Help, How Do You Curb Your Urge To Buy (Another Fountain Pen)?

[tinta]

Take up golf.......

If I still played golf, I'd only had my starting pens....the five I inherited and my old bought new P-75.

Have you priced good clubs (golf etc.) these days?

[ac12]

Take that eBay app off your phone.

And do NOT use your browser to go to eBay.

[Dickkooty2]

I don't buy very expensive pens for collection/increased value reasons. I buy user level pens because i want samples of good design that have stood the test of time and are images of an era.

 

I don't throw my bank balance out of kilter. I buy what I like from a design and aesthetic POV. So far i have nice examples of Pelikans from 30's to current together with a collection of Pelikan ephemera and merchandising pieces. The same for Markant and Fend/Norma.

 

If you like a certain item and you can responsibly afford it, buy it and don't eat yourself up. It is not worth the worry!

[ac12]

 

 

Have you priced good clubs (golf etc.) these days?

 

And green fees.

[Wahl]

Life is too short to curb my urges.

[ParkerDuofold]

I usually sit down and look over all my credit card statements.

 

Of course, after I wake up from my fainting spell, I usually buy it anyway.

 

Hi all,

 

This was meant as a joke, but from the following posts I've read, everyone has taken it seriously.

 

So let me just say: YES, you should only pay cash for your pens, (debit card for online purchases), that's what I do as well. Charging luxury items is always bad medicine.

 

- Anthony

[ethernautrix]

Maybe I am a bit unusual but when I go to a bricks and mortar pen shop (there are several here in the Boston area) and I look at the rows and rows of colorful fountain pens, my brain just goes into overdrive and I can't focus on any specific item. Whether it's Bromfield's Pen Store in downtown Boston, or Bob Slade in Cambridge....or the now defunct Paradise Pen at the Burlington Mall....visiting these stores is an antidote for me.

 

Then maybe we're both a bit unusual. When I walked into my first pen show, Los Angeles, several years ago, my vision completely blurred (or, rather, I could not focus on anything), the sheer number of pens was overwhelming. Several pen shows later, it's still overwhelming. That's why I enlisted Ricky's help (his brain is super big and sharp) to help me find specific models. I called him my pen show sherpa. (Ricky is AltecGreen.)

 

Even at smaller shows... too many pens! When I sit with Sarj and Jas at shows, hang out at their table, that's really the only time I can sharpen my vision. It means I get a really good look at Sarj's pens (he's known as the One-Man Pen Show, so it's a great vantage point for looking).

 

Even with looking, though -- it's still overwhelming. I clutch my Nakayas closer and enjoy the socializing.

[ethernautrix]

Hi all,

 

This was meant as a joke, but from the following posts I've read, everyone has taken it seriously.

 

So let me just say: YES, you should only pay cash for your pens, (debit card for online purchases), that's what I do as well. Charging luxury items is always bad medicine.

 

- Anthony

 

 

I don't carry a credit card balance, haven't in years. I use my credit card on the Internet -- and for almost all of my purchases. My card racks up points that I can "cash in" for statement credits, and I pay the balance each month. If a thief steals my card number, I share the headache with the credit card company; if a thief steals my debit card number, my money is gone until I can work it out with the bank.

[Meltemi]

I watch videos of the pen I want to the point where I get sick of it.. It's a lengthy proccess.

[Sasha Royale]

I have started smoking cigarettes, instead. (It should work any day, now.)

[Manalto]

This was meant as a joke, but from the following posts I've read, everyone has taken it seriously.

 

- Anthony

 

I, for one, never take anything you say seriously unless, of course, you meant it that way.

[chromantic]

Straitened finances helps a lot.

 

Seriously, though, like many new people I went a little overboard. Buying pens just to 'have' them (and not using them) was pretty dumb, I realized, so new purchases have to pass the "will I use this?" test. Cutting back on the number of pens I was keeping inked helped to drive this home.

[ParkerDuofold]

I don't carry a credit card balance, haven't in years. I use my credit card on the Internet -- and for almost all of my purchases. My card racks up points that I can "cash in" for statement credits, and I pay the balance each month. If a thief steals my card number, I share the headache with the credit card company; if a thief steals my debit card number, my money is gone until I can work it out with the bank.

Hello Ethernautrix,

 

This is sage advice and I've been known to do this myself. Also, FWIW, the debit card I use is linked to a small discretionary account, so if it's hacked, it isn't the end of the world.

 

I just try to avoid credit cards, period, because I don't like the tactics they use on most consumers, e.g., paying them $150 and getting only $60 knocked off your balance, etc., etc. (I still remember my younger years when I was stupid enough to buy on credit - or didn't have many other options).

 

- Anthony

Edited February 16, 2017 by ParkerDuofold

[ParkerDuofold]

I have started smoking cigarettes, instead. (It should work any day, now.)

Edited February 16, 2017 by ParkerDuofold

[ParkerDuofold]

 

I, for one, never take anything you say seriously unless, of course, you meant it that way.

 

Thanks, JM. I knew I could count on you.

 

- Anthony

[inkstainedruth]

 

 

I don't carry a credit card balance, haven't in years. I use my credit card on the Internet -- and for almost all of my purchases. My card racks up points that I can "cash in" for statement credits, and I pay the balance each month. If a thief steals my card number, I share the headache with the credit card company; if a thief steals my debit card number, my money is gone until I can work it out with the bank.

 

Yup. I had a friend who liked her debit card because she claimed that she only then bought what she knew she could afford. But she didn't take the possibility of theft into account.

Maybe it was how I was raised. My parents grew up during the Depression. One grandfather was foreman in a coal mine, the other was a musician who was out of work for four years. When my parents got married, they were both 30. They paid off the mortgage on their first house (the one I lived in when I was little) in 3 years, entirely on my mother's salary and lived off my dad's. The house I grew up in, they *couldn't* get a mortgage -- they bought the house mostly on the sale of the first one, plus savings. They didn't have credit cards until I think I was in high school. They never bought things on layaway. They didn't buy things for the sake of buying them. I basically would have one pair of shoes and one pair of sneakers until I outgrew them (and wore a lot of my brother's hand-me-down pants, at least at home). Heck, I think I was a junior or senior in college before they splurged on a color TV, and only because there was going to be some special on PBS (I was in college before I saw The Wizard of Oz in color, so the whole "Kansas vs. Oz thing" -- "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore" -- was completely lost on me). Vacations -- until I was in middle school -- were car trips, staying in cheap motels (I remember -- somewhat bemused now -- about the time we *almost* stayed in a Howard Johnson's; until my dad came back to the car, shaking his head and saying -- "It's twenty-four dollars a night!" and we went elsewhere....)

As a result, I learned to be pretty frugal -- although, as I said in another thread, sometimes frugal means buying the store brand if it saves you money in the long run. I once was helping out in the kitchen at a dinner for about 60-80 people, and someone had bought some cheap brand of aluminum foil. We needed to wrap fish fillets in the foil to bake them, and the foil just ripped and tore in strips as it came out of the box. Horrible. All because someone, at some point, thought that "Oh, this is so much cheaper than the name brand...." Complete waste of time and money, and a waste of a lot of unusable foil....

I think that's part of the reason I don't have too many pens that cost over $100 US. And none at $200 or more. Even the Plum 51 was under $75 -- it's not minty minty, but that's okay, because it works. And a lot of my pens are vintage or semi-vintage ones -- so they've proven themselves already. They're from a time when a fountain pen was a tool, not a fashion statement or a "work of art". They're often better made, they fit my hand better, they're being kept out of a landfill. Sometimes (as in the case of the Plummer, or the Vacumatic Red Shadow Wave) they didn't even need to be serviced when I got them -- just flushed out and then filled and were ready to write with.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[Polanova]

My acquisition phase ended last may. Regarding nibs, I have everything I need.

What`s left are a few Grail pens, but they are either unaffordable or simply not on offer anywhere.

As if they didn`t exist...

 

Occasionally I obsess about this or that pen for a while. This can drag on for a bit until I find that either it isn`t perfect enough for me or simply too expensive.

I could afford a seriously expensive pen if I`d sold off most of what I have. I then realise that the many pens I have are worth more to me than, say the Namiki Emperor I fancy so much.

Also I`m not as suggestible as many here. There are loads of pens everyone seems to have or at least seems to want to have.

 

One pen looks great but comes only with boring nibs (a big No No), the other one looks fantastic if it weren`t for the clip and I`d get pen number #3 if it were 200 less.

Vintage pens I could fall for ... again, not on sale anywhere!

 

The worst thing for me is that I`m still looking, sometimes bored out of my mind, in the hope of finding THE pen after all.

 

I feel the itch of getting a new pen but am not ready to make ANY compromises.

 

And I`m really ruthless in categorically throwing out whole brands and and ...

Edited February 17, 2017 by Polanova

[fpenluver]

Take that eBay app off your phone.

And do NOT use your browser to go to eBay.

NOOOOOOOO

[fpenluver]

Hmmm.... Seems looking at OLD collections and inking some may work. I have not put "fountain pen" as a search term today. I'll see how long it will last......

 

But just landed Sheaffer targa that was on my watch list - at reasonably good price.

[Arkanabar]

I limit purchases by a combination of things. First, I am desperately poor. Second, I have an aversion to clutter, and there are enough pens that I'm not using to constitute an annoyance. Third, things like food, power, taxes, bandwidth, gasoline, insurance, car payments, and so on, are more important.

Refusing to carry credit card balances is a very good idea.

Now, I'm not one to dissuade people from accumulating a fairly large set of inexpensive pens. How are you going to learn what you actually prefer with regards to length, girth, weight, line width, filling system, materials, nib type, section form factor, etc. you like, if you don't try them?

But do it slowly. Get a cheap pen, sure, but then use it extensively for at least a month or two, with several inks, to see what you really like about it, and what you would like to change, and use that information to inform your next purchase, before making it.

 

I don't buy very expensive pens for collection/increased value reasons. I buy user level pens because i want samples of good design that have stood the test of time and are images of an era.

 

I don't throw my bank balance out of kilter. I buy what I like from a design and aesthetic POV. So far i have nice examples of Pelikans from 30's to current together with a collection of Pelikan ephemera and merchandising pieces. The same for Markant and Fend/Norma.

 

If you like a certain item and you can responsibly afford it, buy it and don't eat yourself up. It is not worth the worry!

This, too. A pen has to be something I'll use, and probably like, and include something I don't already have. It's within reason for me to replace my Baoer 388 or my Nemosine Singularity if either of them fails, but it's also possible that I wouldn't bother.