How Long Will Fountain Pens Last In This World, And If So, How About Quality?

[Flippy]

Hey,

 

So, I was looking at my dream pen: a sudden chill went up my spine. The exact same type when you forget your homework or when you realize you're wallet is missing. How long will fountain pens last? If they do, what of the quality of them? Will they be better, or worse???

[shawndp]

FP's as a commodity will exist as long as there is a market to support them. As a hobby, there are enough well made pens today to outlast the current crop of users / collectors, so there isn't a crisis happening anytime soon. I think most people on FPN have enough pens and ink to last any temporary road-bump like a zombie outbreak. Of course your perception of this is coningent on where in the world you live. There are some countries where they are still used in school and that habbit continues for some users. From where I stand, quality isn't getting worse - I have some mid-range pens like the Homo Sapiens, M1000, M800, 146 and none of them are really flimsy or show any inherent signs of falling apart. At age 36, I imagine those pens should outlast me.

 

Just out of curiosity, what is your dream pen?

[Buzz_130]

How long will fountain pens last? I have a fountain pen that is almost 100 years old. My primary collection of pens that make up my daily users are from the 40s and 50s. All of these pens are used, restored, and amazing writers. These pens will outlast me and be passed down to my children.

 

We have FPN users that have been using fountain pens for over 70 years. And these pens are still faithful tools.

 

In our throw-away culture and "need" to upgrade every 18 months to drive corporate profits, you'll find a good fountain pen will last decades. Invest in ink you like and paper you can use, and, like all good tools, they will last a lifetime.

 

Buzz

[Flippy]

FP's as a commodity will exist as long as there is a market to support them. As a hobby, there are enough well made pens today to outlast the current crop of users / collectors, so there isn't a crisis happening anytime soon. I think most people on FPN have enough pens and ink to last any temporary road-bump like a zombie outbreak. Of course your perception of this is coningent on where in the world you live. There are some countries where they are still used in school and that habbit continues for some users. From where I stand, quality isn't getting worse - I have some mid-range pens like the Homo Sapiens, M1000, M800, 146 and none of them are really flimsy or show any inherent signs of falling apart. At age 36, I imagine those pens should outlast me.

 

Just out of curiosity, what is your dream pen?

Oh, its the Waterman Carene Blue Obsession. I've been eyeing it for a while. It's just plain awesome

[Flippy]

How long will fountain pens last? I have a fountain pen that is almost 100 years old. My primary collection of pens that make up my daily users are from the 40s and 50s. All of these pens are used, restored, and amazing writers. These pens will outlast me and be passed down to my children.

 

We have FPN users that have been using fountain pens for over 70 years. And these pens are still faithful tools.

 

In our throw-away culture and "need" to upgrade every 18 months to drive corporate profits, you'll find a good fountain pen will last decades. Invest in ink you like and paper you can use, and, like all good tools, they will last a lifetime.

 

Buzz

Thanks, but that wasn't exactly what I meant. I mean how long will fountain pens stay around?

[jar]

Thanks, but that wasn't exactly what I meant. I mean how long will fountain pens stay around?

As long as people stay around I imagine.

 

There are still flint knappers aren't there?

[TheRealMikeDr]

Thanks, but that wasn't exactly what I meant. I mean how long will fountain pens stay around?

 

It's an interesting question. The vendor where I buy most of my pens and supplies online has stated a couple times in videos that their business is more busy now than it's ever been. I've read articles that claim a slight resurgence in the popularity of fountain pens.I can do a search for "fountain pen" on ebay and over 50,000 results show up. So we can anecdotally claim that they're trending up and not down at the time. So while the Internet and email and 25 cent bic pens have removed them from being number one - there is still a lot of interest in them.

 

How does that translate to 50 or 100 years from now? Will people still be putting pen to paper or will there be yet another giant shift in technology? Hard to say but I suspect, much like reading a physical book, they will last for quite a long time.

[ISW_Kaputnik]

At just shy of sixty, I don't expect fountain pens to vanish in my lifetime. And I expect most of my rather large collection to last as long as I do. So if I unexpectedly make it to a hundred in a condition to care, I'm not going to worry about whether good ones will still be on the market, or even whether I can still get decent ink for them.

 

As for whether they will be available after that, they will be as long as there's enough demand for them, and they will be of decent quality as long as there's a demand for them as actual writing instruments; not novelty items or status symbols. Not really worth worrying about. You can try to communicate your enthusiasm to the younger people in your life, but where they go with it is out of your hands.

[dapprman]

The BBC News had an intersting article a few months back about how the numbers of foutnain pens being bought in the UK had been on the rise over the last few years. I can't remember, however, if this was considered to be a fashion thing or not.

[InkingBishop]

There are countless examples of mainstream technology which was made obsolete, but remained popular in niche and/or in some cases luxury markets. Examples would include the mechanical wristwatch, vinyl, DE shaving. I think fountain pens have already made that transition. You'd probably be right to never expect to see a fountain pen on a counter in the bank again, but on the other hand, you'd be unlikely to see a "connoisseur" of handwriting using a biro.

 

People still make and use scythes. People still shoot with the English longbow. So it might be a long time before enthusiasm for the fountain pen dries up. Pun intended.

Edited May 21, 2016 by InkingBishop

[FOUR X FOUR]

How long will fountain pens last? I have a fountain pen that is almost 100 years old. My primary collection of pens that make up my daily users are from the 40s and 50s. All of these pens are used, restored, and amazing writers. These pens will outlast me and be passed down to my children.

We have FPN users that have been using fountain pens for over 70 years. And these pens are still faithful tools.

In our throw-away culture and "need" to upgrade every 18 months to drive corporate profits, you'll find a good fountain pen will last decades. Invest in ink you like and paper you can use, and, like all good tools, they will last a lifetime.

Buzz

Nice response

[senzen]

They've survived the ball point pen, disposable pens, computers... Their marketing does need to be rethought to appeal to many people and not just a few, for instance I tried for a while to organise my ideas in mindmaps and other such software, nothing beats pen and paper.

[kapanak]

Fountain Pens have lasted well over 120 years now, and have survived just about every new technological and scientific development. In fact, I see them coming back based on market data over the last ten years or so. As long as there are businessmen or lawyers who want a Montblanc, and students who want to work on their handwriting, I see fountain pens being around for a very very long time.

 

However, choice in the market has its ups and downs. Many brands have died, and sometimes nothing has risen in their place. Take Omas, which met its demise less than four months ago, and had been around for 90 years.

 

In my opinion, the methods of advertising and marketing have changed and need to continue to change. Also, innovation in the market to appeal to a wider audience and bring new materials into the fountain pen world have much room to grow.

[Flippy]

Fountain Pens have lasted well over 120 years now, and have survived just about every new technological and scientific development. In fact, I see them coming back based on market data over the last ten years or so. As long as there are businessmen or lawyers who want a Montblanc, and students who want to work on their handwriting, I see fountain pens being around for a very very long time.

 

However, choice in the market has its ups and downs. Many brands have died, and sometimes nothing has risen in their place. Take Omas, which met its demise less than four months ago, and had been around for 90 years.

 

In my opinion, the methods of advertising and marketing have changed and need to continue to change. Also, innovation in the market to appeal to a wider audience and bring new materials into the fountain pen world have much room to grow.

Thank you

 

(P.S Great Picture )

[Ecriveur]

Horses are still commonly seen, and not just in the wild, such as in equestrian tournaments, or horse races, or on ranches, or in certain types of terrain where cars are not practical, or among people who just like to ride horses for fun. Horses are not the standard mode of transportation that they were before the invention of the steam engine and the automobile, but they haven't disappeared and aren't going to disappear.

 

Fountain pens are like horses, not the dominant mode of writing that they once were. Ballpoints replaced them, then keyboards replaced the ballpoints, but fountain pens aren't going anywhere.

[lyonlover]

A fountain pen is right now considered the most formal form of writing (correct me if I'm wrong), as the humble quill and bottle have sunk far below the fountain pen in terms of ubiquity. Like, for example, Cross still supplies Townsend pens to the White House for the president to sign bills and stuff.

 

They're like automatic watches. Most people would never understand how and why they stick around, but they just do.

[rwilsonedn]

There are many cases out there where a device has ceased to be the most productive way to achieve an end, but has remained for aesthetic reasons or because it meets a specific requirement. As others have mentioned there are horses as transportation and as a source of power for farming, vinyl records, mechanical watches, English longbows. (It is rather surprising that the French haven't prevailed upon the European Commission to ban the latter out of sheer spite.) One could also mention art painting; photography with Daguerreotypes, glass plates, or for that matter film; woodworking with hand tools; or (in North America) driving cars with manual transmissions.

As a technology ceases to be the dominant technique for production, its implements become refuse, but then they become highly collectible artifacts. New sources spring up, usually both cheap and rather sad imitations of the original objects and ornate, highly-crafted and treasured versions of the original at huge prices--for instance dreadful Chinese mechanical watches and Rolex, or cheap machine-cut handsaws from a discount hardware store and hand-made Japanese saws. Once this state of cheap imitations and luxury goods is reached, the technology seems to live on nearly forever. But it never again becomes the standard tool it once was.

ron

[Sasha Royale]

As long as they last forty years. In forty years, I will be dead. Then, it is someone else's problem/fun.

[snowbear]

Thanks, but that wasn't exactly what I meant. I mean how long will fountain pens stay around?

Longer than I'll be around, I'm sure.

[frogbaby]

I have the sinking feeling we are in the middle of the proverbial dead-cat bounce.

 

Sales have ticked up as people seek to escape digital devices and enjoy the tactile pleasure of old analog tools.

 

But we see that cursive writing is disappearing. Computers are steadily marching toward AI interfaces with voice commands growing smarter.

 

It seems to me that we are moving into the science-fiction future we see on Star Trek where everything is spoken.

 

I can easily see the fountain pen hobby and market steadily shrinking until at some point it becomes very arcane and loses all practical application.

 

Compare pens to something like pocket-watches which have been replaced by "better" time-keeping tools but are actually potentially more useful than pens since needing to know the time will never go away whereas needing to write things down may well disappear.