Hello everyone. I am new to this forum. I recently bought a MB 146 off eBay. It is from a reputable seller and it looks genuine down to the red glow when held up etc. It has a serial number and writes very smooth and wet (I will post a few pictures in a bit). It’s a well maintained pen and I am pretty happy with the purchase. I will have to date it to about the 80s to 90s. I was a tad surprised at the thickness of the line for a medium nib. It does not suit any of my pen use… the letters are just too fat. On reading other postings I see this is par for the course for MB medium nibs. I am assuming the few week limit to swap nib sizes only applies to brand new purchases. From what I am reading here, if it is not a brand new purchase, this can be a very expensive endeavor. what are my options if I wanted a nib swap? Do I explore this through a local boutique or email MB? Thanks for the input

Ok, I am going to try and answer here - I am no MB expert - but from what I understand - the cost of replacement (if not covered by MB in early period) could be much. The other choice you have is sending the pen to a nib specialist for grinding the nib to a finer size - I have had work done with Deb Kinney and with Greg Minuskin - both excellent people to work with. Please do keep us posted as to what you find out and finally do with this pen.
badrsj

I agree with badrsj, go with an excellent nib man/woman.
Others highly regarded services include: Richard Binder at www.richardspens.com
and John Mottishaw at www.nibs.com
MB will exchange a nib for $30 something on a resin pen, but your nib
has to be re-sellable (excellent condition) and not an older version.
If you try the nib exchange and find out your nib doesn't qualify,
you'll be out postage and insurance.

Here are some of the pics from the pen... I tried to wipe the surface clean, but I see it only leaves fibers on it from our mass produced paper products! I also don't have a camera that focuses that close enough on the nib but I have tried...(if I use a fountain pen, you should know I am probably not very digital!)... it has a brass tail end I noticed during the first fill...

Just a quick hint from my own "not very digital, not very high tech, and not spending more money on camera" methods - try using a magnifying glass, and have good diffuse light - that helps making pictures of things such as nibs.

I did just this - bought a 146 I knew didn't have the right nib, but wanted it because it was a clean pen in Burgundy.

Sent it in to the Canadian rep, who didn't charge the whole renib fee for an old pen (it can be very high) but found an XF nib in the older style like you have and swapped it. Still hurts to pay $100 plus for a new nib and they keep your old one, but it came back serviced as well and is a smooth writer, so I figured it was worthwhile.

Pretty much a toss up as to whether to send it to a nibmeister, BUT my understanding is that MB treats their parts like a rabid dog in the manger, so it is pretty hard for anyone other than them to properly service the pens.

You've got quite a nice pen there. Since your pen is not new, MB will charge you ~ $350 to change the nib so that's not really an option. My suggestion is to get it custom ground to suit your hand. I have a 147 with a Fine nib that was a bit too wide for me. I had it slimmed down, smoothed and tuned to my hand by Richard Binder and he did a fantastic job. I think it was $45 for that. This pen is now my favorite MB. The before and after performance was dramatic.

I don't know where you live but if you can get to one of the pen shows that happen across the country, you can usually find one or more of the excellent nib meisters mentioned in this thread and they can grind it to a size you like and make sure that it performs the way you want (plus you save on postage, handling, and weeks of waiting). If that's not an option, you can mail it to them but it can takes several weeks to get it back due to their backlog of work.

Thank you everyone for the input. To answer Ed's question, I live in ohio, and ironically it seems a pen show just ended in Columbus. Oh well. I do think it would be helpful for those contemplating a MB purchase to know about the "Medium" nibs not really being a medium, more like a "supersize-me" medium. Reading this forum I realize I am not the only one who felt the caliber of the line was too thick for a medium. Either that or Europeans prefer really thick letters. (I am just kidding everyone).

Yep, the Ohio pen show was this past weekend. Both Richard Bender and John Mottishaw were there along with a couple of other nib grinders. I'm sure there's a website that lists all the shows so perhaps someone will post the link. I believe the next show is in Philadelphia, but I'm not 100% sure. And I agree with your conclusion. It seems that all the MontBlanc nibs tend to run a bit wide. In the future, if I order another pen, I'll go one size finer than what I'm looking for.