I Need 29 Cheap Fountain Pens To Give Away!

[sansenri]

I am keeping in mind that the poster is listed as being in Spain, so a lot of what we might look at in the US won't apply.

the link I posted as .co.uk works also as .it, and shows free shipment to Italy, I am sure the offer will be identical for Spain

 

in fact confirmed

https://www.ebay.es/itm/10x-Dollar-5x-717-calligraphy-5x-717i-transparent-fountain-pen-FREE-EXTRA-PEN/132986321612?hash=item1ef69a3acc:g:FPgAAOSw7s5Xg-mz

[Arrivistepen]

Cassotto, You have a great & nice idea. Thoughts:

 

Many good pen suggestions here already. I’ve used a Wing Sung, not sure what the model was but it was worked well & cheap and was transparent which would really catch a 12 year old’s attention. That idea was from Vulpenfanaat who suggested a pen that ink can be seen.

 

I’d drop a few $ to help as PutteringPenMan suggested a web funding site, I wonder if there are pen dealers who use this site that would be willing to drop some $ for the effort. I’m not sure if the “pay it forward” area of this website would be appropriate to post a link.

 

Ink is necessary to get them going. Gotta use at least one “fun” color to get them going.

 

Are you going to show them how to use the pen? If so, and if you use the funding idea, maybe they could write a thank you note using the FP that you could photograph and post a few on this site? It would be a nice gesture & lesson in (international) civility that the world could use more of. The note could be simple as “thank you for the pen” signed xxxx (1^st name only!)

 

Good Luck! George “ArrivistePen”

[Carrau]

With regard to the Jinhao 991, I got a clear plastic one as a freebie with something I ordered a couple of months ago. I was going to set it aside as something I probably wouldn’t bother with, then thought I’d fill it, as I had never tried a demonstrator pen. I was pleasantly surprised at what a good writer it was. I generally like broader nibs, and this was a fine nib, but surprisingly smooth.. I tried a couple different inks in it, and all performed well. I’ve pretty much kept it inked with something colorful for the past 4-5 months, with no issues. Granted, I don’t abuse it like a schoolchild might, however, if the goal is just to let them try using one for a little while, I think it’s a perfectly suitable pen to use. The demonstrator version might be appealing to kids as well, and perhaps giving them a fountain pen that isn’t as durable as a warhorse might be a good thing, as they might have to treat it with a bit of care from the outset, thereby learning to have a little respect for it as an instrument. As far as ink goes, Pilot Blue-Black in the 350ml bottle is an inexpensive way to supply some ink for them (<$25 on Amazon). I’m sure folks might be willing to donate some sample vials, or even ink for that matter, given the hordes of ink many of us have accumulated.

[Cast]

If you have time, you might try emailing Pilot in Spain or another pen company and see if they would be willing to donate or cut cost drastically for some free publicity, etc.

[Cassotto]

Wow! Thanks a lot! I hadn't expected so many answers. That's very kind of all of you!

 

I've copied all you've written to a text document so I can have a look at it offline (commuting takes long for me, and it's a good time to read this sort of things). I've read everything quickly, but I need more time to go through everything carefully.

 

What I thought I'd do is giving the students the pen and one or two cartridges, explaining them how to insert the cartridge, and taking a pen with a converter with me, too, so they can see how it works. I was thinking of telling them that cartridges are the most convenient method if they want to minimise the risk of staining something (you should see the stains they get with ball pens!), but that once they are used to the pen, they can have access to a huge variety of colours by using ink bottles. All the time I was thinking of using pens which accept standard cartridges, because they are the most readily available ones, and the ones they're likely to find if they buy them in a supermarket or any other non-specialised shop.

 

I'll have a look at all your suggestions, though, even if they use proprietary cartridges.

 

I like the idea of having one or two ink bottles in the classroom, but I don't think it's quite feasible. Apart from the fact that I want to give them the pens on my last day there*, it's not as if they were younger children, who stay all morning in the classroom with the same teacher. Since they have a different teacher for each subject, and go to different classrooms, I don't think I can "force" other teachers to take care of the ink and how the students use it. Besides, I think that the easier using the pen is (or seems to be), the more probable it is that they will carry on using it.

 

*(Now I'm tempted to give them the pens before I leave, to have time to see their reactions).

 

What I can't really see is my giving them a disposable pen. I can see their good points, but I'd like to make the guys see from the beginning that a fountain pen is something different from a ball pen. Besides, if they throw the pen away after it's run out of ink, I don't know whether they'll buy another one. Whereas if they buy a box of cartridges, they'll have more time to get used to the pen before having to spend more money (some of the students come from dysfunctional families where education is not valued, and though they will have the latest iPhone, they aren't very willing to spend money on books or school material).

 

Thanks a lot for your suggestion to set up a fundraising page. I'll think that over, though I don't really know whether I'll have time to figure out how that works. When I've decided what the best option is, I'll calculate how much it all will cost, and then I might take that step.

 

Thanks once again!

[Honeybadgers]

11-16 year olds.... Hmm. preppy is the way to go. They're still kids. They're going to throw them, drop them, and not care at all. They may leave them capped for a year or two and want to revisit them, and with just about every pen that isn't a preppy or a varsity, there's too high a chance all the other pens will be dried up. A preppy/varsity will work well,and the preppy just feels nicer, plus the F nib is just better than the varsity's stupid M. Also, preppy ink just looks and feels nicer than what's in a V pen.

Edited March 23, 2019 by Honeybadgers

[Sailor Kenshin]

I second the Jinhao Shark. Your students will probably love them. I bought the semi-hooded kind and they write really well.

 

Plus, the cap is a shark's head. What could be better?

[Honeybadgers]

I think 11-16 year olds might be a bit old for that. The shark is more for the 7-10 year olds.

[mc986]

I have 7 peppy and I definitely would advice not buying them for your students.

two of them the barrel cracked before the first ink cartridge is used up and the third cracked after one cartridge change

i am not rough with my pens and the plastic they used are just too brittle.

this is a common complaint although i ignored them at first because they are dirt cheap

but once its broken the pen is useless since you cant screw it tight.

 

i think to save money, you are better off tuning cheap Chinese pens

the hooded nib pens are pain to tweak.

 

i have half a dozen jinhao 599 and they are easy to tune, but one out of 3 cracked out of normal use.

i believe the shark used similar plastic

 

the x450 and x750 are great but $5 a piece instead of $2. and might be too heavy to some of your students

 

i think the best is the 992. i have half a dozen and they are $2 each.

tuning the nib is easy and the nib is screwed on instead of fiction fit.

 

get some brass sheets and a nail polish pad, and follow this tutorial

 

 

it will probably take you 10 mins per pen but the end result is a very very good writer

my tuned pen writes better than $50 TWSBI out of the box.

Edited March 24, 2019 by mc986

[RudraDev]

Why don't you try the parker Vector pens, they go for about 2 dollars in India.

[Bibliophage]

With the need for them to be cartridge pens, Parker Vector might be the easiest. The cartridges aren't the cheapest, but they'll be available.

[mhguda]

Regarding the communal ink bottle, at my school (a high school as well) I have the ink at the school reception, and the kids have to know about and ask for it to fill their pen. Granted, it's a (very!) small school, but I'm sure you get the drift. Anyway, good luck again, it will be a lot of fun when you've finally made your choice. Given the range of possibilities, maybe a number of different models might work out, and the kids could exchange ideas about which one they like best...

[Cassotto]

Hi everyone!

 

Sorry for not letting you know how I was doing for such a long time. I don't have too much free time, and it's taken a while for me to check all your suggestions and figure out what to do.

 

Finally, I've bought 29 Jinhao 991 fountain pens (they were my first option before I asked here), in five different colours, but for an unexpected reason, not because I had really made up my mind about which pens to buy. Look:

 

 

I contacted several sellers through eBay and Aliexpress, but most of them were in Asia, and they couldn't guarantee that the pens would arrive in time. Finally I changed my mind, and discarded the idea of giving out the pens on my last day. Although our academic year is supposed to end in mid-June, some students will probably stop coming to school a couple of weeks earlier (I'm amazed at how no one at this school seems to care about taking measures to prevent absenteeism), and I'd like to have a couple of weeks at least to be around the students after they've got their pens, to try to fix any problem that may arise, provide advice, etc. This means I wanted to have the pens before mid-May.

 

Last week I entered one of these shops where everything is supposed to cost one euro (that's not really so, though all prices are cheap), which in Spain are commonly run by Chinese people, and while I was looking for a toy for my cat, I happened to pass the stationery section, and decided to check what they had in the fountain pen line. They didn't have many things, but among their inventory they had the Jinhao 991 demonstrators at a very low price. On seeing how many I was buying, the owner kindly gave a discount, so I got all pens for around $25.

 

They all come with a converter, and I'll be giving each student one or two cartridges, too. Besides, I may buy one of those plastic jars that come with one hundred cartridges, which are sold for around $10, and give them more as they run out of ink. I'll tell them that after that, it they who should buy more, and that if they finally find they like using pens, they can upgrade to ink bottles with the converter that comes with the pens. Maybe that will also be the time to upgrade to a better pen.

 

I'll let you know how all this turns out. I hope I'm not getting myself into a pickle!

[mhguda]

I'm glad it worked out so nicely for you! And it's amazing to me that you found a local shop where you could find this many pens to buy right away. Plus a very nice discount. I hope one or two of your students end up being regular fountain pen users...You might want to check if that store has Hero bottled ink available... everything else, including Quink and Waterman, have become so very expensive...

[SoulSamurai]

Good stuff! Make sure you get blue ink cartridges! Blue ink will usually wash out easily, black ink not so much.

[Cassotto]

I'm glad it worked out so nicely for you! And it's amazing to me that you found a local shop where you could find this many pens to buy right away. Plus a very nice discount. I hope one or two of your students end up being regular fountain pen users...You might want to check if that store has Hero bottled ink available... everything else, including Quink and Waterman, have become so very expensive...

 

Yes, I didn't expect to find all the pens I needed, either. They were all mixed in a cardboard box, and when I picked them there were only fifteen or so. I went to the counter to ask whether they had more, the man there told me to keep four pens of different colours and return the rest to the box, and then he brought from the back room five plastic bags with five pens of the same colour each. He said that's how he bought them, in batches of five.

 

Now that you mention ink bottles, I don't remember seeing them, or cartridges. If I happen to go that way in the near future I'll have a look. As I had already decided on cartridges, and I've got plenty of them at home, I didn't pay too much attention to ink while in the shop.

 

 

Good stuff! Make sure you get blue ink cartridges! Blue ink will usually wash out easily, black ink not so much.

 

Yes, I've got many blue ink cartridges, as those are what I use with the pen I carry in my jeans pocket all the time (an Ohto Tasche FF-10T pocket pen which won't admit anything but short cartridges). I usually buy them in jars of 100 like these:

 

https://www.amazon.de/Kreuzer-156372-Tintenpatrone-k%C3%B6nigsblau/dp/B000KTANKS/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=156372&qid=1554667431&s=gateway&sr=8-1&utm_source=affiadc&utm_medium=Banner&utm_campaign=deeplink&bid=120109-49753-86284X1538780X3bf4fc9161e8c2b3555b027ca8671981

 

(Only here in Spain they are more expensive.)

Edited April 7, 2019 by Cassotto

[mhguda]

Yeah we get similar bottles, glass usually, more expensive than that price too, no surprise. Still much less expensive than the small cartons Amazon has with 12 cartridges for $3 or so... They have smaller jars as well, which make nice mixing bottles when empty...

[kl005]

If it's available in your country, I'd also heavily recommend the Preppy. Grab a bunch of different coloured pens and cartridges, and let your students mix and match. Inform them about eyedropper conversion if some of them are inclined to bottled inks. The Platinum converter costs almost as much as the pen, so I wouldn't recommend it in this case. Especially when the pen is so easily eyedropper-convertible.

[bob_hayden]

I think the 991 is a good choice. My one concern would be that you only got 29;-) In my experience, Jinhao ships too many pens that either won't write when new, or soon break. It might be good to have some spares. OTOH an advantage of Jinhao is that they usually take standard international cartridges. Current Chinese pens often take the cartridges intended for the Hero 359, but it takes some effort to find those here in the US of A even online. For beginners I would definitely want to go with something easy such as readily available cartridges.

 

It looks like Cassotto is set. Here are some links for others who might want something similar.

 

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/332160-best-fountain-pens-under-1-us/

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/330996-best-cheap-fountain-pens-under-2-us/

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/314342-cheap-ink-cartridges/

[bemon]

I haven't been here for some time owing to lack of time, but there's something I'd like to ask you today.

 

I'm an English teacher at a secondary school, and now and then I devote one entire class to speaking about any old topic that comes up. Today has been one of those days (though my plans had been different before the lesson started), after one of the students in the first row said he was intrigued by my fountain pen. We've been discussing them (or, rather, it's been me who's been talking about them, as none of the kids knew anything about fountain pens), and several of them have shown some interest. On my way home I've though that, since that group is my favourite one and they're all nice guys, I might give each of them a fountain pen at the end of the year as a farewell present (I won't be working at the same school next year).

 

I'm considering the possibility of buying Jinhao 991 fountain pens for them, though I've never had one. Since my students are twelve years old, and not the dainty type, many of them are likely to break the pens in a couple of weeks, so giving them good pens doesn't make much sense. Besides, I cannot afford to buy twenty-nine pens unless they're very cheap (the translucent 991s with an F nib are sold for $1 on eBay, and they look great for people that age, I think). Though not all the students have shown lots of interest, I'd buy one pen for each, not only for those I think would like them.

 

I've only had one Jinhao pen so far, the worst pen I've ever had. It was a Jinhao 500 I got I don't know where. It was extra heavy (a problem the 991 doesn't seem to have), but, above all, I didn't like how it wrote. The nib was very rigid and seemed to slid on the paper without leaving much ink behind (I cannot explain how it felt much better than this). So I'm a bit wary of Jinhao pens. Still, I like the 991. Anyway, while I don't want to buy expensive pens for my students, I don't want to give them something that will discourage them, either. On the contrary, my intention is getting some of them hooked on fountain pens.

 

Do you think the Jinhao 991 would be a good choice for what I want to do? Or is there any better option which I can get for not much more money?

 

Thanks a lot in advance!

Very cool idea! I still remember my first grade teacher gave all the boys Hotwheels at the end of the year. Can't remember what the girls got, this was a time when a teacher wouldn't be reprimanded by angry middle aged suburban mothers for gender rolling children.

 

Anyway, I still have the car and it's a gesture I'll always remember.

 

I think a cheap Chinese brand may be your only option unfortunately. I'm not a Jinhao fan either, but I haven't had the same bad experience as you have. I always keep 2 or 3 of their pens handy for co-workers who show interest in my fountain pens at work. If someone likes writing with one I give them the pen. I make it clear that better pens deliver better writing experiences, but that the Jinhao could be a good starting point to get to know the hobby.

 

Might be worth contacting an ebay seller ahead of placing an order and saying you want 30 or so pens (or that one that will inevitably break upon opening the package) and a crate of ink cartridges. I bet you'll be able to make a deal, and you'll certainly leave an impression on some of your kids!