Price increase?

[ridiculopathy]

17 hours ago, ridiculopathy said:

Thanks! I should ask the nibs.com team if Nakaya will be raising their prices too since they use the same nibs. 

If anyone else is wondering, nibs.com said they hadn't heard anything about a Nakaya price increase. 

[aimi]

Even if Sailor hasn't announced anything, it seems like their pens have been increasing in price anyways. The new Sailor PG(S?) Habanero is pretty expensive, and the second run of the PG Shooting Star of Jonuma was nearly 500USD.

 

I feel like I read somewhere Pilot was increasing prices in the US as well this year.

 

Outside Japanese pens, Pelikan also announced increases for this year. Pokemon cards and house plants recently are in huge bubbles or at least upward trends as well. Might be some combination of pandemic cabin fever + discretionary income? Interesting nonetheless.

[stan]

nibs.com in todays email newsletter.

 

It's no joke - on April 1st, prices will be raised on most Platinum pen models, including such popular writing instruments as the Century Chartres Blue Rhodium seen above. Even after the price adjustments, Platinum pens will still offer tremendous value, but order now to lock in current pricing - to see all Platinum pens currently available, just click here.

[A Smug Dill]

Not that I actually believe Platinum and other Japanese brands will raise their prices on 1 April, e.g. the Platinum #3776 Century Chartres Blue gold-trim from ¥13,000+tax (to, what, ¥18,000+tax?), but you guys have me spooked, haha, that I just pulled the trigger on a fourth (already discontinued) Sailor Promenade. The retailer — with its own independent online shop, and is not an eBay or Amazon Marketplace seller — from which I ordered does not have a history of raising prices of what it already have in stock, even if the street price goes up; but, all the same, if demand for other still in-production models go down (perhaps in certain Western markets only; we haven't even heard whether European retailers will be at all affected) and redirected to discontinued models that hold their old prices, then sellers may either respond to that with a price adjustment or just sell out its remaining stock rather more quickly.

 

13 minutes ago, stan said:

It's no joke - on April 1st, prices will be raised on most Platinum pen models, including such popular writing instruments as the Century Chartres Blue Rhodium seen above.

 

The Platinum #3776 Century Black Diamond (i.e. black with rhodium trim) and Chartres Blue RT have held their initial release price of ¥15,000+tax for a long time now, even though the gold-trim models of the same colours had gone from ¥10,000+tax to ¥13,000+tax some eighteen(?) months ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if their prices do go up. Do remember that Platinum encodes the MSRP of each pen model in its model number, so even with a price increase, a unit of model PNB-15000CR should still be the same price after 1 April 2021. When Platinum made very minor changes to the #3776 Century Bourgogne (gold trim) model, and gave the ‘new’ model the model number PNB-13000#71, sellers on Amazon.co.jp and Rakuten Ichiba continued to sell whatever stock they had of the ‘old’ PNB-10000#71 at the same prices as before.

[mke]

> It's no joke - on April 1st

Perhaps, one should note that on April 1st, the new fiscal year starts in Japan - even if more and more companies slowly switch to calendar year. Many things start new on April 1st - prices often too.

[stan]

Has anyone tracked pen prices relative to inflation, historic increases in material prices, and labor costs?

[Mew]

If I recall correctly, didn’t platinum, sailor and pilot increase prices of their basic gold nib pens (3776, 1911L, pilot custom 74 and 91) an year or so ago? I may be wrong about sailor though. 

[Nerdyhistorian]

Prices for the Platinum Procyon already have increased, so it seems. I bought mine for 60/65 euro at release in Belgium, now the price has increased with 10 euro's.