The Upper Limit Of Quantity

[Bo Bo Olson]

I have a couple working piston pens from the '30's. Some 30 from the late 40-70's. I collect mostly piston pens.....but did have a good hand full of sac pens.Only have three or four now.....if one also counts the great P-75. Gee it still works just fine and it's from 1970. It is not the P-51 plyglass sac.

 

If and when it needs a new rubber sac, no big deal.It can use a cartridge or a converter.....but the rubber sac holds more ink...............Cartridges are very, very expensive. $$$$$ in the long run.

 

Do your research. Rubber sac pens need to be re-sacked (so what!!!****).....but there for you get great balance. In the days when a pen was used all day long; instead of taking notes at a meeting or doing just signatures, a pen had to have very, very good to great balance to sell. Light and nimble. In the other companies pens did have fantastic balance.

 

****Buy a real vintage car and you have to replace the head gasket and some rubber hoses. So What!

[drv1913]

For me, the upper limit for utility is one pen for each ink color family that I actually use, whatever that number may be.

[sansenri]

With fountain pens, a bit like with watches, the collector is very often also a user.

With some collections the collector is hardly a user (think stamps, or ancient pottery...).

Pen collectors can have the added pleasure of using their objects of collection.

The border is therefore more indistinct, you start using fountain pens, you like to have more for the pleasure of different writing experiences (the pen, the nib, etc.), and then you start liking different brands, shapes, sizes, and then colours, until your collection is no longer just a matter of difference in use, but also in the look, the peculiarity of the design, the feel, the value, and a series of other subjective attributes.

When the number of pens you have is no longer strictly tied to the different specific uses you make of them, then you are a collector.

I used to initially think I am a user, as I use practically all my pens, it is now quite clear to me that I am a collector, despite I have none of the strict collecting criteria of a scientific collector. I collect what I like and enjoy using it...