Do You Collect Expensive Wine - Or Do You Raise A Toast With It?

[kapilapshankar]

Do you collect expensive wine - or do you raise a toast with it?

 

Er, rather - do you collect Pelikans or do you use them? Even the rare and expensive ones.

 

I'd love to hear your stories and perspectives.

 

Cheers.

[Bo Bo Olson]

My cellar is not cool and dry enough for great wines. Don't have a dirt floor either; a must...if you don't have a wine refrigerator. My cellar is good enough for Aldie's famous 7 Euro bottles of Spanish or Italian and some southern French wine that is Parker 90-92. They are at least 20 Euro bottles when found in town.

Some times Aldie a huge discount supermarket has a 20 Euro bottle of this or that grand Italian Brunello that costs 65 down town or on the net. I do of course look up the vintage and buy a bottle instead of ... ink.

 

A young German wine maker, said, most of us do not have the cellar nor the money for the aged great drink at 16-18 (60.8-64.4 degree's C.) He made sense saying drink good red wines at 12 years and at 12 degrees....cool. 53,6 F. White wine at 7 years and 7 degrees (44.6). A wine thermometer helps....and if a wine a bit cool, warms by it's self. A wine served at 65....gets warmer than recommended before the glass is finished.

 

Many wines recommended on the bottle at 16-18 are not really good enough, or old enough to be drunk at that temperature. (and you need four people at the table.) If you serve it a touch cool.....talk a lot, it will get warmer.

 

Do have a few nice single malts.........much, much less than before I started collecting used Pelikans.

 

I never expected to own a Pelikan 100 or 100n....but got a Somgi near mint '40's one at a flea market for 15 Euros. It was the very next table to mine...had I turned right instead of left to case the indoor flea market I could have got it for 5. But some honest person...told her it was worth a lot of money and I had to bargain her down from 20. I don't use it much. It's due out of my two drawer glass topped cherry wood pen case....some time this year. I've got to write empty 12 inked pens and put up another cup of good, to grand pens....some day. I keep inking them.

 

The money burnt a hole in my pocket. My grail pen a Soennecken 111 Extra in herringbone, didn't come up...6 months later. I went looking for Pelikans....got my second Celebry, that one a green marbled one with a '90's 'true' regular flex gold nib. The other has a steel nib as good. A Pelikan double pen desk set got bought.

Gee I'm not going to get that 400n.....and did for only 105 Euro in Tortoise. (German Ebay) The nib is on my 600. Somehow that '90's Tortoise M400 keeps hanging around on my desk, instead of getting put in the pen case.

 

Before I cashed in my Grail Pen money, I never had the pin money to even imagine or even think of, remember and hardly even 'knew' what a 500 was.

Mostly I'm still stuck...out side of live auctions in the gee ... 70 Euro's a lot of money and 100 certainly is mentality.

Maxi-semi-flex OBB or perhaps OBBB (30 degree grind) ...in the nib is unmarked. It is a true Signature pen....a bit to wide, a bit too wet to really use. It's a nib and pen, if I was a bit narcissistic, I could spend hours just signing my name. 150 Euro on German Ebay.

 

I have to start a Company; get a secretary who knows more about it than I do...then I could use that pen often.

It is in Tortoise, matching the same tone as my 400n. My '90's M400 in Tortoise has a completely different darker tone. In fact, it looks murky if I put the rolled gold cap of my 500 on it.

I only got 5-6 Pelikans inked out of the 17.

 

Right now I'm using a gray stripped barreled early 60's Geha 790 in semi-flex OB....in Pelikan bought up the Geha pen division and closed it down in 1990.....Geha can be considered a Pelikan.

Like those 790's....got 4. The 725 is one of the grandest pens ever made, sleek, classy, rolled gold trim, inlaid semi-flex nib. Designed to beat the MB and did!....Hummmm what ink would go good in that....don't know why it's in the dry cup.

 

Outside of Osmia/O-F-C with none of the German pens with some flex of the '50-60's can you tell if you are going to get a semi-flex or maxi-semi-flex....so decide which nib flex you want, or want next.

 

I suggest starting with the semi-flex before moving up to maxi-semi-flex, in it is a natural way to lighten your Hand. A semi-flex is sturdy enough to survive a ham fisted writer....I don't know if a maxi-semi-flex nib is. It is sturdy enough to survive a slightly ham fisted writer. I had gone from Ham Fisted, before the 140 to slightly ham fisted after only three months of use.

 

The sales section here would be much surer and in the end cheaper than gambling what exact flex a pen has on Ebay.

I feel I was lucky to have had the 140 first which as far as I can tell from conversations, are all semi-flex with no...maxi-semi-flex**; before getting my maxi-semi-flex 400nn. It is just as easy to get a 400nn in semi as maxi...a gamble.

 

** not talking about a h or D nib of course.

[jmccarty3]

I buy wines to drink them. Once they're gone, they're gone, and they must, like great food, be shared with someone to fully enjoy them.

I collect pens and recordings, because I can write with or listen to them as many times as I like. Seems like a better value for money.

[inkstainedruth]

I don't have a lot of the really high-end price Pelikans. But the ones I have are probably amongst the most -- if not THE most == expensive pens I own (if you don't count repairs on some vintage pens). The top of the price pyramid are a 1990s era M400, and a 1950s era 400. (The next most pricy would be the M200 Café Crème which I just lost.... ) The other two weren't nearly as expensive -- the 1980s era M100 was a little over $40 US on Ebay, and has a 1 mm stub nib. The remaining M200 (1990s era with a green marble binde) was a freebie -- a gift from a friend who got it on Freecycle a couple of years ago as a sort of joke gift because it has the Bayer logo on it.

Do I use them? Of course! I have the M200 and the M400 inked up even as I write..... And still completely bummed about that Café Crème, because I got it for a great price that I will never be able to match (even at the few dealers who still have them in stock...).

Pelikans are great pens. Why would I NOT want to use them?

I love the look of some of the larger pens, but they're too expensive, too big and heavy, or both. So I wouldn't want one of those. Not if I can't write with them....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Christopher Godfrey]

<Do have a few nice single malts...> Now why am I not surprised, Bo Bo?

 

I like the logic in this: <I collect pens and recordings, because I can write with or listen to them as many times as I like>! Perfect!

[christof]

Once more the collector vs. user question...

 

I am both. I collect and I use. But not the same pens!

 

There can be lots of reasons to buy pen over pen...

 

- maybe you are just looking for the perfect pen. (be sure, you will never find it)

- or you just can't withstand buying beautiful things

- or...you are working on a collection. That's what I do.

 

Some people say that it's a shame, or at least wasted money to own beautiful pens which were not used. I say, the pens of my collection are 50 - 100 years old and some of them are difficult and expensive to replace. Some of them are near mint and othes NOS, but I have lots of very good vintage user pens. Why should I risk damage, lost or even signs of use when I can avoid this?

 

Would you really use this NOS Pelikan 112 from 1936?

 

And a question which should be asked to all "user" people is: If you just use your pens, why do you need 50 or more of them?

 

Just my opinion....

 

C.

 

PS: And I love expensive wine - and drink it! A collector has to focus, you know.

Edited April 4, 2016 by christof

[Bo Bo Olson]

I got more than 50.....there is if you alternate your CI and Stubs there are some 45 different nib widths, flexes, and with obliques having @15 and 30 degree grinds; you can have. Counting Kugel tipped German pens too.

 

I do have 8 or so pens I really don't need,and am too lazy to sell them.

 

If I was going just nibs....I have nibs that beat my Pelikans, but somehow with out really expecting it I ended up with a 'small' collection of then or so of them. It wasn't I had a list of what I was missing. Magic happened, me having money and them popping up saying .

 

One does have to have a BHRC pen.... or five. Having never expected to own even one....those four of the five showed with in months of each other.

 

Those four various guilloche silver overlay ones, are all 'different', "no names" I think came from Pfortzheim....30's or late 40's ones. Two were in a life auction, with me as the only bidder. I couldn't send them back to a home that didn't want Gramp's old junk.....could I? So was one of the others in a lot, with something I 'needed'.

 

The '59 Geha 790 is a true three ring jewel, one of the other two 'regular' '60's has a maxi-semi-flex EF. The last one, an OB semi-flex has a gray stripped barrel. And the other one has a tad better nib than my Pelikans....which means .... Who needs a pillow case of Pelikan feathers.

 

Sigh, OH....got to have a lot of pens...got a lot of inks.

So many reasons....it's so easy to find a few, why my 'Precious' are still mine.

Oh, did I mention some of the very pretty '50-60's German No Names????

 

:eureka: I have so many '50's Pelikan nibs....all I got to do is put a different nib in that 500 .....god there are whole months in a row....were I so very s.l.o.w ... Slow ...cubed.

Edited April 4, 2016 by Bo Bo Olson

[sargetalon]

Both! These are not mutually exclusive though every pen that I collect is fair game for use. No sacred cows...er, Pelikan's, in the flock.

[Runnin_Ute]

I use all my pens - Pelikan or not. After all, isn't that what a pen is for? To use?

 

Granted some don't get as much use as others, but so what?

[FOUR X FOUR]

As a connoisseur of fine wines, I would never touch anything older than a few months. If Walmarts grocery section doesn't carry it, it's not worth drinking. Choosing a fine wine is also an art. I always look for the most colorful label.🙂

[jmccarty3]

As a connoisseur of fine wines, I would never touch anything older than a few months. If Walmarts grocery section doesn't carry it, it's not worth drinking. Choosing a fine wine is also an art. I always look for the most colorful label.

 

 

Walmart has a grocery section? I've envisioned their having a feeding trough.

[FOUR X FOUR]

Close, no feeding trough but they do have a urinal trough.😀😀😀

[The Good Captain]

I use everything I've bought, regardless of the cost. The one exception is a Pelikan M400 white tortoise which I actually don't particularly like. But that's just the way I am!

[tacitus]

As I liked all my pens ready to use, I used to use them at work,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

https://youtu.be/buZ_7eIPTxw

until I dropped one of them on the floor......

Edited April 5, 2016 by tacitus

[gordonhooker]

I cycle through all my flock, but my main pocket pen is an L2K... I carry at least 2 pelikans in my bag at one time.

[mana]

Both for me I actually usually go for getting stuff in pairs, one reserved for use, the other for collecting... Easy as I tend to fix to a certain type/model, like the Pelikan 100N/101N or rOtring 600 (first gen).

[Christopher Godfrey]

I use all of mine (I believe I have 50-odd, in total, 13 of which are Pelikans and a further 13 which are all Germans).

 

Christof: is that what you paid for the 112: Fr40,50? I think you should be using it! It's obviously not such a valuable fountain pen, after all! (Can I buy it from you?)

[christof]

 

Christof: is that what you paid for the 112: Fr40,50? I think you should be using it! It's obviously not such a valuable fountain pen, after all!

Well, from this point of view..... I did overpay way to much. Darn!

C.

[Christopher Godfrey]

 

(Note: "way too much" -- that extra "o")

[Nyanzilla]

Wine? No, I hardly ever drink wine. And I have no knowledge about that.

I do not own very antique or precious pens. But I think if I had such I would probably not use it. Bacause there are a lot of used old pens in the world but only very few mint ones. I think those should be kept as a collectible or museum piece.