The Pain Of Letting Go

[Uncial]

I've decided to bite the bullet. I decided around lunch time today, posted a couple of classified's and already I'm getting jittery.

 

I'm a natural hoarder, so holding on to something I don't use or don't use very much isn't something that bothers me normally. However, I have felt that owning too many fountain pens (please don't ask how many, it's a shameful number) is probably not a good thing. Someone planted the seed that it is possible to live with ten pens you really love. I still find this an utterly ridiculous notion, but did eventually concede that I could live with a few less. They asked me to think about what it was I really liked in a fountain pen and whittle it down that way. I put all such nonsense out of my mind.

 

Then it came back; that niggling thought that I was holding on to something I wasn't adoring that someone else might own and adore. I began to put down on paper what I liked. So I came to the decision that I enjoy fines, extra fines and stub/italics the most. The next step was to go back through the records and look through the pens to see what I hadn't used since I bought them (that feels like a terrible admission) and what I hadn't used in the last year. So now I have me a list, and this evening I bit the bullet.

 

Now this is all by way of intro really, because what really makes me jittery about this is that I keep reading people saying they regret selling such and such a pen. That is something I really hope to avoid doing. Maybe I'm just being too clingy on my pens, but I would appreciate some advice that might help me avoid that pit fall of selling something I later decide was a bad decision to sell.

[ac12]

I almost sold a Lamy 2000. Then at the last minute, thought better of it and put it into my collection...rather than buy one later for my collection.

 

Tough call. I would indeed have great difficulty selling any of the pens in my collection. They are in the collection for a reason...I want to have them.

Edited July 10, 2016 by ac12

[sciumbasci]

Just flip them. How many you have? 500? Sell one, buy a new one, try it for some time, sell again. Buy again.

Guaranteed against seller's remorse!

[Fabienne]

I put them in a bag and leave them for months. If I miss them I dig them out and put them in my good pen box So far, I have missed none of them.

[ehemem]

Forget the idea of downsizing or learn to live with regret...

[DustyR]

I commend your effort. You're a good man. But ten....? I can see getting down to 20. That should last me the rest of my life, if I'm careful.... If I lose or break too many, I've got a few vintage ballpoints to fall back on, and that alone should assure careful handling of the fountain pens!

 

:-)

[oregano]

I think it's different for each person, but the pens I don't regret selling are the ones I had and didn't use for several months, and didn't miss using when they were in the box -- usually because the nib is too broad, or I didn't like the nib after having it ground to an extra-fine from a nibmeister grind.

 

It depends on what makes you love the pens you have, and is a question of degree. There is one that I sold early on whose nib I loved, and that's the one I really regret now, and still have not been able to replace. There are a couple that were hard to find, that I regret having sold for that reason, bt again, you weight the pros and the cons. If you think you can part with it without a lot of pain, I say go for it! Having too many nice pens is a burden on its own...

[pajaro]

I have mostly forgotten about pens I sold. I am glad to neutral that I sold them. I think one tends to forget about it after a while.

[praxim]

I am still in the phase of acquisition rather than disposal but it will come and these are some of the considerations I will have.

 

Do I not use it, or do so because it is there, while thinking about how nice it will be when another pen comes back into rotation? If so, it will be ripe to go.

 

If the pen has some other basis on which it was bought then it will be harder. Thoughts found in the de-cluttering thread may help.

[da vinci]

I have sold a very few pens that I actively disliked after buying and trying.

 

If I am at best ambivalent about a pen then, as things stand, it stays in the collection

[ISW_Kaputnik]

If I really wanted to clear some space around here, I would sell or give away a few hundred books that I'm not likely ever to read again. In fact, I have done that a few times in my life, but they always multiply again, very quickly. Compared to that, the number of pens I have (not "shameful", but I don't feel like mentioning it just now ) wastes relatively little room.

 

Getting rid of extra stuff doesn't bother me, but it never feels terribly urgent, either. The trouble is that most of the pens I'd be actually happy to dispose of are ones that I can't really sell for enough to make it worthwhile. Internet PIFs are not going to happen. I like giving the occasional pen to somebody known to me in real life, but most of the people I know simply aren't interested.

 

I do keep meaning to sell a few of the pens that might actually find buyers. I would not miss my Edison Hudson at all, and someone might like it. The thing that keeps stopping me is that I dislike the process of selling things, having to deal with a buyer's expectations. But once some of these things were gone, and the buyer satisfied, I wouldn't miss them. The pens that I might miss, I'm keeping.

[inkstainedruth]

I'm like praxim -- I'm still in the acquisition phase. Although I have been better (somewhat) this year about what I buy, and instead getting pens I already have repaired/restored. There are still pens I want. There are probably *always* going to be pens I want.

I have, recently, started thinking more about what pens I *could* let go of without regrets. Some are inexpensive pens. Some are ones that were not so inexpensive (once restoration was done on them) but which -- for whatever reason -- I've never been quite happy about. In a couple of cases, I now have duplicates of pen model/color (but with different nibs), so in those cases I will be not having regrets about.

Pens that are absolute keepers? Those are absolute. I know what they are. They're the ones that I would completely hyperventilate about if they were lost. Okay, mind you, I hyperventilated about the Parker Vector I lost in my house for the better part of a year (fortunately, right AFTER it got flushed out) -- but that was for sentimental reasons. The other Vectors (and I have a lot at this point) are fun and useful and write well but if push came to shove I could let them go. *Some* of them, anyway....

I've been relatively lucky in some of my finds -- getting good pens (particularly vintage ones) for less than they're worth, even after paying for restoration. So, if I do get around to selling some of them, or even doing a PiF, I will be less panicking about price even if I don't turn a profit (because I'm also not buying them to "flip").

I keep thinking about a conversation I had a few years ago with my sister-in-law's husband. He couldn't understand why anyone would have more than one pen because "you can't write with more than one at a time". Scrambling for a quick answer I said I liked different colors of ink, and didn't want to have to wait to flush out a pen before switching colors Then, a few days later, my brother-in-law's wife (who is VERY mercenary) could not understand why I would have pens other than for the intrinsic value (i.e., to resell for more than I paid). Last winter she showed me a couple of Sheaffers she found in a desk drawer. One was a No Nonsense with a crack the barrel right at the threads; the other I couldn't identify (don't know enough about the brand). I think she expected me to do an on-the-spot appraisal, and it was clear that she was horribly disappointed that she wouldn't be able to sell them for huge wads of cash on eBay....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[4lex]

I cut down to 20 from 80. I regretted selling Dialog 3 so I reordered it, other than that I got over it quickly. But now I am slowly but surely moving towards 30....

It is a bit of an addiction and probably an outlet for something...but as they say, there are worst addictions to have.

[ScienceChick]

I empathize with you, Uncial. Recently I've sold a few pens that either I didn't particularly like or did like but weren't seeing any ink time. My rationale was that the pens were lovely tools that deserved to be used. I was gratified to find that the new owner's pleasure in the pens outweighed any small regret I thought I'd feel. I don't see myself replacing them with identical pens - after all, I sold or gave them away because they were languishing in pen cases. I don't miss them a bit.

[Uncial]

Thank you for the responses. It's somewhat comforting to know I'm not losing the plot or that we all are, but we share the same boat.

[catbert]

It’s good to know others feel the same way. My hoarding tendencies haven’t (yet) reached the stage where I need to let things go. The space my pens occupy is insignificant compared to the time spent using them, learning about them, and searching for more. But I can envision the lightness and peace of mind that would come from being able to let my less-loved, less-used pens (or possessions generally) find new homes. It’s only (only!) attachment and the fear of making a mistake, regretting something I can’t get back, that stops me. Good luck.

[PAKMAN]

I like to buy pens but it would cost too much to buy as many pens as I purchase with out letting some that I don't enjoy go. I keep about the same number of pens but sell off 10 or so a year to fund new purchases.

[Wahl]

After about 50 years in the hobby, I would have a ridiculous amount of pens if I never sold anything.

 

I do keep the first pen I ever had, as well as those which were given to me by the family. The others, they come and go, These past years I have concentrated on a few good vintage pens and selling all the rest.

[vinniekowalski]

"'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."

(said some old guy who apparently didn't buy any fountain pens...)

[atomic_doug]

Ten pens is easily do-able.

 

I had around forty at one point when I realized that I didn't like half of them, I bought a whole bunch simply because I'd been told or read about how great they are, or simply because I liked the color.

 

I was even worse with inks. Liters of ink that I bought just to have some of every color.

 

It really bugged me because I don't like to have stuff I don't use (though when I get into a hobby, I get in hard.)

 

I started by getting rid of all the pens that I didn't like writing with, regardless of how they looked. If they looked great but wrote poorly, I'd never use them anyway. Pens are meant to be written-with, after all.

Then I started pairing pens off that had some similarity (both yellow, both extra-fine, both Aurora Optimae, etc) and I would eliminate the one I liked less of the two.

Finally, I bought a pen box with 10 slots and anything that wouldn't fit in there would have to go.

(The task was made harder because three slots were reserved for pens with sentimental value and one slot was co-opted by my wife.)

 

There were some losses that would have surprised me early on in the process if I'd been told they weren't going to make it, like the Pelikan M800 or the Nakaya.

 

Nowadays, I can tell you why each and every pen I have is special to me and if I want a new pen it has to be special enough to bump something out of the box.