Taccia “Limited” edition Polar Lights/ Amairo Hekiku

[Baabaaredsheep]

I fell in love with Taccia’s original blue LE Raden “Polar Lights” fountain pen, which was sold as a limited run of only 50 pens worldwide.  http://taccia.com/limitededition/reserve-polar-lights-le/
I finally picked up one of these grails and love it.

 

However, I was checking today to see if Taccia has anything new out, and it turns out they are releasing the Polar Lights in three colour ways— in Red, Green, and Blue — with a “limited” production of 100 pens worldwide.

https://www.sakurafountainpengallery.com/en/boutique/detail/polar-lights-le-amairo-hekiku-fountain-pen-taccia

 

How are companies able to do that? To market a pen by saying only 50 pieces are available, and then release another 100?!

This reminds me of the hot water Pelikan found themselves in in the 90s when they released a limited number if Toledos, only to come back and sell them again (I think there were lawsuits about that too).

Any thoughts?

[Paul-in-SF]

There have been other discussions on this board on this topic, and the consensus seemed to be that marketing a pen model as a limited edition is not the same as a contract with the buyer that they will never ever produce that same model again. So that when they said "Limited to 50 pieces worldwide," they did not promise that will be the case in perpetuity. 

 

I can see two ways that a limited edition can appeal to buyers: one is that here is a beautiful object which is going to be hard to get due to scarcity, so if you want it, get it as soon as possible; the other is that here is an object that is appealing enough that its after-market value may go up due to scarcity. Both of those depend on the company not actually producing more of those objects in the future. When they do, as in this case, they tend to devalue all their other and future LE products, at least for those who are paying attention, because people now know they are not to be trusted. Nevertheless, none of this is a matter for litigation, only for customer wariness. 

[steve50]

I can understand your frustration. But perhaps Taccia's line of reasoning is that they commissioned 50 of these pens to a particular artist, so it was a limited edition, and now they've commissioned another 100, both times with no guarantee that this artist will produce them again.

 

I don't like the business practice of releasing some model in a different colour, call it a limited edition and charging double the price, like Sailor and Pelikan do all the time. In Taccia's defence, it looks like they genuinely aren't in full control of how many of these pens they can produce, and also they aren't really charging a 'limited edition' price. 875EUR is what this kind of pens normally go for. 

[Baabaaredsheep]

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Edited April 1, 2021 by Baabaaredsheep
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[jandrese]

The red one is awesome. I bought one. LE in another color. Common across industries and it really is a very different looking pen than the original colorway.