Limited Edition Or Discontinued Pens That You Regret Buying?

[Carguy]

The number of limited edition pens I’ve bought and traded for over the years astounds me, along with the money I wasted..... I have none left except a few Conway Stewarts that I bought before this last bankruptcy or reorganization or whatever they called it. I think at some point I regretted every Aurora or Parker LE that I ever bought, including the Norman Rockwell.

[Vunter]

I most regret buying the Conklin Mark Twain Crescent Filler Demo.

At more than double the price of a Lamy Safari I don't think it is worth the extra cost nor does it write better in my opinion. The ink capacity isn't very good either. I've tried to get this crescent sac to fill up more than 1/3 and I can't get it to fill more than 1/3 full no matter how hard I try or different methods.

 

I'm just gonna clean it up and then sell it on ebay or something because I don't have the desire to ever ink it up again.

[inkstainedruth]

Honestly, I've bought very few LE or SE pens. Those I did buy were either not horribly expensive (like the Dark Lilac Safari) or pens that fit my aesthetic sense to begin with (Pelikan M200 Café Crème and M405 Anthracite Stresemann).

Too many pens sold as LE or SE pens I look at and see them merely as expensive, tacky, unusable bling that only says "I have a lot of money and the pen is then going into a display case to show off how much money I have!" I don't have the budget for that. And I don't buy pens as "investments" or "status symbols". I buy them to use, and the only ones I don't use are mostly vintage ones that haven't been repaired to get back into working condition again. And a lot of LE pens in particular are going to be way too big for my hands.

I've never really liked the look of the Kullock Fantasy 51s either: I like the guy, and I can admire the workmanship -- but they just belie the whole concept of what a Parker 51 is to me: a streamlined, understated pen that was designed to be the perfect writing instrument, where form follows function and every dime of the R&D that went into the design met that, from the hooded nib to the materials used. For a pen that was originally on the market roughly 3/4 of a century ago, the real McCoy 51s don't look old fashioned or stodgy, even though they were a revolution in style and materials.

YMMV of course.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[corniche]

Hi Everyone,

 

I've purchased a few Conklin LE's because I thought they looked sharp, but their nibs/feeds are terrible. Skip City!

 

Now I get them only from Goulet because they replace the original (redacted) with JoWo nibs which transforms them into almost great writers.

 

 

Sean