$ 12, 000 Bugatti Pen. I can understand why a rolls or a maybach cost what it does. Cost of materials and the cost of the highly trained mechanics that hand assemble them perfectly.

But does it take Swiss Watch maker skill to assemble a non bejeweled pen ? Even if a pen were solid gold or platinum I don't think you could justify the rest of the cost of some non vintage pens as labor.
Is it totally the, my pen cost $50,000 and we both know it and therefore mine are bigger than yours ?

Perhaps on the high priced side. But in the below $1,500 or so, it is materials, workmanship, number in production run, design time / designer (how good), quality control, advertising cost and the nicer the pen the more profit margin required. I could probably afford a $10,000 pen, but I must admit I have not been tempted... although that $5,000 Krone Einstein had me going for a while (until I realized the ledge where the cap butts against the cap would make it difficult to write with). In that case it would have been a piece of art purchase, not a pen.

JD

I can understand the cost of the elaborately & exquisitly hand painted urushi pens by Danitrio & Nakaya. I don't get the cost of that heavy chunk of metal.

Some of the hand painted pens are a rare work of art by a master artist, like buying a masterpiece on a canvas, except the canvas is a pen.

However, the metal pens for 50,000 or the Mont Blanc Diamond encrusted bohemuths, nah. And guess what, the people who bought the Mont Blanc diamond encrusted pen latter found out that the company actually used sinthetic (lab-made) diamonds and not real ones as they led everyone to believe. Talk about getting your wallet washed out!

Other than materials, art, and hand craftsmanship, you are purchasing exclusivity, cachet, luxury and advertisement hype. I would rather spend my money on the perfect nib. I have no use for a lot of the ultra-high-end pens out there.

Dr. Ozzie stated, "people who bought the Mont Blanc diamond encrusted pen latter found out that the company actually used sinthetic (lab-made) diamonds and not real ones."

In my opinion, anyone who spends 50 grand for a "pen" which would almost certainly be difficult to use owing to placement of the "diamonds" and even more difficult to keep clean deserves manufactured diamonds, or for that matter cubic zirconium.

The pen in my hand today is my FPN special edition that was released last year. It writes nicely, is easy to hold, lays down an even line of ink, and cost less than $50 thousand. Additionally, I like its appearance. That meets my requirements for a satisfactory writing instrument.

Let me also agree with DrJPM1 when he states that he would rather spend his money on a perfect nib.

Let's face it:

It is one of the principles of capitalism that if you sell something to someone else, it is usually worth less than the money you get for it. (There is an exceptions to that rule - sometimes companies sell below entry-level, in order to strategically raise their market-share).

With luxury brands the discrepancy between what you get and what you spend is nominally of course much greater than with more profane products:

A MB that sells for 500 Dollars should have cost the company less than 200 Dollars, transportation, tax and advertising costs included. That makes a reasonable profit of > 300 Dollars.

Buy a Papermate instead and you pay around a Dollar for a pen that cost the company less than 20 cents to make, to advertise and ship to your retailer.

From absolute figures it seems that MB is the greedy monster (300 Dollars compared to 80 cents).

From the percental aspect it is Papermate (or take BIC if you like) who rip you off, if you may.

But apart from this I was never in my life disappointed by Papermate. I always got a functional writing instrument for a few cents. I never expected too much of it and still was entirely satisfied.
I wished, I could say the same for MB.

Most current Mont Blanc pens cost about $25 to make, includes marketing and labor and materials.

That means that your $600 MB pen made a profit for the company of $575. You paid that much extra for the "precious resins" (PLASTIC).

Bic pen costs to make 1/5 of the total value. Mont Blancs cost to make 1/30th the value they sell for. Who's the greedy one???

If you buy a Mont Blanc for status symbol, go ahead. You won't find a more recognizable brand out there. They are so marketed that even people who don't know about fountain pens know and recongize Mont Blancs.

However, don't argue Mont Blanc and good price in the same sentence. They are OVERPRISED material wise, but people are willing to pay it for whatever reasons, so I guess you can argue they are "priced cheap" due to the demand but not due to quality or cost of material.

Admittedly, what I left out here is the share that the dealer and / or the distributor get. I did not want to make it too complicated. There is a complicated system of rebates (mass rebates) as well.

Someone with some insights told me that a renowned manufacturer of electric shavers has total costs of 5 Dollars for a shaver that sells for 150 Dollars. That is what I call quite good. Comes close to the benefits of drug dealers. And do I need to mention the brand produces in "good old" China...

Basic market forces at work here. Supply and demand. You make it, some one buys it. Was it worth it? If someone bought it, yes. It must have been to the person who bought it. Why did they spend that much money? Ask them. Did they want it before it was made or did they want it because it was made and by whom it was made? Did they want it if it was one of a kind? or would they still want it if it was one of a hundred?

Why did I spend $300.oo on a pen. Why did the next guy spend $ 6000 on a watch? Why did the guy from Idaho spend 12 million on a boat? Was it worth it? It was to somebody.

I feel weird. I never thought in my life that i would ever defend cheap Bic "monstrosities" that don't even deserve to be called pens

For a substantial number of people in the world these products are all they can afford. I think it would be snobbish to call them "monstrosities". Of course they would not look that nice on a photo, next to someone's collection of roman coins


By the way: I don't know where you got the 25 Dollars figure from. I have heard quite different figures several years ago. Who knows, maybe they succesfully raised their productivity and save some money on QC nowadays.

Yes, where did you get the $25 production cost from? a $600 MB would be something like a 146, and the cost of the gold nib material alone should cost more than that. Then there's the other stuff, the manufacturing, and a portion of the costs of a very extensive advertising system and the upkeep of a wide network of stores. It seems that if companies were able to manufacture pens like that that cheaply, that there would be plenty of cheap knockoffs with similar quality. Even the Chinese c/c 149 copies, with steel nibs, cost about $25, don't they? And the people who make them are operating on a very tiny profit margin in a very competitive underground market.

Its been documented here in the past by others more knowledgeable than I that MB pens only cost around $25 to make. The rest is just hype. (Am refering to their resin pens with gold nibs, not gold or silver or diamond encrusted pens)


Dont kid yourselves thinking you have more.....a Pelikan M600 has as much resin and a gold nib just like a MB pen and only costs $140 - $160. That means Pelikan makes them for a lot less considering that price takes into account dealer profit. And thats with a piston filler, resin and a solid 14K gold nib! (Are we to assume Mont Blanc, also in Germany, is incapable of making a similar sized pen with about as much resin and gold material for less than what a Pelikan sells at retail?)


Hell, a slightly smaller M400 that has almost as much gold and resin a Mont Blanc Starwalker can be had for $120, and with a better piston filler mechanism too!!!


Wikipedia even quoted several "sources" that comfirmed this until a few days ago when someone completely changed the article on Mont Blanc and deleted almost everything on it.


A few weeks ago this was a topic in the Mont Blanc forum and many of them agreed their pens only cost around $25 to make but they still loved them and would buy them anyways, they even quoted some of the sources used in the wikipedia article that now doesn't exist. However, here is the link to that discussion in the Mont Blanc forum: http://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/in...+blanc+make+low

I'd say that they far from agreed to that figure. And it's a little unfair to compare the Pelikan m600 to the Montblanc 149: the 149 has a bigger nib, bigger body, and brass piston mechanism. The Pelikan m1000 is more comparable. I'm not saying that Montblancs cost about as much to buy as they do to make, but 2,300% profit is a little ridiculous in a supply and demand world. Even companies that have been reduced to almost no-name brands like Senator charge $200 for a very similar pen. If they were really paying $25 to make it, then why not sell it for a much cheaper price that would bring in more sales and still give them a handsome profit? I recall another forum discussing MB fakes that said that it would be too expensive and impractical to copy the 149 convincingly. And there apparently are some gold-nibbed MB fakes, but they don't cost very much less than the real thing. If these knockoff manufacturers, who are ingenious enough to produce fake cars before the real ones are released and at a far lower price (and who make fake products of all types that are so faithful to the originals that parts are interchangeable), cannot produce a Montblanc for $25, who can? It's logical to assume that Montblanc would not be able to get away with gouging customers so much if other companies could sell the same thing for $25. The links on the wikipedia article sound interesting, but remember that this is not a reliable source, anyone can post anything there. And there's a notice on the page that warns of possible "weasel words." This $25 figure sounds like a poorly supported attempt to bash Montblanc, initiated by one person and then spread and repeated until people think it's common knowledge.

According to Friday's Wall Street Journal, gold closed at $907.40 per ounce. My digital scale tells me that my Sailor 1911m (the small one) has a nib that weighs .02oz (it was the only gold nib pen I have that allowed me to remove just the metal part of the nib). It's 14k, so the cost of materials would be $10.62. The nib on the 146 is much bigger, and 18k. The raw material will easily cost $25 alone.

Edit: My estimate disregards the cost of the other precious metals in the nib and the iridium.

Firstly, why not also knock the M1000?
Secondly, if this refers to Paircon1, then you are far from quoting a highly-regarded expert. If this refers to Dubiel (who never said this here), I believe it was a very exaggerated statement that he made. If you think about it, it's irrational to believe that even a mediocre copy of a 149 could cost $25.

Lets see why i won't nock the M1000


Because although suggested retail price is around $500 USD, Pelikan allows dealers to offer discounting, bringing the average price of the M1000 to around $280- 300 dollars, far cheaper than the entry level Mont Blanc FP and better quality too

Lets face it, Pelikan allows great quuality while still letting you have money to pursue non FP pursuits.

Mont Blanc is a piker. Years ago, I worked for a company that bought computers and used them in its products. The computer manufacturer made a power supply for its product that perhaps cost $200 to build. That company charged us $4000 for it. We put the same unit on our shelves and charged our customers $26,800 for one.

Paddler

Did those calculations take into account that gold is sold by the Troye ounce, which is bigger than the normal ounce? Also, gold has shot up by more than $100 in the past few months, so the starting point may have been too high for comparison

$50,000? That's nothing - the list price of the Montblanc Black Diamond pen is 125,000 Euros. I wonder how many they've sold.... This might sound like sour grapes, but it seems to me that beyond a certain price point (which is under $1,000, I think, except for a few vintage pens) pens get uglier, not more attractive - tacky-looking stuff that no-one would buy if they were cheap.

Simon

For me there's an optimal point in the middle where I "feel best" about a purchase. Too low and I don't get the functionality, too high and I don't get any more for the money other than claims to superiority that can't be backed up by anything that I care about. (Not that I'm saying anything noteworthy here ...)

So, for instance, that Krone Einstein pen, which I just googled, seemed utterly ridiculous to me. It was SO poorly designed that there would be no way to work with it in your hand, or so it looked. It was obviously just a platform for visual artwork to be placed on. But, the visual artwork was, itself, poor; of the representative and chintzy kind, like paintings of Elvis on black velvet. I could imagine, to the contrary, a similarly priced pen but designed by someone who knew more about how to make a good looking item, an item that visually appeared to function well (even if it never was literally asked to function in all its existence). Perhaps an Italian cufflink manufacturer, or someone, would do a better job. Then I might be more tempted by the price-to-benefit which I perceive.

Thing is, all of that is about MY perceptions. Other people have chimed in, here on this thread, that THEIR perceptions were much more favorable toward that pen. So, there are really two mathematics going on. One math is about the ratio of cost to sale, for the manufacturer. Who gets the higher percentage of mark-up, Mont Blanc or Krone or Bic? The other math, though, is just about a given individual working out his own priorities. What can he or she afford, what does he want to afford, how much is he willing to spend for how much benefit?

I am often surprised at just how consistent price-points are, even in "collectibles" that arguably have less "functional" value than they might be perceived to have. I can find a wide range of pens in exactly the same wheel-house of prices, by different manufacturers. There's a sweet spot where the user pen resides, right at roughly $75 for a "high quality but user grade" pen. There's another for "really dinged up but works like a charm" right at $35. If you watch the auctions and the prices here at FPN you'll start to get a handle on where the prices are, and what things go for.

And for me, it's never really over $100. I have a few stellar specimens, but I'm no happier with them than I am with a $55 "user." My 51 with gold-filled cap and two jewels pleases me only as much as my battered Conklin Chicago. And the pen I write the most often with, is a (rather battered, too) Binder-ized Esterbrook J. Maybe it's all about the nib?

I think for everybody there is also a price point at which pens become too expensive to buy. It's like wine for me - for example, the experience of a $25 wine is not really different enough from the $100 wine to justify buying the latter. (The nice thing about pens is that you don't consume them the same way - you don't use them once and then they're gone, so this example, I'm aware only works so far...)

For me, that price point right now is around $300 - that's because one of my next acquisitions will be a Pencraft pen and that's what I'll have to spend. I'm saving, saving... It used to be a bit lower, but then my tastes have gotten more refined (expensive?).

The study of consumer behavior is absolutely fascinating and, as I'm sure you're aware, many economists, sociologists, and anthropologists have studied this.

Erick