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What Are Your Fountain Pen Deal Breakers?


ItsMeDave

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Only deal-breaker would be if the individual {Seller} is an outright AxxHxxx.....Other than that..no problemo

 

Fred..

carryin' cool pens wearin' Sinn EZM1 503 on this wonderful day....................

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step downs are a no go for me, not so much for aesthetic reasons, but due to lack of comfort in holding therm.

I do have a few pens with step downs, not all of them are totally unbearable, as long as the section is long enough.

Very heavy pens are also out for me.

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Having skimmed through other people's deal breakers, and thought about my own range of pens, I can reduce my deal breakers to two:

  • not a brand or design (in all respects) that I feel like buying; or
  • is, but lacks value for the asking price.

In the course of buying many and selling few, I have found things which I thought should be a dealbreaker (for example metal sections) to be not the imagined problem. The pen still needs some point of interest, after which a rejection point is most likely to be some aspect of the nib.

 

I could correctly nominate certain brands I will not buy or say I will never buy a steel nib but for what? They are strictly personal selections among optional preferences.

X

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If the pen doesn't have a flexible nib I'm uninterested. Flexible and fine only. That sure thins things out fast!

 

No metal sections or caps.

No c/c fillers.

Nothing over the size of a Pelikan 400.

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As I read the responses I'm reminded of another deal breaker, pens that can't be used without posting.

I never post my pens. Why? I have no clue, just because. It's completely irrational, and I'm ok with that. :D

Reading these comments reminds me of my own deal-breakers. Thanks for mentioning this one!

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Silver/Gold "Plated". I own enough vintage pens that I realize those finishes look horrible after a decade of REAL use.

I buy pens, I don't rent or lease them. Finish must be durable for Decades!

 

Stiff nibs, you might as well write with a sharpened rock. A fountain pen is meant to be an expressive tool, (they certainly used to be when more people wrote).

 

Unmemorable designs, also, Pens that "try too hard" with gaudy doo-dads designed to catch the eyes of racoons and crows (certain Chinese pens come to mind).

 

Pens too small and need to be posted to use (unless they are purely for collection and not use. AKA ring pens), Pens too large (yeah, I am talking to you Montblanc 149, they remind me of carnival novelty pens).

 

Any pen which drips or leaks, any pen which requires real work to make it a good writer when new. I didn't buy a New pen to have to restore it like a Vintage pen.

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I'm mostly interested in vintage pens for one particular reason: the nibs and their performance. So, I can deal with a lot of things but the ONE deal breaker is a poor nib and por writing performance. After all, I need and want my pens for writing rather than for, say, decorating my living room. I can put up with a lot of things others have named above if the writing performance is great. But poor writing performance really kills a pen for me.

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similarly, when the step down ruins the visual flow of line of the pen. I just won't even bother picking up the pen.

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I'll narrow it down from all metal grip sections to only chrome grip sections, and the Monteverdes with finish that bubbles and flakes off of their base metal sections.

There's a limit to how much girth I'll tolerate. Where I hold an Ahab, it has too much girth. I also won't have pens with less than a 9mm diameter grip. And I also don't like triangular or faceted sections, which lets out a whole raft of pens. And finally, any pen that has a rubberized grip is not going to do well either dipped in ink or once it aborbs enough hand oils.

I won't have an overly heavy pen; I've tolerated a Jinhao X750, but I much prefer lightweight and even airweight pens.

I don't know if I could have a pen with a big step. The only one I've had much access to is a Pilot MR, and it's disqualified on being too skinny, and heavier than I really like. I was lent a larger pen with such a step down, a smallish Newton Eastman, but if I recall correctly, it went on the outs with me for lacking a clip. Cliplessness is also why I don't carry a Kakuno, and adds to the issues with the Plumix.

I've seen a pen or two that are just too ugly, but most of those are also absurdly costly.

I have to be able to leave it overnight without it drying out.

And finally, I've had a couple that I could not get to stop dripping ink. Those do not ever get used.

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Still trying to figure that out, but I do know that any pen that looks like ordinary plastic is a no-go for me, no matter how special the resin is supposed to be in real life.

No signature. I'm boring that way.

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Deal breakers for me:

1. Pens that don't post. I have a couple and they drive me crazy.

2. Pens that are too heavy (my two TWSBIs -- the 580-AL and 580-ALR, are the absolute dealbreaker.

3. Pens that overpriced gaudy/tacky bling/or jus plain ugly (most of you know the usual suspects). Also pens that are urushi (those are often quite beautiful -- but I'm so horribly sensitive/allergic to stuff like poison ivy I just can NOT take the risk. (I once told my husband, after looking at a website full of drop-dead gorgeous maki-e pens: "Congratulations, dear, I just saved you twenty THOUSAND dollars!" B))

4. Pens that have stuff on their section (like the rubberized sections on a couple of pens early in my foray down the slippery slope -- a couple of Parker Reflexes; the rubber disintegrated after a while

And finally:

5. Pens that are being hawked by a certain few eBay sellers that are on my "Do Not Buy From These People Again Under ANY Circumstances...." (Of course the flip side of that is that there are ALSO a few that I wouldn't think twice from buy from again -- in fact a couple are people I've bought from a couple of times each now, with absolutely zero issues :thumbup:.)

Metal sections don't bother me; super skinny pens might, (and much as I love my Parker Vectors, I would more likely to be using a pen with a bigger ink capacity for serious research/writing.). Many pens with a pronounce step-down between the barrel and the section are okay for me because my hands ARE small....

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

ETA: Forgot one other category -- pens that ONLY take cartridges, and not converters as well...

Edited by inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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Polished metal sections.

 

That's kinda it. But even then sometimes I like a pen enough to rectify it (I'm looking at having ron bead blast the chromed section on my conklin nozac because apart from the section, I adore that pen.

 

Also, pens that take excessively long to uncap/cap, or screw post with an inappropriate number of turns (a 1/4 to 1/2 turn MAX to post is all I will tolerate)

Edited by Honeybadgers

Selling a boatload of restored, fairly rare, vintage Japanese gold nib pens, click here to see (more added as I finish restoring them)

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What are your fountain pen deal breakers?

 

What exactly do you mean by "deal breaker", though? If you mean, "If this condition is true, then the deal is off, as in I will not make the purchase comercially," then my deal breakers are:

  • the product is being offered to me at MSRP;
  • the pen's brand is Montblanc, S.T. Dupont, Parker or Cross;
  • the only nib options available to me to purchase at the time are round-tipped and no finer than (Western) Fine; or
  • used pens that need further work on the buyer's or user's part before they are ready to write properly.

On the other hand, if you mean, "If this condition is true, then after I have (spent money or otherwise) acquired the pen, I will refuse to use it as a writing instrument," that's a whole another story.

 

I have knowingly made exceptions to the above. I bought myself a Platinum #3776 Century "The Prime" with a Broad nib; and I just about never write with it or feel any desire to do so. I gave Parker a chance recently, after it spent some twenty years on my personal black-list, and the outcome turned out to be entirely unsatisfactory to me. I bought a Leonardo Momento Zero early on at the undiscounted ticket price, when the brand was fairly new and few retailers were offering product-specific discounts and no site-wide discounts were in play at the time; the nib turned out to be badly made, but that I paid "full price" for the pen made it an even more bitter pill to swallow. All those experiences teach me it's not a good idea to go against my normal rules and filters for purchasing decisions.

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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What exactly do you mean by "deal breaker", though? If you mean, "If this condition is true, then the deal is off, as in I will not make the purchase comercially," then my deal breakers are:

  • the product is being offered to me at MSRP;
  • the pen's brand is Montblanc, S.T. Dupont, Parker or Cross;
  • the only nib options available to me to purchase at the time are round-tipped and no finer than (Western) Fine; or
  • used pens that need further work on the buyer's or user's part before they are ready to write properly.

On the other hand, if you mean, "If this condition is true, then after I have (spent money or otherwise) acquired the pen, I will refuse to use it as a writing instrument," that's a whole another story.

 

I have knowingly made exceptions to the above. I bought myself a Platinum #3776 Century "The Prime" with a Broad nib; and I just about never write with it or feel any desire to do so. I gave Parker a chance recently, after it spent some twenty years on my personal black-list, and the outcome turned out to be entirely unsatisfactory to me. I bought a Leonardo Momento Zero early on at the undiscounted ticket price, when the brand was fairly new and few retailers were offering product-specific discounts and no site-wide discounts were in play at the time; the nib turned out to be badly made, but that I paid "full price" for the pen made it an even more bitter pill to swallow. All those experiences teach me it's not a good idea to go against my normal rules and filters for purchasing decisions.

 

Your first definition is correct.

I have purchased pens in the past that had features that I didn't know I didn't like. If I knew then, what I know now.......

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Lately, I only want to use nibs with nice bold lines. The nibs have to be buttery smooth, too.

 

Fingerprint magnet pens are a no go for me these days, too. I have a wonderful Sheaffer Legacy 2 in polished palladium that I have a hard time using because it's always covered in fingerprints......

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Screw cap. Too tedious. Tendency to sometimes unscrew in the shirt pocket.

Heavy. On an individual basis.

"Don't hurry, don't worry. It's better to be late at the Golden Gate than to arrive in Hell on time."
--Sign in a bar and grill, Ormond Beach, Florida, 1960.

 

 

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That reminds me... caps that take more than two turns to remove. I sold an Opus for that reason. I also don't use my Visconti Opera Club much since the cap takes 2.5 turns to remove.

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