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Dearest Members and Visitors of our little Fountain Pen Nut house on the digital prairie,
Our first pen to celebrate 11 years of FPN is available for purchase, as a Group Buy.
This pen, appropriately called the FPN Blue Pearl Celebration LE, is the most extravagant we have ever created. As 11 years is the crazy number, we thought we'd do something a little crazy, hence this rather magnificent, extravagant fountain pen.
This pen is made by CONID in Antwerp, Belgium, in their first rate factory, and designed by our own fountainbel, engineer by profession and pen lover at heart.
It is a King Size Bulkfiller, truly an outstanding piece, from an engineering, design and materials point of view.
Starting with the material, it is a stunning very high quality, unstressed acrylic, in a mix of colours resembling some of the best celluloids out there, but obviously a lot less flammable 
. Anybody who has ever seen the celluloid Tibaldis with blue and slightly green-yellow cream coloured layers of material, will be drawn to this pen immediately. The colours are even more intense than that particular celluloid, en have even more depth. You have to see it to believe it. It is a truly incredible material. Cap, section, barrel and bulkfiller button are all created from this magnificent material. There is only enough material to just create a limited edition of these pens, and it will not be used therefore for any other pen.
It obviously is a pen made to the extremely high and very exacting standards of CONID and fountainbel. It is engineered from the best materials only, trim and threading turned out of titanium, and all seals in this pen are created purely by screw threads and/or rubber seals - no glue is used in this pen whatsoever. Just one place has some shellac applied, and that is the ink view window. As this ink view window is fixed and sealed with shellac, it is easily removable as well if need be. The pen comes with a single small tool, which is all that is required to take this pen apart into all of its parts, making it easily cleanable, and the parts easily replaceable. Well thought out engineering and planning clearly lay at the base of this design.
The filling system of this pen is the by now famous, patented (patent pending) design of fountainbel, the bulkfiller. It is elegant and beautiful at the same time, and it also is the system which allows one to fill a pen with the highest fill rate possible, as the system allows one to fill the barrel completely with ink, up to a stunning 3 millilitre, or 3 cc! That is an awesome amount of ink. Imagine, 16 fills from a standard 50 ml ink bottle only! Of course it was designed with a shut-off mechanism too, one wouldn't expect anything less from such a pen. The beauty of the shut-off design makes it possible to still write a page, and probably two or even more (depending on nib type of course), with the shut-off enabled. It also makes it leak proof, so this pen can be taken along anywhere, without having to worry about ink escaping at all, in the wrong places or at the wrong moment.
We still haven't mentioned the nib yet. Well, this is a monstrous, gigantic, 14K #8 gold nib, made by Bock, especially for CONID. And yes, you read that right: an enormous, 8 mm nib! These nibs are available in F, M and B. However, they can be modified to an italic or oblique, or extra fine if you so like, at additional cost. These nib modifications are done with respect to the nib, not by removing almost all tipping material. This work is done lovingly, and completely manually, by an expert nib enhancer (aka nibmeister).
Even the box of this fountain pen is a master piece. It is made from a single piece of aluminium, with a large foam insert to hold the pen, its servicing tool, and potentially other pieces you might want to store with it. This box s made especially for the FPN Blue Pearl Celebration, in a colour unique again for this production only.
This is obviously not going to be a cheap pen. We will only make a maximum of 132 of this particular model, there isn't enough material for more, and we may even have to settle for a smaller number, due to the very limited availability of this material.
Last year, CONID made another LE, also a King Size Bulkfiller, made entirely from a single material, including the section, with a #8 nib as well. That sold for about 1420 euros excluding VAT and excluding shipping, a whopping 1700+ euros including VAT. And that Limited Edition, although smaller in number than the FPN Blue Pearl Celebration, sold out in just a couple of weeks time, such is the trust in the products of this company and its designer/engineer!
As we have been able to strike a very good deal with CONID, as we do not have any large overhead costs being a volunteer run organization, and as we are doing this as a Group Buy with prepayments for this pen, we are able to initially offer this exquisite and stunning piece for the extremely discounted price of 929.75 euros excluding VAT, 1125 euros including VAT, or US $ 1125 (incurs high currency exchange costs) for those living outside the European Union, excluding shipping costs and any nib work if so required.
As mentioned, this is a Group Buy, so how does this work?
We need an initial order of 20 pens to be able to start production, and we would like to have at least 20 sold the latest towards the middle of September (2015 ). That would allow for production to start towards the end of September, and with an estimated processing time of 6 to 8 weeks, that would mean that these pens will be in your hands before Christmas this year.
Once the pens are manufactured, assembled and QA tested, and the nibs mounted and tuned to perfection as well, they are sent on the FPN HQ in Europe. Here they will undergo a final QA inspection and test, any nib work will be carried out if so required. Once inspected, tested, and any nib modifications carried out, the pens will be shipped to the respective new owners.
Because of the high value of these pens, shipping will only be done express, by courier, or fully insured. I am sure you will forgive us for doing so . Yes ,it will add to the cost, but we think it is absolutely worth the extra trouble.
To order one of these these fantastic pens, check out our FPN Store
If there Is demand for other shipping methods, beyond the two we currently offer, we will add them - we are currently negotiating with UPS for fully insured express shipping. Do note that the express shipping we offer currently, is only insured up to a value of 500 euros, which will therefore all we will be able to refund in case of damage or loss during shipping or transport. The fully insured shipping is a bit slower, it is priority shipping worldwide.
Warm regards, Wim
On behalf of the FPN Moderator and Admin team
Sadly I cannot raise the funds in time for the offer so I am left with only vicarious experience again. A longer lead-in/heads-up time would at least give people like me a fighting chance of competing.
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