Hello From North Carolina

[Claud]

I am a very recent fountain pen user. At 69 years old, I remember using fountain pens in elementry school and later in Military School.

One of my friends is also my boss at work. We have been friends for years and exchange Christmas presents. On two different occassions, he gave me a pen as a gift. One is a demonstrator and the other is not, so I have been using it sometimes. In December, I realized that fountain pens are "office supplies" and deductible for my real estate side business. After consulting my friend, I have purchased a flock of Pelikans,M 200 Smokey Quartz, Black M400 and Blue M600, M805 and the Renaissance M800. I have preordered a Sailor Relo Pro Gear 11 and a Mont Blanc Platinum line 149. I bought some on Amazon and some on Ebay and some from Nibs.Com/Classic Fountain Pens. I really like Pekikan pens. The nibs are interchangeable between the M200, M400 and M600. This has prompted me to purchase an M400 medium Stub nib and an M600 broad stub nib from Classic Fountain pens who also did the stub customizations. Talk about your super smooth writing nibs!!

As you can tell, I am not really a collector, just a user hobbiest.

I hope to add a picture to this post of my home work desk.

Edited January 14, 2018 by Claud

[mitto]

Greetings and welcome to FPN from the Orient - Islamabad, Pakistan. Hope you enjoy your time here with us.

[CraigR]

Hi back at you from North Carolina! Interesting, your taking all fountain pen related expenses as office supply expenses. As a home based small business owner, I wonder if I should go back and amend a few years worth of returns.

[PAKMAN]

Hello and Welcome to FPN!! Glad to have you as a member!!

[Claud]

Hi back at you from North Carolina! Interesting, your taking all fountain pen related expenses as office supply expenses. As a home based small business owner, I wonder if I should go back and amend a few years worth of returns.

 

It seems to me that a writing device is a necessary office supply. I do not think anyone here would deny that a Mont Blanc (insert your favorite pen brand) is a superior device to write checks and other billing matters I itemize my various and sundry expenses. Don't you?

 

Thanks for the warm welcome, Folks.

[jar]

Welcome home. Pull up a stump and set a spell. I can see East Carolina BBQ being justifiable as an office expense but not too sure about fountain pens.

[inkstainedruth]

Greetings from Pittsburgh!

Wow. You jumped in with both feet, didn't you? It was a couple of years before being on here that I got my first Pelikan (an M400 Brown Tortoise from the 1990s) for a special occasion. My husband was kinda freaking at the price (I think up till that point I'd never paid more than about $80 US for a pen -- and those were vintage ones) -- but I pointed out that a NEW M400 would cost WAAAY more.... And that they no longer made that color binde. Of course then the company went and made a liar out of me last year....

There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a "user" rather than a "collector". The only pens I own which don't see use are vintage ones I haven't been able to get repaired yet. My pens don't live in glass top cases on display. The non-inked ones are in inexpensive zipper cases, and the ones in current rotation in a metal canister on the bookshelf next to my bed (the "c-worders" are probably reading this in complete and utter horror right about now ). Even the vintage ones, like the user-grade Parker 51 Demi Aero in Plum (my favorite pen), and (at the moment) three Parker Vacumatics -- two smaller sized Azure Blue Pearl pens, and a 1937 Red Shadow Wave lockdown filler (which has been in constant rotation without even flushing it once for nearly 2-1/2 years, and probably the number 2 favorite after the Plummer). My most expensive pens, though, have all been Pelikans, including a couple of M405s -- a striated Blue with an EF nib, and last year's Anthracite Stresemann, with a B nibs. I can't afford pens as expensive as those two very often, but last year, due to special circumstances, I had a very nice pen-shopping budget so I spent money like a drunken sailor: the two M405s, plus a couple of Parker 51s (Navy Grey and Midnight Blue), a TWSBI 580-al (Pink -- while they were still available ), one of the afore-mentioned Azure Blue Pearl Vacs, a Parker Laidtone Duofold (found in the wild for ten bucks ) and some others.

So, what ink(s) are you using for your flock?

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[ThomasB]

Hello and welcome from Baton Rouge, Louisiana...Enjoy your time here

[DaveT]

Hello and welcome from Indiana!

[Carrau]

Welcome aboard, from Charleston, SC.

Mike

[Claud]

Is it just me, or do a lot of fountain pen users/collectors have cats? After 19 and a half years, Ours died two years ago. I'm ready for another, but wife is not.

[OCArt]

Welcome to our little corner of the universe from a pen user in San Diego.

[Chrissy]

Hello and welcome to FPN. ​

[Henricum_Tropen]

Hello and welcome to FPN, from Cape Town, South Africa.

[Wahl]

[Bisquitlips]

Glad you are with us! Welcome!

[Claud]

Wow!!!!! I am on several audio, BMW and headphone forums. I have never gotten the kind of greeting I have received here.

[TwizzlerNibs]

I wish I would have gotten into fountain pens before I sold my business so they would have been deductible! Hope you are having fun with all those pens! I also jumped in and got a bunch of pens to play with - but they are all from China, bought off the Wish app, and only cost a few dollars a piece.

 

I have found people around here to be very helpful and welcoming and I hope you have the same experience.

 

Welcome from another newbie,

 

josh

[Sasha Royale]

Welcome, Claud !

Office supplies. What does your CPA say about it ?

[TheGreatRoe]

From a fellow NC resident (Hillsborough), welcome to FPN.