My girlfriend is going to give me several thousand dollars in the near future. I would like to take a portion of it and buy a fountain pen that is a good investment. Yes, dare I say a 'safe queen'. I use all the pens I have now no matter the value but I am looking to put this money away in something that I can look at, and sell if we ever need some money in the future. I would really like some kind of pen that would at least hold it's value or possibly increase as time goes on even if it is a small increase. Anyone have any ideas?

Sorry, but I really do not consider pens a sound investment. Rare coins, maybe. Do I have pens that have increased in value? Yes. But I never intended them as investments. And the value of the ones that increased do not outweigh the pens that have not increased.

There really aren't any investment grade pens out there right now. Everyone's pumping out LE pens right and left, so there really isn't that scarcity that will drive demand. The only pens that might appreciate in value are likely to be the ones that you and I can't afford.

FrankB, I'm in the same camp as you. I'm not even sure "rare" coins are a sound investment either; I certainly wouldn't classify them as safe due to the vagaries of the market. My wife deals in fine art (original oils and acrylics primarily) and the swings and round abouts of that market can be quite hair raising. We have a very extensive private collection of oils, acrylics and water colours; we've bought them because we like them and they give us pleasure, but I sure as heck wouldn't want to bet my pension on them. I also collect high-end watches, but again for the enjoyment these watches give me and not their potential vlaue. The problem with this sort of stuff is the market for it is opaque and not liquid.

This is a terrible mistake that most people make.

Fancy stuff such as fountain pens, pocket watches, various cars etc...they don't make good returns on their investments. For the simple fact that they simply do *not* appreciate. Or if they do, certainly not fast enough for you to make any profit on them.

If you're going to buy a pen, buy it to enjoy it and write with it, not to lock it in a vault.

What about gold or other precious metals? Loose diamonds?

(Why no, I don't know what I'm talking about....)

I'm saying that if I were looking to invest a few thousand in something tangible, those would be my first considerations.

Oil/Crude stock!!!!!!

Only a stolen pen will hold its value.

Trading is an option, but as an investment not many pens will be a good opponent of inflation.

Maybe gold or silver could do that trick when the economy collapses and hyperinflation in some markets beats deflation in others.

Nope, I don't regard these as good investments either. Look at gold for example, it was over US$800 +20 years ago and then dropped to about US$200 for many years and has only recently rallied back over US$800. Similarly for silver and platinum. I haven't bothered to work out what the real price is on an inflation adjusted basis, but it isn't good. Moreover, you would have earned nothing on the cash you used to buy the gold and probably paid to store it in the bank vault. Diamonds are very, very tricky, as you really have to know everything there is to know about them in terms of cut, clarity, colour and carat. Also, the price of loose diamonds, not to mention those in jewelry, is greatly marked up and it is unlikely that the casual buyer would be able to purchase stones directly from the cutter.

He could buy that $160,000 (or whatever it was) Montblanc fountain pen with the hundreds of diamonds set into it...

You are right about diamonds. They are overpriced and not a good investment.

But gold is at the moment a good investment again like in the seventies.

Unless you can find a pen made with lots of gold (which can be melted later when needed) you probably won't find an item like a pen that works for an investment.

I like gold and silver. Diamonds are good too, if you know and buy high quality diamonds at or near wholesale. For investment they should be one carat or more in weight, D, E, or F in color and VS1 or VS2 in clarity. They should also be excellent in cut and brilliant cuts or better than fancy cuts such as pear shape, emerald cut etc.

That's very nice of your girlfriend.

You would probably do better to invest in a publicly traded company that manufactures fountain pens.

Too much labour goes into making a functional fountain pen, so you will never be able to recuperate paid price of the pen from selling the pen in pieces. No matter how you cut it , you should buy a pen to write, not to put dinner on the table some time down the line.

How about taking a trip and investing in some memories? You can use your favorite FP to capture the journey on paper. That's how I started journaling. Plus, the memories increase in value throughout the years. At least mine have.

Pens are a very bad thing to invest in because you have to be both very good and lucky with your choices. There are so many examples. In 1992 when the MB Hemmingway came on the scene I liked it but didn't buy. At that time it was $600 and many many felt the price was too high for such an ugly pen. Fast forward 15+ years later and you will find them from $2500 to $3000 and up. Should you buy one now? I don't think so because the price increase on the Hemmingway is not likely to increase much more than it already has. However, if you have the money and you really like it, it is one classic pen that most collectors would be proud to own.

Another case in point is the more common flattop Parker Duofold from the early to mid 1990s. At first these great pens were selling well and were soon discounted to sometimes ridiculous prices representing up to 50 percent of retail as Parker began transitioning to the streamlined model. That would make an original centennial (larger) model priced at $325 discounted to around $165 by the late 1990s. Today, many collectors are now releasing their stashes of these gems for new in box prices of about $300+ to $400. If you got one during the fire sale great, but would you buy one now? I don't think so from an investment standpoint because the prices are not likey to continue much higher.

What this all means is that knowledge of pens and the marketplace should be your guide. Be a voracious student of the writing instrument and learn all you can about them. Stay away from pens or pen mechanisms that are fussy, bordering on exotic, unless you really really like them and are so mechanically inclined to understand what its going to take to keep them going. There's nothing bad about staying with the classics because they provide a symbol of greatness inherent in their design, construction, and choice of materials. Once you settle in on a pen just make sure it is first a good writer and then you will be certain to have money left over for the other things in life that matter.

Thanks for listening to my opinionated thoughts.

Best wishes

Oiy... terrible idea. Invest in an interest bearing bank account or start investing.
Buy low, sell high... things are low right now.

If you want something that will payback way more than it's investment worth, and you can look at it, is a Dog! You can pet it too, and their worth often is priceless. They often become like family.

I want a MacArthur Parker because that is the pen that got me into pens so I may get that and enjoy it. I do not own anything I don't use and it was a fleeting thought. I do the gold/silver thing now, always have.

I can only imagine vintage pens appreciating in value.

Vintage time pieces, like Elgins, never seem to depreciate. So long as they are in good condition and have a fair amount of jewels in the mechanism.

Well, as they told me over the years...........

Manufactured things are never investments, they are expenses........

Collectables are not investments because they depend on finding someone else who pay more for it that you did.........

Commodities are never investments but they can be inflation hedges and maybe some speculators (investors for the short term who are not risk adversive) will make money out of them (tricky, zero sum game, really tricky...)......

Real Estate can be an investment, your home is an inflation hedge with favored tax status...........

Bonds can be an investment but most people are not willing to put in the time and effort to learn how so they usually end up as savings, or not.........

Equity is an investment. Equity can be Stocks or since 1948 No Load Mutual Funds.

Owning your own well managed profitable business is the best investment there is...............

As always YMMV............

But do they gain value faster than the rate of inflation? More importantly, are they beating what you could earn with monetary instruments?

Are you factoring in your losses every time you take it in to be cleaned and adjusted?

Pens are a poor investment. Now, you may get intangible benefits from them, such as pleasure in ownership or use. We can't tell you if that is worth the financial loss you are taking by buying one instead of investing in the bonds or CDs. That's up to you as a consumer.

If you aren't already doing so, use that money to start a 529 plan to fund your childrens' college education. A far better investment than buying a very expensive pen that probably won't keep-up with inflation.

A "nice" pen might make a nice family heirloom, but not an investment.

My 2 cents,

-Mike

I heard precisely that line about the stock market in 1999, and real estate in 2005. And gold this past March.



Hi, EtherN- & etc. Have you noticed what happened to the precious metals market in the past month? Silver went to over $20/oz in April. It's now about $12.50, where it was 2 years ago. Gold's in a similar fix. No matter what the fans try to tell you, precious metals do not always go up.

As a matter of fact, this is probably a pretty good time to buy silver or gold, as they both have returned to their historical line of rate of appreciation. So go ahead and buy some, I might. But don't count on PM's, real estate, or FP's to buy you any tickets to riches. Just keep doing what you can, with all your heart and spirit, and that will be enough.

If there were "Investment Grade" fountain pens then BENZ would sell them!
And look at how much he looses on every "$350 Value" pen he sells.

Investing in vintage or modern pens, or pocket watches, or wristwatches or...anything like that...really won't see you getting anything other than a nice pen or watch.

What makes an item a good investment, what'll make it increase in value, is rarity. Not age. Or how nice it looks. A fountain pen might look great. But if there's 50,000 of them, it's not exactly that rare. An Elgin pocket watch, as mentioned above, might look nice, but there were 50 million of them made during the duration of the company's existence.

If you buy a pen for any reason at all, it should be to buy it to WRITE with. And later on, to become a family heirloom. And in my mind, for absolutely no other reason; because there's really no other reason to buy one. As the others have said, they're nice to own and use, but they're terrible as investments.

And Glenn's quite right. If there ARE any pens which are any good as investments, they're all in the amazing Phillip Benz collection. And since even the simplest pens there are worth about $900 bucks, I think they'll be quite out of your league.

Only investments I could think of that would be safe, buying euros, buying gold, buying savings bond from a government other than the U.S. right now(consider some place that's part of the E.U., or even China or Japan). Buying gold would be slightly risky but at least you have a commodity that has no shelf life, and could be sold at any time you feel like.

Yeah, like Georgia. I understand that Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice sent out a statement to our allies in the former Soviet republics that we will stand up for their interests, but only if they move away from geographical proximity to Russia. Or something like that...

I would have to say that there are particular pens you could put your money into that will hold a value and be safer than the stock market, but will never appreciate and be a good investment.

For example, assuming the pens are in excellent condition, you could probably purchase a Senior Mandarin Duofold, a rare Parker "51", any hard to find vintage overlay (think snake, aztec, etc...), or other such pen. Assuming it is in excellent condition, there will always be a market for these pens and (assuming you didn't overpay) you could probably get your money back out of them.

This might even be a good time to pick such a pen up, as hard times might tempt some people to liquidate part of their collection.

By no means will you get rich doing this. It is risky. Any deterioration to the pen can sharply decrease it's value. But, if you absolutely have to have a way to turn your money into something that you could look at and enjoy, I'd imagine one of these might work.

white feather wrote:

"I want a MacArthur Parker because that is the pen that got me into pens so I may get that and enjoy it. .."

If you have the money, that sounds like a great pen to buy. It might hold its value in some ways, but it will definitely be a pen you can enjoy. I have the Norman Rockwell and Mandarin LE's and they are wonderful writing pens that are lovey to look at, and just plain fun to own. I do not have the MacArthur LE. I chose to get one of the orange Duofold anniversary pens instead. But they are all great pens.

Some manufactured goods will become rare and valuable in the future but you never know which ones until the future happens. And the ones that do are the ones that people didn't think much of at the time - so they threw them out - thus increasing the rarity. Modern manufactured items bought as collectibles rarely hold their value.

I had a cheesy Lost In Space toy as a kid that now sells for up to $10K. My parents threw it out years ago, of course. If we had all known, no one would have thrown them out and then it would just be a cheesy toy that everyone else has too.

Buy a pen that you love and want to use - buy you personal "holy grail" pen - then it will be worth more than just a monetary investment !

If you do buy pens for investment buy from someone like Vacumania or one of the other pros.
It may be a little more than on eBay but you'll have a better chance of getting an investment grade pen.

My husband's advice is for you to buy a Grayson Tighe fountain pen.

My advice is to think about what you are going to buy or owe your girlfriend...

Heh. Ms. Playpen- right on.

IMHO I find that most things I invested in years ago have only kept up with the cost of living, and the falling dollar.

A gizmo I paid $20.00 for 20 years ago might be worth $200.00 today, but that's only because it takes $200.00 today to buy what you could get for $20.00 20 years ago.
And I put the esteemed "diamond" in that category. The market is saturated.
Even gold is a questionable investment now.
As the markets (housing and otherwise) finish all of their writedowns, real? value is lost and a lot of investors are left holding the bag.
Everything is fluid and relative and of course, based on real demand.
If things don't get better, I'm thinking of buying a big oven to bake bread in, and my brother is going to buy some milk cows, and a shotgun (he was in real estate) LOL.

I'm an old guy -- 64-------it's really sad.

Tell your gf to save her money. Make some of your own and buy a nice pen to keep.

MrR

Spend it on want you want and enjoy!

If its a pen - enjoy it.

If its a watch - enjoy it.

If it another woman - Be careful

Buy to own and use, not to lock up in a vault and wait for appreciation. If you buy it for the latter, you're wasting your money.

Geez, I'm the only one here who takes you seriously. Buy yourself a Pelikan Toledo M900, 3 colours available.
Or a Toledo 1931,
or an M1050.
The last one would today -- if you'd ever find one for sale -- cost about 12,000 to 15,000 USD, but it didn't cost that much when it came out 4 years ago.

Mike

WF, I am echoing the sentiments of others here - buy a pen you really love and use it. If it appreciates tremendously over time lucky you.

Re-releases have become more common these days and you'll never know if your pen will share the same fate.

In the years of watch and pen collecting the only time I made a tidy profit was when I sold my Rolex 1655 Explorer II and that was after owning it for some 25 years.

Rarified collectibles are true investments. The Vacheron Kallista was valued at $5 millon in 1979 and today is worth $11 million. But then if I had $5 million I would have retired and be driving a vintage Ford GT40 in Gulf livery.

No matter what the hype of super limited pens. In my opinion there are no investment grade pens unless you buy a Duofold and fill it full of diamonds!

No guarentee that a pen will hold it's value and definitely no guarentee that it will increase.

Better to invest in something else and buy a nice pen to use.


Remember the old saying: buy a pen to use and enjoy.


Kurt

Mike that is rather an insulting comment as I am completley serious.

Would you have been able to predict that 4 years ago of all the pens produced the Toledo would have increased in value? Of all the pens that any manufacturer produce there is no 'gold seal' on any that guarentee an increase in value. It is better to look to investments for putting money in expecting a return compared to pens which are much more fluid in pricing.

And let us not also forget that a pen can be valued at MSRP or 4x that but you need to find someone willing to buy it at that price.


Kurt

Do tighe pens really hold their value? There do not seem to be many of them out there so I guess there could be a small base of pen collectors.


And there is a Makie pen on the marketplace right now valued at $12,000 that is trying to be sold much less.

so YMMV on any pen you buy.


Kurt

What about a CD?

I'd invest in the girlfriend. She's your best bet.

Does your girlfriend actually know what you are planning to do with her money? If she is then she will have a rude awakening one day when she wakes up and understands that you are a few fries short of a happy meal in your ability to chose an investment mechanism. Limited editions are so widely produced and in such large numbers that they are not going to make anyone any money other than the manufacturers who make them for a few dollars each and the dealers who get them from the manufacturers at fractions of the prices they sell them to the gullible public for. Any premium beyond what an unlimited edition would sell for is smoke and mirrors. Buy a pen because you like it and expect to use it and don't expect to even get your money back out of it.

Gold and silver are also a (Potty Mouth) shoot. Gold was selling for over $1,000 and ounce in March, and today, just 6 months later is at $799 an ounce - which amounts to an average annual loss of 40 percent. Silver in March was almost $21 an ounce and today it is $12.38 an ounce - which amounts to an average annual loss of about 115 percent. These precious metals may go up they may go down or they may stagnate - no one knows and 'investing in them' is high risk.

If you want to invest in a collectable, find something that is not only very rare but is also in very high demand and in such condition that would make it the feature item in any auction into which it could be placed, and that is likely to be in exceptionally high demand for many decades to come. Such a thing is going to cost more than a few thousand dollars though. An easier investment is going to be in the stock market but only if you are able to educate yourself as to what makes an investment grade stock in terms of the cost of the share, the value and earning potential of the company, etc. etc. It is hard work in down or uncertain markets like we have today but it can be done, especially if you avoid the high risk, instant profit syndrome.

I wonder if Bexley pens or Copernicus make good investment

I have a collection of Pink Floyd and Radiohead... and some jazz and some blues.... CDs are very versatile and enjoyable, if you know what you're getting yourself into.