I'm looking for a fairly inexpensive Pelikan to hold me over until I get some real money. In your humble opinion, which would be better as a fairly che...er...thrifty starter, an M22 or a Pura?

An M200. they can be found for $40-60. I have no experience with the others.

JMO, YMMV

I bought a M200 off ebay from a German company, Sorry I dont remember the name, Fast service and a great writing pen around $50.00 with shipping to Texas.

Hello,

to the difference of the both fountain pens mentioned:

M 200 is a piston filled pen, plastic barrel, very good quality
Pura is a cartridge pen made of aluminium and also good quality

For M200 please have a look to:
http://www.ruettinger-web.de/e-pelikan-modell-m75-m250.html
for Pura:
http://alt.pelikan.de/de/docs/pro_viewall....d=120&fid=2

Best regards
Werner

Thanks, I'm familiar with both on the basics, but was curious on performance. I admit to a slight prejudice against cart loaders.

As far as performance, the M200 is a absolute stunning performer. My "work" pen is M200 smokey grey demo that I just today received an upgraded nib from Richard Binder. Now the original nib was absolutily fine, nothing wrong with it, I just prefer to write small and wanted a finer nib, and Pelikan only goes as far as extra fine. That's one thing about Pelikans is the ability to change nibs so easily. Also the M200 will take M400 nibs, which means you can upgrade the nib to 14k if you want.

Now I picked this up for around $45, so it is not an unreasonable amount for a Pelikan. The piston filler works beautifully and I now love piston fillers and prefer them over cartridges or convertors.

Now the downside to the M200 is the size. My hand size is on the larger size and the M800 is more comfortable to me. But the M200 is still very useable, I sat and wrote two letters with it today.

All in all you really can not go wrong with the M200 as an inexpensive pen, because it writes like a much more expensive pen.

Cheers.

I agree with the statement of "PelikanPenman". I also use for my daily
writing a M200 smoky grey among others (model 400 and model M400).

For me the smaller size is comfortable and I had to declare it is really
a "work horse".

Best regards
Werner

Ditto. I use the M215 because I like the look and weight, but it is more expensive. Go for the M200!!

My choice would also be the M200. Not as good as a Souverain serie pen (M400, M600 ect.). However, the 50 euro I bought it for are really well spent. You will get a piston filler and a good and fine writing nib. The size can be a bit small. For me not a problem. However, that can be personal.