Anyone noticed that Jotter ballpoints are difficult to find? No longer are they in grocery stores, drug stores, or Target. I can only find them at Staples and Wal-mart (and I'm not a Wal-mart fan one bit). Think one day they phase out completely from easy avilability in stores? Wonder why? I hope not but that seems to be the direction things are going.

They are hoping to sell other model, Like the IM

Their old market dried up as people who buy office supplys won't pay five dollars for a fountain pen anymore.

I'm talking about BALLPOINTS - Parker Jotter ballpoints.

The Parker Jotter is still available in Target, I just bought one the other day there and saw several of them in the pen section yesterday. I have also seen them in Office Depot and a few other stores...maybe your area just didn't have a shipment.

Don't tell my dad. that's the only pen he has used for 20 years.

My error above post, I ment BALLPOINT pen.

Although, in truth, the majority of people out there, in the big market we have in the USA, wouldn't take a FOUNTAIN pen as a gift. But then they don't know what they are missing.


The Parker Jotter, which I think is a great BALLPOINT pen, and of which I have many laying about the place, some dating back to the 1960s, is being killed off by $.50, or so ballpoint pens, comming in from the third world. I was in an office last year where the STIKPENS were marked "made in S.Africa," and I've seen them marked "made in India."

Lucky for me, I have been able to find Parker BP's - both Jotters and 1M's - at my local Staples & Target. Not sure about Office Depot. My problem with them is that I don't like ballpoint tips...I buy the gel refills and replace the stock refills. I have two 1M's, one blue ink and one black, and one Jotter, black. I'm ready to buy another Jotter and make it my blue pen. The 1M's are too heavy for my shirt pocket. The Jotters are perfect.

Office Depot has them. I almost bought a Jotter Flighter there yesterday. Might still do ...

Over here in the UK you can still get Jotter BPs everywhere. My friend collects all the different colours (she has about 10 or so I think) and she got a lot of them from her localTesco's supermarket. They are quite expensive though. She pays about $10 for one, and I can get a vintage P45 FP for that. I think she's mad, but Im working on her. She tried my Lamy Safari the other day and her eyes definitely lit up...

I bought a gorgeous Charcoal Maze 50th Anniversary Jotter off fleabay a couple of weeks ago. Ive got a flighter too. I load them with Fisher Space pen refills (SPR code), because they are so durable, write upside down, over my hand oil, etc, and they come in loads of colours. (My personal favourite is burgundy). I get them from Cyber Space Pens on fleabay (no affiliation).

Ive also got a lovely old navy one which is very scratched. If anyone could give me tips on polishing some of them out Id be grateful.
Cheers
T

Probably the same thing that removed FPs from the mainstream. They are expensive obsolete technology.

If you want a pen for writing (as opposed to indicating your station in life) you can pick up Pilot 207 for under a buck. They have a comfort grip, come in a rainbow of colours and are filled with permanent gel ink. Lose it or let someone borrow it and isn't not a big deal. Runs out of ink, just grab its mate from the blister pack.

Alternately, you can buy a Jotter, which looks like cheap plastic and steel, for 6 USD. Your ink choices at most retailers are limited to blue or black and are not permanent. If you lose it, you're out more than the 70 cents or so the 207 cost you. If you want to amortize your costs, you have to remember to hunt down and buy refills for it. Until you do, it's just a thing you have to tote around.

Technology pushes on and Parker missed the boat by not updating their Jotter. It was a great pen for years. My dad had one he loved and religiously bought refills for. Just didn't keep up with the desire for coloured refills or permanency. Their price is also high for their materials and in recent years they have lost the stature of being a Made in USA product.

Is this a game of devil's advocate? Fountain pens obsolete? A pen that can refill from an incredibly wide range of bottled inks and write with the lightest touch seems kind of futuristic to me. Why, it's like a pen from another planet! Being in a niche market does not in any way imply obsolescence for a useful tool.



I use Uni-ball Signo 207 pens (to which I presume you are referring), but prefer to do most of my writing with fountain pens for the above reasons. Inexpensive Sheaffer "drugstore" cartridge pens suit me just fine, whether or not they indicate a station in life.



I hate the 207's grip--hard plastic is far more comfortable.



Only the black ink is truly forgery-proof and fade-resistant. While we're on the subject, the same goes for Sharpie markers. Most other gel inks I've used can quite easily be removed, and some are even vulnerable to water (e.g. Pilot G2). If you want bulletproof colors, there are the Sakura Gelly Roll, Gelato, and Pigma Micron.



Gel pens have a rather short write-out in comparison to that of ballpoints. They're expensive in the long run unless you need the indelible black ink of the Signo 207--better just stick with BiC disposable ballpoints when you can. Inexpensive fountain pens aren't a bad deal in the long run, either, if you do a lot of writing.

I'm very fond of Jotter BPs. I use them with gel refills. I just wish they were a bit wider in diameter.

Not at all. If fountain pens were comparable or better than ballpoints for the majority of applications, you'd see them everywhere. They are not, so you do not.

Fountain pens suffer from a raft of problems which do not plague ballpoints:
-no industry standard for nib sizes. Your F is my XF is someone else's M.
-delicate writing surfaces. You don't have to worry when you drop a ballpoint, if it was nib down or not. You also can't push too hard with a ballpoint.
-messy and inconvenient filling systems. Even you use cartridges exclusively, there is a much greater opportunity to get ink on yourself than with swapping a ballpoint cartridge.
-price point. I can make top of the line ballpoint system for under a buck. If you want an equivalent fountain pen (M200 maybe?) you're talking around 40-200X that cost.
-convenience. I can pick up a ballpoint pen from 10 yrs ago and it starts up, maybe it takes a swirl or two on some scrap paper. A fountain pen left untouched for 10 yrs would be full of dried ink.
-ease for the average user. The angle and pressure of my writing matters very little with a ballpoint. Considerably more finesse is required to hit the fountain pen "sweet spot".

Fountain pens have some advantages. Like you pointed out, you can have pretty much whatever colour you want from whatever pen body you have. You also don't have to press as hard as you do with some ballpoints or rollerballs. You get the intangibles like nostalgia. All of which are obviously nice for a small demographic. However, by and large, the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages for the average person.

Bought another Jotter BP at Office Depot this afternoon. As aforementioned, I replaced the stock refill with a gel refill.

While there, I was tempted to buy a couple of fountain pens for under $20 each, but my wife intervened. It was nice to see them available, though.

Although I can wrap the barrel with tape, it isn't a very elegant solution.

I found these little "tubes" the office supply stores sell to give a better grip on wood pencils. They will slip over the Jotter barrel and give a thicker cushion grip.

Here - I live in South Korea - I can see Jotters in almost every stationary store. Among young boys aged 13~18, a Jotter ballpoint pen or mechanical pencil is greatly admired as a *serious* writing instrument.

I have one Jotter BP, and it's my 'pen-for-rent'. I myself always use fountain pens, but when someone wants to borrow a pen from me, I hand her/him Jotter BP. I'm a jealous lover, so I don't want to see any one of my precious FPs in strange hands.. Not that I ignore Jotter, but a ballpoint pen is 'less sensitive' than a fountain pen!

I saw this post and remembered the Jotter I used in my younger days.........come to think of it, it was and is a very very good and practical pen.
Next I wanted to buy one as I couldn't find the ones I had earlier............this lead to eBay...............wow..the colours now available are so so tasty(can't find a better word to describe them).

Now I want one in each colour.

Office Max has them, not sure about Office Depot. Went to Office Max last week, bought the last 4 Flighter Jotters, and two IM stainless, for a meeting this week Tuesday through Friday. There were not that many Flighters at Walmart, and no IMs.

Donnie

don't you love that. i'm trying to get all the colors... at least the ones that are manly!!

Through my years of school and work I have not one recollection of a Parker Jotter ever failing me.

I seem to recall I did run one refill out. Usually someone would "permanently borrow" my Jotters before that happened.

We may end up having to agree to disagree on this, but popularity does not determine whether any tool is obsolete. There's no question that ballpoints are more convenient for most people, and often popularity and mainstream acceptance can be decided on the basis of convenience alone, for better or worse. This has nothing to do with the other qualities of any type of tool, and over time, people become increasingly ignorant about what they might have sacrificed long ago in the name of convenience, but this still does not imply that any tool is obsolete.

It's hard to think of good analogies, but in a broad sense, let's look at electric motors, which have been around far longer than internal combustion engines. Some early automobiles were based on electric motors, but the new internal combustion engine won out because of convenience (in range and refueling time). Does this make the old electric motor obsolete for personal vehicles? I bet that if and when everybody is driving an electric automobile in the future, they'll think that it's pretty "advanced" and look back and laugh at the clunky cars that chugged along noisily on the streets all those years ago. Would they even realize the irony of such views? Did they ever fully realize what they were missing before electric motors finally made it into the mainstream after having been rejected earlier? For the average person, the answers are no and no. But regardless, the old electric motor has never been obsolete, and neither are fountain pens, regardless of whether they are mainstream, because they still do some things better than their mainstream counterparts.



Well, this new BiC Ultra (that I'm learning to dislike more and more) is listed as a medium but writes like a broad--it isn't even consistent with other BiCs, much less any industry standard. I also have a gel pen (essentially a ballpoint with a different type of ink) with a 0.5 mm ball that writes just like another gel pen's 0.7 mm ball, and yet another 0.7 mm gel pen that writes much broader still (it seems that some companies measure the ball while others measure the line on some representative type of paper).



No argument here.



I get more ballpoint ink on myself than fountain pen ink, believe it or not (except when I'm washing pens and playing around with inks, of course). This is because ballpoint ink sometimes forms globs on the page that don't dry out for hours. Maybe I just have strange luck, but I've also had ballpoints leak on me on several occasions. Just a few weeks ago, a disposable advertising Pentel RSVP squirted a bunch of ink onto a multi-part form I was filling out (I had to request a new form).



Why would anyone need an M200 to compete with a ballpoint? Fountain pens that write just as well can be had for a few bucks.



I recently threw away a bunch of ballpoints I got eight years ago after trying to get them started, literally tearing through a couple of sheets of paper in the process. Some of them did work, but I think those were probably the ones that started skipping on me later, so they got tossed, too. I have a few very old ones that still work perfectly, but it's the luck of the draw here.



I had this issue with a fountain pen that I hadn't used since I was a kid. I flushed the dried ink out and popped in a new cartridge--good as new.



I won't argue over these technical points or perceived convenience, but then there is the strain that some people have and the calluses that some people get from using ballpoints, which could have been avoided by using fountain pens, as some people have discovered. Such injuries could be considered a form of inconvenience that is nevertheless not blamed on ballpoints due to the ignorance of the average person (I don't mean this in a rude way--we're all ignorant until we learn something new about something old).



Agreed, but the latter does not make fountain pens obsolete technologically. Perhaps we're merely using different semantics and therefore this isn't worth arguing about, because I think we both have valid points, even if we use certain words differently.

They're easily found in Spain, and other European countries I've been to (France, Portugal and Italy). In fact there are new colors every year or so.

I like jotters a lot; they're the perfect match for a 51 or Sonnet or 75...

Juan in Andalucía

Iridium
Agreed, agreed and agreed again, on all points. Fountain pens have so many qualities that you will never find in a ballpoint. Which is why they have such a strong following.
My husband has always proclaimed to dislike FPs. He has nibbed tiny, scrawly writing and always thought FPs were too broad for his handwriting (having only tried a Vector in his youth).
But when I began collecting a short while ago he was mildly interested, so I got him a Hero 330 (no point splashing out till I knew the results) and he loves it because it writes so very fine, without any pressure at all. I then tried to convince them were even greater models to be had, but he says he's happy with this one, thank you ( a bit of an FP Philistine, Im afraid )
TTFN
Tawanda

I compare fountain pens with guitar tube amps. I've tried some amp simulators, like my brother's Line 6 POD, and yes, it's fun, but a tube amp is a tube amp. Are there cons? Sure: higher maintenance (worn tubes), they're heavier, and you don't have as many features as with a FX rack. But... it's all about tone!. With fountain pens it's the writing experience.

One more thing: a fountain pen will outlive any of us with some care and basic maintenance. I don't know about you, but when I use something for a long time, I get somewhat attached to it, and I like that. That writing stick means something to you. Go figure.

Juan in Andalucía

Has the Jotter changed at all over the years? I'm just wondering, as the few I have that I suspect are from the 80's seem to be very solid pens. Are they still made like this? I'm also psyched to hear that gel refills fit. Which brand/model are they?

As for the strain in using ballpoints, is this issue from the "old school?" Most modern quality ballpoints I've tried write smoothly without exerting any deliberate pressure. Maybe if I had a bad case of arthritis, where a very subtle change in pressure causes pain, could I see a possible complaint. The cheapie BiC ballpoint ink formulation appears to have changed for the better, but the lines are not very crisp and blobbing can still occur. But I have to say that ballpoint refills from Schmidt, Pilot, and Waterman are top notch. I miss the grace of the nib, though, so the allure of a fountain pen remains stronger.

The Jotter BPs are still as solid as the ones I remember from the 80s.

Parker makes it own brand of gel refills, and they fit Jotters (and many other BP brands). Itoya also makes a gel refill that fits any Parker BP, or any pen that accepts Parker style refills.

I'm always amazed that you can't easily get more colours in the Parker style ballpoint refill - in the UK you can find blue and black and red with a bit of searching. But can you find a green? Very hard - yet no problem getting a green BIC. Why is this I wonder?

Itoya makes green, red and purple gel refills for Parker BPs.

Yes, if so inclined one can build quite a collection.

Styrene ribbed barrels.
Original clip.
T-Ball clip.
Variations in Arrow Clip
Peaked Pusker.
Domeed P monogram pusher.
Brass internals.
Plastic internals.
U.S.A. made.
U.K. made.
Colors.
Calandar model.

It just goes on and on and on and on..............................

I am pretty sure, at this point in time, it would cost less than collecting Vaccumatics............

Best of luck...........

Hey,

Could we put together a list of all colours the jotter came/comes in?
Just the single colour ones.

Jotters had been the only ballpoints I was using at all. I had several of them and still do have them. They were simply the best for reasonable money. Later I got some Pelikan ballpoint to match the fountainpen but all ballpoints were pretty much neglected when I got my M200 rollerball. And meanwhile the rollerball is retired, too, since I am using fountainpens at work as well.

When I was sorting through my pens for keepers or for-sale-pens I still could not bring myself to sell the old Jotters.

I was just at the local Office Max and they had Jotters galore. I bought a royal blue pen and pencil set. There was black, red and the all metal models in addition to blue. I was looking for the turquoise or robins egg blue to no avail. Lots and lots o' Jotters though.

-Tye

Could we put together a list of all colors the jotter came/comes in?
Just the single color ones.

I would like to see one of those lists also. However, I have a suspicion it will not be possible. Parker seems to have dumnped whatever tint it had on hand into the plastic mix for the injection casting machine.

The ones I'm aware of are:

stainless steel
black
burgundy
yellow
green
gray
lilac
neon orange
red
teal
white
pink
clear
dark blue
light blue
purple
pistacchio
lime
brown

For Red I recall seeing maroon red, medium red, and a lighter red. I have a lime green but I recall a dark green. I have a slightly green tinted grey but I recall a neutral grey. I have a turquoise brass internals USA made old style pusher on the desk here. Oh, here is a new style light mauve. Oh, and comparing a dish monogram cap red to a dome monogram cap the dish cap is a darker deep red. Those are just observations from the doze or so I've got floating around the place, that I can find.

Doesn't ?Francis ?"Parkercrazy" collect Jotters? I thought one of the regulars collected them and was expert on the Jotter?

I don't collect, I just accumulate them.......................

Have used Jotters for years, but have heard there was a 'Mini" Jotter, but never have seen one. Anyone have info on this? Tom

I think a picture of a Mini Jotter was posted around here. I thought I heard there was also a lady's purse jotter without a clip, or it may have been posted here also.