that includes three currently inked pens: New Postal, Sailor, and Pilot. Please note: all are M nibs with different inks, and the paper does make a difference.

 

 

 

All the best,

T

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thanks! that's a really nice blue, too. any pictures of the pen in the wilds of your desk or out hunting for ink?

 

:roflmho:

 

there's the crocodile hunter's voice again...

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Here are a couple of pictures you might find helpful. I do not post my pens and all three fit nicely in my hand. The Pilot Vanishing Point is on the left and the Sailor King of Pen is on the right. Hope you find these helpful. I tried to make the pictures small enough to upload on the forum, and I hope they are not too small. :-)



All the best,

T

Edited by Tumbleweedtoo
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  • Filling instructions started at step number 8 instead of step 1... though the steps are listed in the correct order.

Yeah, that's what I get for composing the instructions in Word instead of a real page layout program. The instruction sheet is half an 81/2"x11" sheet of paper; I set up a two-column table for the two copies of the instrux. I'm not a Word geek, and it never occurred to me that Word would continue the numbering of the list items when I pasted the text into another table cell. Silly me.

 

I looked at Word's help, and it's fixed now. The 20 or so funky copies out there will become collectors' items, so hold onto 'em, folks!

 

I half expected this to be an inside-joke, with the missing steps 1 through 7 explaining how to send 5 post cards to my friends to get the pen for free :P (Readers unfamiliar with the original Postal pens should read Richard's reference page to get the joke.)

 

-Mike

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Funny how these photos don't make it look as humongous as the pen comparator does on the website?

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Thank you for the review. This is an interesting pen but overpriced at a MSRP of 245$ imo. With a gold nib maybe it would be worth the money but considering that one could buy 2 Lamy 2000s or Pelikan M200s with the same amount spent on a Postal pen... I don't know, maybe there's something I'm missing. There always is...

Regards,

Mihai

NO

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This is an interesting pen but overpriced at a MSRP of 245$ imo. With a gold nib maybe it would be worth the money but considering that one could buy 2 Lamy 2000s or Pelikan M200s with the same amount spent on a Postal pen... I don't know, maybe there's something I'm missing. There always is...

Do bear in mind that MSRP is not a real selling price. $195.00 is what you'll really pay for the New Postal Senior. As to whether it's overpriced, consider what Gate City Pen says on its own Web site:

 

...we are creating simple, reliable, attractive, and affordable pens made right here in the United States of America, in the great tradition of the old American pen companies. We have no monster molding machines that can spew out hundreds of pens an hour. Our pens come one at a time from the hands of real people, people dedicated to giving you the best writing experience you’ll find anywhere.

The M200 and L2K are both great pens, but they are mass produced by injection molding. In the simplest terms, the New Postal costs a lot more to make than those pens. A fairer price comparison would be with the only other bulb filler currently being produced, from Edison Pens. Edison's bulb filler, which is an excellent pen, starts at a price somewhere north of $300.00 to the purchaser -- also with a steel nib.

sig.jpg.2d63a57b2eed52a0310c0428310c3731.jpg

 

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