Opus 88 Picnic (green) with M nib writing sample

I like the Picnic the best, out of the Opus 88 pen models I've tried. Over a couple of years, I collected the pens in all four colours that were not limited edition or ‘collaboration’ exclusives, even though the model had already been discontinued by Opus 88 by then. The last of those was the brown one, which I ordered mid-2021. Out of the four, my wife ‘accepted’ the green one from me; I kept the teal, violet, and brown ones.

A few months ago, I came across a vendor that still had new old stock of all four colours, and was offering them at lower prices than what any of my first four cost me years ago, … and so I ordered another four pens (in three colours, including two units in green, but none in violet), three of which are fitted with Italic nibs, and the ‘extra’ green one with an M nib. They arrived two months ago. My intent was to eventually sell all of them, and so didn't go about filling any of them.

The green one that came with an M nib seemed to have some mist that evenly settled on the interior wall of the reservoir, and made the translucent barrel look more frosted than on the other new green pen. I thought the pen may have been filled before and cleaned (but not thoroughly dried); no colour seeped out when I put the nib under a running tap. It may or may not be a unit that has previously been returned, but I had no way to verify one way or the other, so I offered the unit as-is at a lower price than the three pens with Italic nibs, especially when I don't usually use or like Medium nibs and have absolutely no intention of keeping it. Nevertheless, it didn't sell.

This morning — as in just after midnight — I finally got around to giving the pen a good clean, and filled it with only a small fraction of the reservoir's capacity to test. The capability of the nib absolutely wowed me! Not only did it write smoothly (without skating across the page surface uncontrollable), but in my hand it can deliver a fairly wide range of line widths on demand.

This is now definitely a keeper for my personal fleet.