This is purely an observation and question that has been commented on before, but, how can Pilot Varisty FP's be so good for $3? My 13 y/o daughter jsut handed me 3 of them that she found in a purse long abandoned. Judging by the body style two of them have been hibernating for about 3 years. All of them wrote instantly, and are really smooth. They are more reliable and smoother than some of my expensive, name brand pens. Some times I wonder what the use of buying a $150 pen is when I can get a $3 throwaway that writes as well.

(Edited typo)

scary ain't it.......

Yep... I have loads of them around the house and at work.
They are my equivalent to disposable ballpoints. I have one in the car and even during the hot summer and the cold winter it never ever fails to start and work well.

For UK members, these are called "Pilot V-Pen" and are for sale in all PaperChase outlets.

Ah - but would you trade your $150 pen for 50 disposable Pilots? Depends on your life expectancy, I suppose.

---
Col

1. Every Varsity is identical to every other Varsity. No tooling changes, no variation in process, no changes in design. Saves lots and lots of money, makes for a wonderful ROI on their capital plant investment.

2. Pilot makes them by the millions and millions. After a while, even American manufacturers would get good at it.

3. The Japanese learned Statistical Quality Control from American masters (who were ignored in the United States ). Making millions and millions of the identical item is the perfect application for SQC. The Japanese are now the masters of that science (it is not an "art").

4. Because all the millions and millions of Varsity pens are identical, Pilot can buy the materials in mass quantities, inspect all incoming materials to ensure they conform to the same unvarying standards, and you better believe this brings their raw materials costs down to as little as possible.

All of this means Pilot can sell a reliable, if not high-quality, pen for $3 and make money on it.

I find that they are hit or miss as far as writing goes. Maybe my first one was excessively wet, but I liked that style better than the drier writing ones i have now.

Yep, good pens. And they work fine, as long as you're happy to use disposable sticks of plastic with pieces of steel on the end.

For many people plain functionality is not the main consideration when buying a fountain pen - and thank goodness for that!

Interesting. I've seen these pens in white barrels and grey ones. The white barrelled ones seem to have a less rounded point than the grey ones and are not as smooth.

The nibs are on the fine side of medium, like all Japanese pens, which is good for some users and not for others, and it is true that the quality varies from pen to pen. I have also found that the blue ink pens tend to write better than black ink ones - weird.

Also - they might be $3 each in the US, but in our poor overcrowded little island the price is around $5.

True. But what bugs some of us is how a $3 pen can have a functional superiority over a more expensive one. We'd expect an expensive pen to have AT LEAST the same functionality of a cheap one. Behind all this is the suspicion that our pockets are being picked. Well, okay, not MY pocket, but say... yours.

Doug

I don't believe that these cheap Pilots are any better or any worse than more expnsive pens. They work OK, write acceptably well, but I wouldn't even begin to compare them to the best pens in my collection - not by a longshot.
Infact I cannot think of any expensive pen I own which writes worse than a Pilot Varsity - maybe as good as, but not actually worse.

It appears that some may have the impression that I think the Varsity is just as good as a $150 pen overall. I don't think that. My collection has pens ranging from a few dollars to some in the several hundred dollar range. I enjoy using most of them, regardless of their price. Given that the fundamental function of a pen is to be a writing tool though, it often strikes me how good the performance of the Varsity is relative to pens that cost a hundred times as much. The overall writing experience with most of my good pens is better, and I will continue to buy more.

Where can you buy these in the US? I've seen them neither at Office Depot nor at Walgreen's, and both stores used to stock them.

OfficeDepot.com has them for $3.50/per, but having to order them is kind of a drag.

I used a couple of them several years ago and was kind of disappointed. For $3, they were acceptable, but if I had paid more, I would have been irritated. I'm willing to give them another shot.

I've had a couple of bad copies, but most of them have been surprisingly good. As far as writing characteristics go, they actually come out better than the average pen in my collection.

My only problem with them is that I wish they'd modify the nib/ink so that all the colours flow at an even rate. I've found the purple (and to a lesser extent the turqoise) pens tend to much wetter than the black and blue.

Does anyone happen to know if the blues are eradicable?

-b

Do you mean washable? There is no such word as 'eradicable'.

The Varsity comes in two shades of blue - a light blue and a dark one. The light one is washable, but I don't know about the dark blue one.

I have seen only two 3 pen sets in all my searching for FPs and ink. They were at 2 different Office Depots, one set each, and were almost hidden amongst the (shudder) ball points.

Yes, there is. It's from the root 'eradicate'...

http://www.answers.com/eradicable&r=67

I actually did do a water test with all 3 of my pilot varsities (Black, Blue, and Purple) and all 3 washed completely off the page. these are by no means permanant ink. I never posted it because in the end i decided that people probably wouldn't have been interested

Me too... these are all over my desk so that when my pens "walk" away, i don't care. Interesting though... they don't "walk" the way my BPs used to... I think US students are afraid of them! :doh:

I don't notice too much variation in flow based on color. I tend toward the purple ones but because i purchase them in the local Staples store (a blue, black, & purple for US$6), i have just as many blue & black as i have purple. Just acquired my first pink & turquoise, though.

Thank you. 

And yes, I could actually care less if they're 'washable' or not, I was curious to know if anyone had tried eradicating the ink with one of those blue eradicator pens.. What would also help is if anyone knows if the normal blue Varsity is the same ink as blue Namiki ink in a bottle.. Any takers?

-brian

Smartass!

In anycase, in English you erase ink, you do not 'eradicate' it.

Uh oh! In that case please disregard the Pelikan Ink Eradicator on this Pengallery page:

Pelikan Ink Eradicator

Doug

I first learned the words "eradicate" and eradicator" from my school teacher in the Fourth Grade. She was asking another teacher if she had some ink eradicator. And in fact that was what was written on the bottle. The stuff was officially called "ink eradicator."

I haven't seen any of that stuff since the '50s. But it was American made.

Ah, but the person with the Pilot Varsity fountain pen doesn't necessarily have to throw it away when it runs out of ink.

I was able to pretty easily pull the nib/feed out of one. Others have reported success in refilling Pilot Varsitys with bottled ink. When I get the time I'm planning on trying just that. And those babies hold quite a bit of ink, too.

I guess this is what you need to do if you're either (1) an incredibly tight s.o.b. or (2) trailer trash on social benefits.

I think I'd rather spend $150 on a standard refillable pen with a gold nib.

There are a few less insulting categories one might belong to:

(3) Find it fun to refill a $3 pen
(4) Prefer to recycle than to add to the environmental burden of our throwaway culture
(5) Actually like the Varsity enough to try it with different inks

I am new to this. I chose them because the nip was meant for normal writing verses the first one I picked up. I just wanted to try them. But I can tell you that they do seem to work very well. I have one on my desk here at home and will be taking one to work with me a few minutes.

I will at some point buy a nice unit, but for now they do the trick.

.\\itch - "When all is said and done, love is trite compared with the spirituality of a tobacco pipe.
-Jules deGancourt

How do you refill it, exactly? I would be interested in doing this not because i am a "cheap s.o.b." <_< but because i hate adding to the great trash pile we've come to consider all of the earth... I could put some more interesting colors in the black & blue pens i have if i could learn how to refill them. 9

Will they become weak/leaky with multiple refills? anybody found a limit to the number of times these are truly useable before they become absolutely disposable?

Seems like I remember taking the nib and feed out of a Varsity. Considering I might have been in my early teens at the time, it was probably empty. The repercussions from an ink mishap at that time would have been unpleasant.

For those who have done this, which replacement inks worked well, and did the pen develop any leaks?

Sorry - couldn't resist having a dig!

What's next? Sending a Varsity to Richard B. to give it a right-footed, semiflex, .6 stub nib?

eradicable does indeed evolve from eradicate- which itself comes from the Latin prefix e(x) and the root, radix (root); however, the word eradicative is probably preferred, being more frequently encountered.
Eradicatory is even less frequently encountered, but is acceptable.
If one thinks of all the ink(?) spent on this exercise, one might be tempted to subject it to either eradication or extirpation.
Ah- now my Monday is complete.

Tony

huh, what did Tony say........................

Just another 2-cents. I sort of like these little pens. I think they are very reliable and they write pretty well, and I have some around the office and the work shop. As long as they are available, I will keep a few around.

(As a side note, I recall there was a product called "ink eradicator" from the 1950's or early 1960's. I always heard the word "eradicator" used a a noun. One used the "ink eradicator" to "erase" ink from a page, or so I was taught many decades ago.)

Or, use the Varsity when YOU want to practise grinding a right-footed, semi-flex, 0.6mm stub. A better choice than your Pelikan 800 wouldn't you say?

Our local university bookstore has them in black for around $3.20. I bought one, and it's pretty good. But I don't think it's as good as my Sheaffers. I like having some weight in the back of the pen because it helps me keep it in the best writing position. The Sheaffers have it, but the Varsity doesn't. But for only $3.20, maybe it shouldn't.

Hi Emlee,

I don't know the answer to the second part of your question since I haven't refilled my Varsity (or V-Pen, as it's known here in Canada), but there are a couple of methods discussed re: refilling the disposable Varsity here:
http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...?showtopic=7263

(check out Old Griz's long post in the middle of page 2 for the method that doesn't involve nib removal---apparently the nibs are pretty hard to remove so Griz's method may be the way to go...Again, I haven't tried it myself)

I like the reliability of my V-Pen; it starts up every time without a second of hesitation. Amazing, really....(or have we become so used to modern pens that have this problem? )

THANK you for this link. I read through & copied some of the responses. I have a black Varsity that is just about empty. I think it needs some green ink....

Although, i do have friend going to Germany in 2 weeks and the German V-pens come in green...and yellow... and red... and...

You're welcome; I am better at remembering threads in which I posted (vs. ones I've only read)

Oooh, V-Pens that come with inks other than black.....Cool!
I am actually looking forward to trying to refill my Pilot V-Pen so I can try Old Griz's method.

How is the smoothness compared to those odd looking Pilot ballpoint needle-looking pens- ink flow and width somewhat similar? Better? Scratchy?

The smoothness is certainly better than the Pilot V rollers - the 'needlepoint' pens - but not as good as the best high end fountain pens.

Hmm I'll have to try and locate a couple of them. My girlfriend loves her pilot pens of various kinds and colors, so maybe these will be a hit.

I just couldn't give up my better fountain pens though.

Try the below:

http://seiky.zoovy.com/product/PILVARSITY

I agree these are good writing pens, both do nothing for me. As they look like any garden variety of BIC ballpts/rollerballs. Much like a black plastic cased Timex watch for $10, great to tell time, but beyond that...Not much...

Just IMO,

Dave