When college students began to reject the fountain pen because of the feather prone recycled paper they found themselves using in classes...it was seen as a grave threat to the very survival of our hobby by yours truly. I am old enough to have seen a few cycles of college students begin an interest in fountain pens and "graduate" into fellow pen collectors. For a brief period I feared that vital process was about to stop and the hobby was at the start of the end.

Thankfully the feathering problem on recycled papers is becoming less of an issue...especially as I see more college students in my e-mail and in other communications. Two years ago it was ominously at zero...

The miracle is something of even greater wonder: the preteen demographics desire to use OLD VINTAGE PENS!! I kid you not... Instead of the new age gel pen or the overly bulky soft plastic ball tipped polymer sticks....there have been several reports now of the younger crowd actually SEEKING OUT VINTAGE FOUNTAIN PENS....the older the better...shading of hard rubber is a plus...faded imprints sought as they show the pen's age better.....!!!!!! Why?
Apparently there was an invisible map in a very popular movie out of the UK. It is not a flood...but there are young people buying the Blue Ghost along with some very old fountain pens and quill pens.
This is ink nirvana... I'm sure some of you realize how difficult it is to successfully introduce the world of vintage fountain pens to a young person....but because of this information it is likely the Blue Ghost will be expanded to other mysterious and light specific inks in the future.

On a practical level I was also delighted to find out that a college professor uses the Blue Ghost to correct papers...he then gives the student a grade in green ink and informs them that if they can find the errors in their work overnight he will adjust the grade to their benefit if they can correctly adjust their mistakes. A small mark from the Blue Ghost indicates where the prey sits in wait....for him to see if it is adjusted properly or not at a glance. Instead of giving the student a C or D he's signaled to them that they really did not do as well as they perhaps believed earlier. With more effort they might correct their errors...or might not - but he does not have to spend time looking for the errors again for 150+ students that night...he just clicks on the blacklight in his second desk lamp and looks...

Another note about the Blue Ghost - it does not work with "Extra Bright" ink jet printer papers...in fact most "Extra Bright" papers have UV blue traits and behave as if one were using yellow ink on a yellow legal pad or black ink on black paper....one needs contrast for the Blue Ghost to show up at its best. Standard papers are better - not the "bright" grades. It is also waterproof, fade resistant, pretty much as bulletproof as the black. I know it looks like water in normal light - but it is a seriously durable ink once dried on cellulose paper.

Nathan we are all grateful for the many things that you have been doing over the years (I can count 2 Noodler bottles on my desk and several more in next room ) but this post appears to be an rather awkard exaggeration

Or maybe I am in a bad mood tonight... :ph34r:

I've never seen young children take enough interest in a vintage pen to spend their own money on it...at a show now and then somebody has a pen bought for them, but not with their own money.

That is new to me - I probably am over excited about such a simple thing and many of you probably think I'm exagerating or over the top on this....but it is something so unexpected that is just plain rare to me....!

If it is over the top - my apologies....heck, I'll remove the post if it is...

I have four children ages 19 to 11. Only the 11 year old has shown an interest in my fountain pens, and asked for one of her own. I gave her a Parker school pen, and my best writing MB. She loves them, and delights in showing her school mates how they work. We just bought the Blue Ghost (and two balck light flashlights) so we can send secret messages.

Keep up the great work.

This past year when I started using fountain pens more, my sister in a restaurant would draw on some paper with a fountain pen that I'd give her. She now loves them for drawing - she says that they're 'just better'.

It makes me feel warm inside... My mother and I bought her one of those $7 fountain pens from Target, and it's great for her - it's a fine and I must confess I like it too - bit of a tooth though, but doable because of the great ink flow.

There's no reason to remove a post if someone disagrees with someone else. If we all agreed with one another there would be no reason for discussion

Nathan,
It doesn't matter if you are "over the top" --ANYTHING That encouarges young people to like Fountain pens and writing in our ipod/Internet/Keyboard world is so welcome in my opinion that it deserves TO BE CROWED ABOUT!!!!

framebaer

Jared, we are equally excited to have FP users among the young. But you are exceptions that confirm the rule (didn't you say that you are the only person in a whole high school of 1000+ people that uses FPs?)

I was pointing out to the fact that there is no significant increase in the usage of FPs among the young. Ask your favorite teacher or college prof and they will confirm it
Which means that claiming that Noddlers played a role in the "increase" of FP usage among the young is an exaggeration..

Nathan, no need to remove anything. And it is great to be excited. Without excitement many of the things that you brought to the hobby they could not be realized. And we are all greatful for that.

I'm sure that the statistical figures on fp user numbers will lag the increase in interest that Nathan is writing of. A couple of years from now, it would be interesting to see new user figures secured and compiled.

Of my five children, my 9 year old son is the most enamored with fountain pens. His "best" pen is a Pelikano Jr., but he has a half dozen other Chinese pens that he bought with his own money while we were in China last semester. He has been begging me for an Esterbrook for quite some time now.

My 17 year old daughter also likes to use her fountain pen, but mostly only for her journal. I doubt she would ever take it to school.

Matt C.

I am very much interested to see if Nathan has figures or it is just excitement talking.

I think that the excitement is enough.

For what it's worth their are two young folk who regular attend the Seattle Pen Club meetings, both 11, and very interested in vintage pens. However, I imagine they are rare among their classmates.

I doubt that there is any huge upswing of fountain pen use among the younger generation. However, if we are talking about keeping the future of vintage pen collecting alive, we don't need a huge percentage of kids interested - if 1% of high-school students were interested in vintage pens that would be a huge number of up-and coming collectors to keep the hobby alive (I doubt it is 1%, but ...). From Nathan's original post, it seems like his frame of reference is 0 a few years back, to a handful now.

However, I doubt that it is Noodlers ink that is bringing kids to fountain pens as is the increase in availability of information on the internet.

I was a fountain-pen user on and off from 5th grade(?) on through college. Mostly it was cartridge-filled Sheaffer school pens, then Parker Vectors, which is what I found at the local Pharmacy. In 8th grade my parents got me a lever-filled pen with 3 different interchangable nibs (I suspect Osmoriod? not sure who would have been making this in 1983) which I used throughout that year until I dropped it and bent the fine nib. But I knew nothing about different inks (other than the different colors of Sheaffer cartridges available), about nib smoothing, or about vintage pens - all of which contributed to my switching back to rollerballs and ballpoints at various times.

Had I known about pens like Sheaffer Snorkels in 8th grade, and the fact I could get one for the price of mowing a few lawns, I would have been majorly hooked. Or that my scratchy fine-point vector could be made silky smooth with a few strokes over $8.00 worth of mylar. That information is now a few clicks away for most 8th graders these days.

I also suspect that the use of all those quills in the Harry Potter movies has done much more to spark interest in fountain pens and dip pens among young people than anything with Noodlers ink. That said, I think some of the invisible inks and glow-in the dark inks would be considered pretty cool to the average 8th grader.

John

I don't know if I count as the sector Nathan is quivering about, as I'm halfway through my 20s, and I don't mean to inflate Nathan's ego (no offense, you seem like an excitable though well-intentioned person), but...

I was drawn to FPs when I read about Noodler's waterproof, bleach-proof, fade-proof inks, just a few months ago. Interestingly, I have been using Beaver and Antietam more often (and lately Golden-Brown, since I found a pen to make it appear dark enough). But that's because I hadn't yet known about the diversity of color inks that are out there... (this is the real reason I'm in love with FP's, I admit)

You can speculate what you want about why young folk are interested in FPs, especially regarding "contemporary times", but unless there's a pop-cultural reference (that post about Harry Potter was interesting) I don't see there being any rhyme or reason to the bulk behavior. Children, however impressionable, still exhibit a diversity of personalities, and it's unfair to lump them all together in a category.

Okay, but isn't this all pretty America-centric? I'm under the impression that in Europe they make the kids use fountain pens for a while as they learn to write, thus the viable business of manufacturing school pens over there. I'm also under the impression that in parts of Asia folks use fountain pens a lot more than Americans do. I assume that if the adults use fountain pens a lot that they must have been introduced to them as kids.

I'm glad if fountain pen use among the young in America is increasing, but isn't the bulk of young, and old, users of fountain pens offshore?

And I don't care what the kids do, I'm buying Nathan's inks anyway.

PS - hey, Nathan, can you clear something up for me: What exactly could we call the color of ink that you sell as Nightshade? I like it, but I can't figure out what to call it.

Hi,

Nice to hear.

I have a few of your inks on my shopping list.
Maybe I can take Blue Ghost and show the kids.

Dillon