Dear FPN members,

I have happy, happy news to share with everyone: I just got accepted by my top choice college!

This means so much to me, knowing that I've scrapped and toughed it out (somehow) to get into this institution. Without the support of my mum, teachers, guidance counselors, coaches, friends I know I couldn't have made it here...but I deserve some credit too


Can anyone suggest a college pen I can get for celebration/marking this occasion? I really love Japanese pens and would love to have another one to use other than my trusty VP. And hopefully it doesn't break the $110 cap?


Thanks for reading!

Congratulations, Lingyuki, on your great achievement! I can't recommend a specific pen, but a seller called Ujuku has an eBay store with all kinds of Japanese pens, including many in your price range. Let us know what you decide on!

Lisa

Sailor Sapporo.

Maybe a 1911 if you can find a owner willing to part with one.

How Kewl! Congratulations! I second or third the suggestion of a Sailor 1911 /Craig

Whatever pen it is, shouldn't it be in the school's colors?

Congrats, I hope its everything you hope for!

John

Congratulations!

if you go for a piston filler, just be sure to buy some pen which holds a lot of ink,...I think you will be being writing a lot in the next years...I remember changing cartridges every day

Repeat after me ... P51.

Pelikan M605,best pen for the money.

Congratulations

Thank you!

The school color is blue and my class color will be red. Can someone recommend a pen with (one of) those colors, preferably Japanese-made, with a large ink capacity?

Ah you can get the Pelikan M400 with either blue or red body.Indeed its a German made pen but you can put a Japanies flag on it and voila its a Japanies pen.For the price of either the M605 or M400 you will not have a Japanies pen that can compete with it in my eyes.The combination of high quality,smooth and responsive nib,piston filler and a design that isnt a MB 146 replica the Pelikan M400/605 will win in its price range.

Squeee!

Congratulations.

I echo the sentiment of school colors, though there's also the possibility of something that's related thematically to the history of the school.

Blue and red are common enough colors that you might want to get a decent pen with both. Maybe a pair of matching vanishing points.

Japanese pen.Large ink capacity.You could go with a Sapporo or a 1911M.The 1911M comes in red or blue I think.Both can be bought at under 110$.About large ink capacity...IMO you'd have to write novels to empty one cartridge in one day.Or two days.Or three.
And I also think you shouldn't dismiss a Lamy 2000 that fast.
Congratulations and good luck!
Mihai

Yes, go for the Sailor 1911M - it comes in blue and also in red and the colors are wonderful. The nib is one of the best. Always writes right out of the box - good quality control. I recommend the Fine nib and the ink will last you even longer.

I wish you all the best in college!

Erick

The Conklin Jockey Club is available in a rather striking blue and white checkerboard pattern.

Not Japanese, but a nice cartridge / converter pen.

If it really has to be Japanese, well the Namiki Vanishing Point comes in a dark Duke Blue and in a candy apple red - both with either gold tone or silver tone fittings. The silver toned fittings look a bit like white - so that would give you either a blue and white pen or a red and white pen. The Namiki VP, as you know, uses an oversized Namiki cartridge, and so has a larger ink capacity than a standard international cartridge provides.

Have fun.

Quite right!!

And might I just say this as a warning to the OP - When you enter university/college/other tertiary education - BE PREPARED TO DO A LOT OF WRITING. I don't mean typing on a computer or a laptop or on granny's old Remington up in the attic - I mean nib-to-paper handwriting. Ever since I started university, my handwriting-frequency has SKYROCKETED. An important tip - Bring good pens that write smoothly. Never one, always two, three is better. And keep a spare bottle of ink and tissues on you at all times. The number of times my pens were running on empty and were lines away from skipping out completely, I couldn't tell you.

Edited to say: I feel sorry for all those bastards in universities and colleges around the world suffering from blisters and cramps because they're using ballpoint pens...

But yes, a Parker '51' is a good choice. If you buy a C/C filler of some kind, might I suggest now to forget entirely about cartridges. With the writing you'll be doing, it'll be more cost-effective to buy bottled ink and a converter.

I'm not sure if you can get these where you are, but there's a brand out there somewhere named Campo Marzio. I think it's Italian. It's quite small - only been around a few years, I think, but it's fountain pens are good. I have one and it's a bloody tank. It made it through three years of highschool and two years of uni without a single disaster. And they are TOUGH. The pens are small (about 5-5.5 inches long, capped) but they are solid (and consequently a bit heavy on the wrist, be careful of that), but the nibs are strong.

Congrats on getting accepted into your dream college. I think rewarding yourself with a pen is great but also keep in mind that it might have to go through a lot of hell in college. So I'd strongly suggest getting a reliable workhorse type pen. The Pelikan M200, P51, cheap pilots/platinum/sailor pens would all be great recommendations. Also, if your major requires doing a lot of computation, I'd recommend a good mechanical pencil (the Pentel Sharps, Sharp Kerrys), which you can also use to take notes. The Ujuku pen shop has a 14K nibbed pen for ~$50, which is a great deal and also it should be of pretty good quality. You might still have to go through the nightly ritual of lining up your fountain pens and filling them up with ink even if you have a piston filler. This was true for me in college and I went through it with a couple of parker vectors.

[rant] Oh, FYI: textbooks are ridiculously expensive, especially in your first few years. Sometimes, getting an older edition of the text will be perfectly fine and cheaper. I don't know why professors don't recommend this more or list the homework assignments for both the newer and the older editions. The only major thing that publishers do to change the edition is to jumble the end of chapter problems. [/end rant]

Congratulations!! As a college prof. myself, I love to see students enthusiastic about attending and not just 'cause their parents wanted them to. Now you have me trying to guess which school blue goes with, and I never have heard of a class color.

Congratulations!!

The suggestions are all excellent. May I suggest that you select a pen with a different size or profile from your VP? The change between pens is actually refreshing to my old fingers when doing a lot of writing. A Lamy Safari makes a great change of pace.

Best wishes,
gary

It's Wellesley College!

Congratulations lingyuki!

Shangas said:


If you PM me your shipping address, I'll send you a few syringes so you can refill your cartridges yourself. Lots of people do that rather than use converters, probably mostly because cartridges hold more ink than converters (that and you don't have to buy converters).

Again, congratulations.

CMaxx

You deserve a double jeweled P51!

Absolutely Sailor 1911M (Profit Color in Japan). Consider ordering from Ujuku - http://ujuku.jpn.ph/KAIMONO/penframe.htm - $105. I personally think a medium nib would be great for notes.

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i've got no pen advice, but congratulations on Wellesley. Any thoughts on what you will be majoring in?

Congratulations on Wellesley, it is an excellent school. Although Danitrio is technically an American company, their Cum Laude models are really quite nice pens (I have 2). They are cartridge/converter so you would need to refill regularly.

The Sailor seems to be popular, I don't own any, so I can't comment. Another option, in the used market is the Namiki Bamboo, which is likely to come in at just over your $110 price point. This pen is also a cartridge/converter fill, but it uses a push-button converter which holds a lot of ink. My wife and children purchased me a used one for Christmas, and I love the way it writes, and the balance is quite nice. Cheaper from Pilot/Namiki would be the 78G. These are light weight pens, squeeze fillers, and inexpensive enough that you wouldn't be all that crushed if something happened to it. I have a 78G with a bold nib (actually a medium stub) that I purchased from hisnibs.com. I believe isellpens.com also sells these, but I don't think I've seen the bold nib option there.

I hope this helped a bit and didn't muddy the waters too much.

French

My pen advice, in addition to any one or two of the many good pens suggested here, get a 4-1/2 oz bottle of Legal Lapis with free eyedropper pen from Pendemonium or Heart of Darkness with the free pen (HoD $15 at Swishers or ISellPens), and order a couple extra of those eye dropper pens from Pendemonium while they still have them. Use those fun little cheapy pens for a LOT of note taking. Dang things hold a bunch of ink! And the 4-1/2 oz bottles of ink will be more economical in the long run for standard note taking purposes. Doesn't mean you can't change it up once in a while if you need a change of color.


edited spelling and to not be redundant.

do you like those eyedropper pens, I'm fascinated by them, but I'm afraid they are more novelty than anything else.

Not a bad suggestion. If you have a light hand and want an absolutely fantastic pen that is Japanese made you may want to also look at the Namiki Falcon. I have a bunch of these in various nib sizes and love them to death.

RB

Yes, yes I do like this pen. And yes, they do seem to be all the rage right now. I like it not because it's clear or "in," but because a) it holds a lot of ink, b ) it is one of the few fine nibs that I feel comfortable writing with, c) so far it has started up almost immediately every time I've picked it up. I'd love to find a really nice pen, eye dropper fill for a barrel-full of ink that writes consistently nice with a fine nib in the same manner. I have Nikita Red ink in mine, I use it at work for markups. I also have one inked with Socrates that is the same way. That said, the regular preppy with cartridges does not thrill me. What the difference is or why, I cannot say, except they don't seem to want to keep writing. They are cheap, so didn't bother me too much. But for the ink capacity in the eye dropper, if you have one that's willing to keep working - hey - it's free with ink. great investment.

Congratulations on getting your first choice! That is really fantastic. And Wellesley! Outstanding school.

Here's a link for Pilot's Legance, available from Ujuku in Japan. They'll ship. I do not have one, but only because my pen budget is already blown this year (maybe this decade). It looks like a very sweet pen for the money, and light enough to write for hours and hours (because that is what you will be doing!).

Again, great accomplishment. You must have worked hard.

Pilot's Prera has a pure blue color, almost as pure as if the RGB settings in MS paint were set to 0/0/255

As for Red, I'm looking for one since I graduated. I've seen old schaffer's lifetime pens, pilot cavalier, VP, Aurora Ipslon, and Lamy Safari, and Cross Apogee. I like the Apogee but can't find one for a good price in an XF nib just yet.

I graduated with a mathematics major, and used only one Rotring Core for the last two years into my major. I used a fine sized nib which was good for all but the most finest subscripts, like a subscript of a subscript. I even rewrote my topology and abstract algebra notes into a composition journal for safe keeping.

The ink I primarily used was parker's quink which wrote well, but then the ink's color would change from black to a charcoal dark grey color when there was alot of writing done in one sitting. I switched over to noodler's polar black towards the later years, and I kind of wish I did it sooner, cause sometimes I sneezed in class on my notes, and other times during the winter season my runny nose got on my notes.

You might consider the Platinum 3776, a pen with an excellent nib (starting point for the nibs in much higher-priced Nakaya pens) that's quite reasonably priced. Of all the pens in the < $110 price range, it's my fave. Available from Oscar Braun (Pam Braun) or Swisher pens in the U.S., or send me a PM for a seller in Japan.

I remember my excitement about going off to college. What a great transitional period in life...

Congratulations! We just went through that whole process at our house so I can share your excitement from a parent's point of view.

PM "gr10girl" here at FPN (that's my daughter). She can share all of her college freshman fountain pen experiences with you......a pen pal?????

Congratations to you! All of the suggesitons so far are good-- my vote would be the Pelikan (605 or 400, depending on your size preference), but add the Japanese qualifier and the 1911M is a great choice.

Most important piece of advice is to always have backup, and enjoy the writing, writing, writing! FPs make the note-taking bearable...

I plan on double-majoring...one of my majors will be writing/English related and the other one...is yet to be decided. Probably will be something more "practical". (Not to offend any English majors out there!) Due to a wide array of interests, it'll be difficult to pin down the other major.

Exciting news! Maybe if you could find a blue AND red pen. That'd be perfect

As someone with a BA and MA in English (Creative Writing), I'm not the least bit offended. That said, I also have an MS in Computer Science.

Congrats!!! That's a big success ;-)

I like the idea of a pen in your school colors. I took all of my school notes with a FP - great idea as your arm won't get so tired after hours of note-taking. Happy shopping.

neuroscience is a useful major!

If you're looking to overload yourself, she is trying to double major, too, it has to be something practical. Accounting

Since I'm a creative writing major and I've got friends at Wellesley (I myself am not qualified for Wellesley on gender grounds), I feel suited to give academic advice.

I am double majoring in modern languages - German, in my case. If you love language, nothing will help you understand your own language better than having to learn others. It will get you thinking about language on a much deeper level, since you don't usually have to think too much about your native language. And, if it's something vital like Russian or Arabic and you learn it well, you can get a high-paying job involving that language. (One of my Wellesley friends is a Neuroscience/Arabic major and she has been offered jobs in the CIA.)

As for your pen (finally!) I recommend the Lamy 2000. In my experience, the 2000 is the toughest, best-balanced, and tactilely most comfortable pen I have ever owned, and I must say I have had a pretty good sampling of the major brands, including Pelikan, Sailor, Omas, Pilot, Sheaffer, and Parker. Though i love Japanese pens, the feeling of the 2000 nib is unique, and it is quite easy to assume various gripping positions on the pen. It is also one tough contender - that makrolon probably wouldn't break even if it got run over (though I wouldn't try it). it is not too flashy, thus it is less likely to get stolen; and, as a writer, you want your words to be brighter than your pen! It is also within your price range. However, if you have to have a Japanese pen, I would go with a Mottishaw 1911M (in blue, of course!). His adjustments will make the pen 10 times better than even the great Sailor factory default setup, which makes his pens infinitely better for a frequent user than any out-of-the-box pen.

For the amount of writing you'll be doing, though, I still recommend the Lamy 2000 for its ink capacity. It is a tanker. You won't be caught dry when that transcendent phrase comes to you while you're crossing the Charles bridge on foot in an ice-storm. The 2000 is such a great pen all around that I have come to cherish it even though its looks didn't really catch me at first. It's like that altitude of love where a great personality hits you so hard that an otherwise ordinary face takes the light out of diamonds.

S. Greer

PS - If you do vintage - and some of the greatest pens were made decades ago - I recommend looking at the old Sheaffers. No act of precision engineering has outdone the Sheaffer Snorkel Triumph-nibbed pens in my opinion, making them the greatest pen ever made to my tastes. For smoothness, the Lifetime open nibs are The Real McCoy. And these can usually be had for around $30-$50, even restored, and they write rings around most modern pens.