Pen.wing.stationery ?!?

[awa54]

Anyone here remember the name of that seller on Ebay back around the Millenium? All of the (usually well worn and not terribly scarce) pens were "Ultra RARE From the .... Collection" and had exaggerated (to put it kindly) estimates of value.

 

Well, apparently he moved to Japan and reopened his Ebay account under the name pen.wing.stationery... Literally *every* auction from this seller at the *very least* exaggerates the value of the pen and usually either mis-identifies it (often by *miles*) or claims ridiculous things like blatantly steel nibs being 18k gold. He/she also doesn't seem to have taken note of Pilot's nib dating system, since they regularly state production dates that are *decades* off.

 

Now, it's hard to claim they're hurting anyone all that much, since the auctions start low and essentially "let the market value the item", but any noob who stumbles on one of these auctions will at least be badly disinformed and at worst might bid orders of magnitude higher than the item warrants.

 

I've actually sent messages to this seller inquiring/correcting the (mis)information in the auction, they replied *after* the end of auction, made no corrections to the auction text before the end of auction and the reply was placating and evasive (as well as perpetuating the incorrect statements in the auction).

 

 

This kind of game really annoys me, since I cut my Japanese pen teeth, buying from great, honest sellers like Stan, Russ and Dr. Ron, who educated their buyers and didn't make unwarranted claims. The even more irritating thing is that occasionally pen.wing has items I'm interested in and I find it hard to even bid on them, knowing that I'm potentially enriching a ja***ss.

[A Smug Dill]

Thanks for alerting us to look more closely at that seller's listings.

 

I haven't bought from that seller before, although I remember seeing that name on eBay. I'm happy to take your word for it at face value, but what do you want to do about it, other than choosing not to buy and knowingly deny yourself material gratification (from owning particular pens) as the compromise, to appease a competing (psychological)l need to which you give higher priority?

 

We all have sellers and retailers we have problems with in principle, who may from time to time have rare or "exclusive" items on offer that we'd personally like to buy but just not from them. That's not something that can be changed or "should" be changed, in my opinion, just so we feel more empowered and/or at liberty to get what we want commercially, while those we strongly disagree with (or even resent) are cut out of the action, denied what they want, or even "punished" precisely for what we judge to be an affront.

 

Limiting our own options, at least in the first instance, is the "price" of having strong feelings and/or holding firmly onto our principles.

[Cyclohexene]

awa54 good for you to inform the community of problematic sellers to be aware of. I agree with your stance of refusing to buy from someone you deem dishonest. Compromising a belief or principle one holds dear over shallow materialistic desires (For a pen? Come on) just sounds pathetic.

[awa54]

I'm mostly just venting and marvelling at how the same "sales strategy" has been recycled over a decade later and across the Pacific. I bought a few pens from that original US seller (who's name still escapes me) when the price was right. They were exactly what I had expected: well used vintage pens in need of restoration, that were in no way "RARE RARE RARE!" or "valued at $600" as the auctions stated.

 

If this post nudges a potential buyer to view pen.wing's auction text with a critical eye, it will have done its job.

 

The flip side of the equation is sakura_zeppelin, who routinely sells (accurately described) mint in box or NOS pens that are scarce or high trim level variants... and they're priced as collectibles; expensive, but appropriate for the condition and rarity of the items. If I had thousands of dollars of discretionary income I'd be a regular buyer there!

Edited January 30, 2020 by awa54

[awa54]

[snark/on]

 

sigh....

 

pen.wing.stationery

 

every.single.auction

 

...the bloviation and incoherent muddling of fact and fluff continues. Good 'ol pen.wing has a continuing stream of nice, interesting Japanese pens, but can't help him/her self and continues to spew seemingly randomly chosen adjectives, in an attempt to either totally misinform buyers new to the Japanese pen world, or gin up excitement in those who are *slightly* informed, but not truly knowledgeable (or perhaps blind?). Tidbits like petrified sacs or only using double spare cartridges, are conveniently left out of the page-long gushing reviews of these (always!) unique and historically significant pens.

 

It's sad, since the pens are always in decent shape and have merit, *even if* accurately described

 

[snark/off]

Edited March 2, 2020 by awa54

[Lomi]

idk what store was there around millenium but Penwing on Ebay since 2017 actually, so not that new there either.
I was watching them for a few years and even wanted to buy a few pens because they do sell sometimes some interesting ones that hard to see anywhere else unless you live directly in japan i guess, but prices on auc got too high and my bar is low to begin with But i can agree that they spread lots of misinformation - most of their prices for pens taken either from their heads or based on inflation calculator with added value, descriptions for their pens is also almost same story over and over again, gold content is jumping from 14k to 18k in same description (haven't seen them claim steel as gold yet tho), dates are close to reality but i highly doubt that they are true, more like they just trying to describe the decade this pen are from, and lastly they retouch their photos so much that they became blurry, tho it really helps them to hide all scratches)

Also if you want to know there PenLife store on Rakuten that goes by the name "Stationary shop PenLife" it's pretty safe to say that they are esentially pen.wing.stationary but for stuff that goes only for buyout price, they have same descriptions there, but only on Japanese, and photos done by the same person, also as I found out sometimes if pen doesn't sell there for a long time they send it on ebay for an auction.
Tho if we return to the topic about their ebay store I never seen someone there to buy a pen for nearly as close price as they value it, some people do overpay there it seems but i doubt anyone read description to estimate value.

[KingsCountyWriter]

Ugh... After reading this thread, I looked at the last eBay purchase that I made, because the seller sounded suspiciously familiar. That's because it IS Pen.Wing.

 

Now, I don't feel as confident in what I bought. It sounded like a reasonable ad; I didn't see any egregious claims, just a weird part of the ad that referred to 2018. The photos were done well and the materials referred to what was seemingly depicted in the photos. I guess I'll have to see what arrives next week.

 

Not looking forward to it now as I fear the worst!

[neverforget]

there are quite a few people on the classifieds here who use the same strategy of listing hard to find and some rare pens at 5-10x markup over MSRP. It's very sad because while some of the pens they list are hard to find, it is obvious that the demand at the price they set is non-existent since every week they re-list, often adding "Price REDUCED" while leaving the price as it was the prior week.

 

I guess more power to them if they are able to float cash (on what is hoarding by any reasonable definition of the word) on an inventory of pens.

Edited April 1, 2020 by nickycat

[VintageCollector]

That seller does that with almost all of his/her listings. The majority of them don't go that much above what they would normally go for without the false advertising, but every now and then, when several buyers all have no clue about the value of the item, crazy prices result. I made a post about this back in December:

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/350899-ebay-absurdities-research-before-you-bid/?do=findComment&comment=4271677

[rocl444]

I won an auction of a Pilot Elite from this trader 5wks ago and I was curious how he would cope with the shipping for the very reasonable cost he was stating. 2wks after the auction ended he sent me an email outlining the process he had set up and advising me the pen had been shipped and also providing a means of tracking. It took just over a week to leave Tokyo, another week to arrive in Auckland and 2wks to get from there to me in Christchurch. All in all I am very impressed. BTW the pen is great and sold quite a bit below his own valuation of $799.

[KingsCountyWriter]

I finally got my Pilot Custom Sterling Silver from Pen Wing. He sent it on March 30th and it arrived yesterday after almost 2 months. Unfortunately, it's filled with ink as he didn't remove the cartridge from previous use. It looks and feels good, although it also sold for quite a bit less than the $790 stated value.

[KingsCountyWriter]

And it doesn't write. Water runs through it, but ink won't. Definitely not in the description. It had a dried up cartridge of unknown vintage and it's been soaking in water since it arrived.

 

Although they offered to totally refund my money, I opted for a 50% refund, as I keeping the pen, and hopefully will get it to write eventually. They completed that transaction immediately, which says a bit in my book.

[KingsCountyWriter]

As the pen has proven difficult to get working, Penwing fully refunded my money. Although a large portion of the difficult experience was not of their doing, and a result of the mail shutdown during a pandemic, they quickly took care of the issue. I respect how they chose to react once I shared my experience, and am happy with the results. Now I need to get this pen in working order.

[shalitha33]

I have only bought 2 pens from them so my experience is limited.

 

Their price estimates are off but then again everyone has their own views (i.e about flex , wet noodle status etc). I am coming from a coin collecting background (mainly European pre 1800) in to pen collecting. I am very new to this subject of pens. I have learned my lesson not to trust estimates sellers provide without doing any research myself when dealing with coins (for coins estimated grade also apply). I have been burned many time for making this mistake. i can understand the concern that one may have due to the estimates they provide. That said they do have low starting prices.

 

I cant complain anything about their service. if they mess up they do own up and offer refunds / provide alternates. also they seems to communicate well on where things are with shipments etc. (at least in my limited experience).

 

In the middle of lock down here in New Zealand they and other sellers from japan couldn't deliver items to New Zealand. Something entirely beyond their control. They communicated via email asking if I am ok to wait, or if they could provide a full refund. They offered to send them via Kuroneko Yamato and DHL (2 different pens).

 

So far i haven't had any bad experiences with any of the Japanese pen sellers. Although i haven't had dealings with that many. And only two of them while in the middle of the lock-down. (pen.wing.stationery and happy_kookey-sapporo-bungyokudo ) both have been really good at communicating. Other non-Japanese sellers like fivestarpens and kubanstar handles communication really well too. They too are a pleasure to deal with. Good communication essentially makes it stress free.

 

I haven't had any reason to ask for advice or anything related to the item i am buying with the two Japanese pen sellers so i cant comment on that (basically subject knowledge). I have had experience with this area both from kubanstar and fivestarpens in the past and I would recommend them without any hesitation.

 

Please do take this as a view of a noob who is very new to pen buying. And with very limited experience. I tend to value communication /experience over cost so my views are obviously skewed. Also note that i have nothing to do with any of the names listed above, other than me having bought pens from them in the past.

Edited June 4, 2020 by shalitha33

[BobB]

There is A LOT of misinformation floating around and it's not just in advertising.  Just the other day I was listening to a youtube review by a Canadian lady discussing how Wancher applies urushi to the pen and she said that it's a long process in which they put hundreds of layer of urushi lacquer on top of the ebonite pen.  Keeping in mind that a lot of newbies to the pen world are listening to her, they may not realize that if you put hundreds of layers of urushi on any surface and dry the lacquer after each application, you are going to have a huge thick pen and that hundreds of layers of urushi is total overkill from an artistic and utility point of view.  Unless you do your research, most if not all the pens listed throughout ebay are not exactly "fairly priced" and information is not exact.  Buyer beware.  But then, fair is in the demand and what the seller can get. Another case in point.  Look at the Wancher pens for sale on ebay.  Then go look at what you can get directly from Wancher and you will see markups of anywhere from 50-75% on ebay.  The businesses - I don't mean the individual sellers - are there to make a profit.  Don't go on ebay expecting to make a "steal" from a business.  The rare occasion that happens is when the seller tries to auction something and didn't anticipate the lack of buyers.  Then that one buyer walks away with a great deal.  That's where supply and demand don't meet and the buyer gets the better of the deal.  I've dealt with Pen-Wing and if you know the limitations of the seller - then go look up his product on other sites, compare prices, compare information.  Frankly, I've been very happy with the purchases I've made from him and I've made some excellent buys.  Other items he's selling I've let pass because they've gotten too high.  

[CRKD]

I collect Japanese fountain pens from various eras and I can tell you that a lot of what Pen Wing sells is overpriced and purposely misidentified. Several people have complained to eBay about that seller. Specially in regards to them trying to sell so called vintage "Maki-e" pens. Those vintage Maki-e pens they try to sell are just vintage pens from the 50s - 70s with a printed decal/sticker with a thin layer of lacquer to make it look as if that sticker is a true Maki-e artist creation that has been on that pen since its inception. Several collectors have found the decals/stickers on Japanese sites. So please don't ever buy anything Maki-e from this vendor. 

[Chicken_Scatch]

Thanks for the heads up, I've noticed that they also seem to put Sailor special edition pens up for auction which skyrocket in price quite quickly. Does anyone know if those are legitimate?

[BobB]

I've contacted Sailor directly on some of the specific Sailor pens that Pen Wing sells and they have told me that there are plans for Sailor to release some of those on the international market.  They haven't done it yet. I guess those pens were just being sold in Japan.  HOWEVER, Sailor did say that Pen Wing is not an authorized dealer for Sailor and therefore you can't get Sailor service through them.  NEVER had a problem with Pen Wing on either a return or product, on either a new or vintage pen.  As for the Maki-e pens they sell, I've seen Pen Wing specifically state that they did the Maki-e in house with their own artists using old vintage pens.  Finally, if you have a question about their product, service, return policy, etc., ASK them.   I've bought from a number of Japanese dealers on ebay and while most of them are cordial, I've experienced several who simply don't respond when you ask a question or even if you make an offer - perhaps a cultural/language barrier?  However, once you buy from them, they are all over you to leave them great feedback.

[Chinchy]

Maybe they are trying to differentiate themselves?  But I'll admit it really confused me to see some of the items that Pen Wing sells, like the Pilot Vanishing Point with "Custom colorway" with "Ferrari Red and Yellow".  But all it looks like is that they are just taking a red VP, and a yellow VP, and mixing the top and bottom halves.  Although I can't tell if the sections are the original color, or if they are also doing painting or overlays, as the colors don't quite match existing pens.  

 

Here's an example:  https://www.ebay.com/itm/BRAND-NEW-Pilot-Vanishing-Point-Capless-Red-Yellow-Alloy-M-Nib-Fountain-Pen/143944026767

[A Smug Dill]

2 hours ago, Chinchy said:

… the Pilot Vanishing Point with "Custom colorway" with "Ferrari Red and Yellow".  But all it looks like is that they are just taking a red VP, and a yellow VP, and mixing the top and bottom halves.

 

Engeika used to sell that kind of Frankenpen on eBay years ago. I don't have a problem with that, but I don't think it's honest to list the product of such after-market mixing-and-match of pen components as ”BRAND NEW Pilot Vanishing Point Capless”, especially when it isn't endorsed by the Pilot brand or recognised as legitimate for an authorised retailer (irrespective of whether Pen.Wing is actually one) to do.