Lamy New Editions for 2024.

[Misfit]

@Mercian does the shipping charge change if you get two bottles of ink?

[Mercian]

1 minute ago, Misfit said:

@Mercian does the shipping charge change if you get two bottles of ink?

Good idea! 

 

I’ll have a play with the numbers, and see if I can get it down to a low enough level (per bottle) to make it attractive for a proposed ‘local’ shared-buy. 

[Misfit]

Cool idea, I hope it works out for you. Vanness is a really good online seller. They do reply to emails, and carefully ship your goodies. I’ve never been to their store in Arkansas. 
 

Take that Lamy!

[Anne-Sophie]

 

The colors are truly beautiful, it is like getting 4 pens in 2 due to the grip being a different colors.

 

Pink Cliff: The pink grip is a matte and slightly deeper version of the regular edition pink color, the body is a deeper version of the Violet, a true dark blue Violet.

 

Violet Blackberry: the grip looks identical to the Violet Special Edition, the body is a shiny deep burgundy.

 

As it was suggested in a previous post, it would have been smarter to use the pink grip and cap top on the burgundy pen and call it pink burgundy, then use the Violet (Black) + berry name for the Violet grip and deep matte dark blue violet body, which is a true blueberry color.

 

It makes more sense that way, especially for ink matching.

 

I saw the cap of the purple ink, which seems to be matching the dark blue violet color of the mis named Pink Cliff.

 

If anyone have seen or bought both inks already, please chime in.

 

I would love to get both, I will have to get back on those words "I don't want anything for Valentine's Day" to "I know exactly what I want for Valentine's Day"

 

Let's hope this year's Al-Star, Joy, Studio and Lion LEs colors are unattractive, to me, otherwise, I am in trouble.  

 

 

[Puddinhead]

18 hours ago, Anne-Sophie said:

Let's hope this year's Al-Star, Joy, Studio and Lion LEs colors are unattractive, to me, otherwise, I am in trouble.  

 

The Safaris are the unattractive pens, but if people are happy with them then perhaps Lamy was right to produce them.

[Glenn-SC]

12 hours ago, Puddinhead said:

The Safaris are the unattractive pens, but if people are happy with them then perhaps Lamy was right to produce them.

You mean “In my opinion”.

Since Lamy sells the Safari and specific yearly “Special Editions” there must be a number of people who find these pens attractive for the price they are willing to  pay for them. 
Lamy as a company wants to make a profit.  Therefore, they sell pens that people buy.  

[Bill P]

1 minute ago, Glenn-SC said:

You mean “In my opinion”.

Since Lamy sells the Safari and specific yearly “Special Editions” there must be a number of people who find these pens attractive for the price they are willing to  pay for them. 
Lamy as a company wants to make a profit.  Therefore, they sell pens that people buy.  

I personally love the Safari's....I have a very large collection of them going back many many years.  

 

Nibs are easy to swap in an out, can use 18K or steel, etc....large collection of available nibs.  Converters work great, as do the cartridges...lots of colors to choose from.

 

I love the style of the Safari's and the variety of colors Lamy has offer over the years.

 

Additionally what a great value for a fountain pen.

 

Some people love them, some for whatever reason do not.  As stated above.."Therefore, they sell pens that people buy."...must be lots of people who enjoy them.

[Puddinhead]

1 hour ago, Glenn-SC said:

You mean “In my opinion”.

Since Lamy sells the Safari and specific yearly “Special Editions” there must be a number of people who find these pens attractive for the price they are willing to  pay for them. 
Lamy as a company wants to make a profit.  Therefore, they sell pens that people buy.  

Of course...

[Puddinhead]

1 hour ago, Bill P said:

I personally love the Safari's....I have a very large collection of them going back many many years.  

 

Nibs are easy to swap in an out, can use 18K or steel, etc....large collection of available nibs.  Converters work great, as do the cartridges...lots of colors to choose from.

 

I love the style of the Safari's and the variety of colors Lamy has offer over the years.

 

Additionally what a great value for a fountain pen.

 

Some people love them, some for whatever reason do not.  As stated above.."Therefore, they sell pens that people buy."...must be lots of people who enjoy them.

I love Safaris - I have about a dozen plus Al-Stars. I just do not like this year's 'Special Editions'. "In my opinion", they are ugly and unimpressive!

[Astronymus]

2 hours ago, Puddinhead said:

I love Safaris - I have about a dozen plus Al-Stars. I just do not like this year's 'Special Editions'. "In my opinion", they are ugly and unimpressive!

I back you on this one. I just hate them. They look like Doc Frankenpen got drunk and made two pens out of color-mismatched leftovers.

[inkstainedruth]

3 hours ago, Puddinhead said:

I love Safaris - I have about a dozen plus Al-Stars. I just do not like this year's 'Special Editions'. "In my opinion", they are ugly and unimpressive!

I am reserving judgement until I see them in person.  Hoping that some of the vendors at the Baltimore/Washington Pen Show in a couple of weeks will have them so I can take a look and decide then.  I may ink up my Dark Lilac Safari, if for no other reason than to do a side by side comparison (the Violet Safari, from a couple of years later, was *just* enough different in color, and with at the different color clip, that I didn't mind having both).  And -- because I have the Dark Lilac -- I'm probably leaning more towards the "Cliff" color way just in general.

Ironically, I don't have ANY of the "standard" colors for either the Safaris or al-Stars -- just some (but not all) of the SE colors for those models.  I do have an LX, but got it when Lamy's old US distributor was having a close-out sale, and I was able to get one for less than I paid for any of the Safaris (and more half off the "normal" US price for an LX).

I didn't think I'd be able to get used to the triangular section at first, but then someone gave me a metal-bodied Jinhao 599 (a knock-off of an al-Star).  It wasn't a great pen -- wrote like the $5 US pen it was worth (and was a really ugly color), but it was useful in that it showed me that I COULD get used to the section on a real Safari.  

But I don't do the Pokemon 'Gotta get'em all" mentality -- any more than I do for any other brand/model of pen.  If I like it I'll try to get one; if I don't?  I pass, and spend my money on something else instead.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

 

ETA: I did just see the swabs and writing samples for the new inks on this morning's e-ad from Goulet Pens, and am REALLY tempted by the "Cliff" ink....

[Mercian]

22 hours ago, Puddinhead said:

The Safaris are the unattractive pens, but if people are happy with them then perhaps Lamy was right to produce them.

I agree with you! The shape of the Safari is weird, and it is unattractive.
And I could never see the point in the Al-Star either, what with scratch-prone finishes, and a clear plastic grip section mated to the squashable aluminium body.

 

Which is why, after being intrigued by all the love shown for them on FPN, I bought myself a Vista - the transparency of its plastic being useful insofar as it disguises the inelegant weirdness of the pen’s shape.

 

Now though, in addition to my Vista I find that I have somehow bought five Safaris and an Al-Star.

The company must be doing something right with these pens… 😉

On the subject of this year’s LE pens, I would very much like to buy a Safari whose components - body, cap, and grip-section - were all made out of that shiny plastic in the ‘Blackberry’ (en français, ‘cassis’, ou peut-être ‘mûre’?) colour!

I also think that it would complement my 2016 LE Safari in textured ‘Dark Lilac’ most-pleasingly 😊

 

Oh, and as for the inks?
When pricing-up the bottles at the Vanness website, I forgot to include the 2% Import Duty and the 20% VAT that HMRC would add to the price 
Even if I were to order ten bottles, to bring the total-price-per-bottle down to the £25 range, instead of £42, the additional posting costs of subsequently transferring them to other Brits who might be interested in a ‘group buy’ mean that this ink is probably destined to be, for me at least, Unobtainium 😢

 

I shall therefore lick my psychological wounds, write an email full of nastyrudesailorwords to Lamy, and then head over to the ‘Inky Recipes’ board, in order to look for concoctions that will give a shiny aubergine/blackberry/dark-purple hue on page.

 

Slàinte,
M.

[jungkind]

I got confirmation from a German shop that the Cliff and Blackberry inks will not be sold in Germany. ...but he was told by Lamy that end of February they will add a new ink to the T12 lineup, called Dark Lilac. Lamy told him that this new (?) color was created to be used with both of the new SE Safaris. 

[Mercian]

4 hours ago, jungkind said:

I got confirmation from a German shop that the Cliff and Blackberry inks will not be sold in Germany. ...but he was told by Lamy that end of February they will add a new ink to the T12 lineup, called Dark Lilac. Lamy told him that this new (?) color was created to be used with both of the new SE Safaris. 

I wonder whether that would be the same ink as the 2016 LE ‘Dark Lilac’.

As I’m a European, I was only able to get hold of it in the box of five T-10 cartridges that were included in the packaging of the 2016 LE ‘Dark Lilac’ Safari, and was not able to buy a bottle of the stuff.

 

That ink was very popular with a lot of people. It was a nice purplish colour and, if one wrote with it on a smooth, hard-coated paper (e.g. Rhodia, or Oxford ‘Optik’), it would give a gold-coloured sheen on the parts of one’s writing in which the ink shaded heavily.

[Bill P]

6 minutes ago, Mercian said:

I wonder whether that would be the same ink as the 2016 LE ‘Dark Lilac’.

As I’m a European, I was only able to get hold of it in the box of five T-10 cartridges that were included in the packaging of the 2016 LE ‘Dark Lilac’ Safari, and was  not able to buy a bottle of the stuff.

 

That ink was very popular with a lot of people. It was a nice purplish colour and, if one wrote with it on a smooth, hard-coated paper (e.g. Rhodia, or Oxford ‘Optik’), it would give a gold-coloured sheen on the parts of one’s writing in which the ink shaded heavily.

I really enjoy Dark Lilac and Petrol ink....both in my opinion GREAT inks...and Good Value.

[Bill P]

1 hour ago, jungkind said:

I got confirmation from a German shop that the Cliff and Blackberry inks will not be sold in Germany. ...but he was told by Lamy that end of February they will add a new ink to the T12 lineup, called Dark Lilac. Lamy told him that this new (?) color was created to be used with both of the new SE Safaris. 

I really wonder why it is Lamy won't sell some these inks in europe?  There must be an underlying reason....with some substance.

[Mercian]

1 minute ago, Bill P said:

I really wonder why it is Lamy won't sell some these inks in europe?  There must be an underlying reason....with some substance.

I suspect it’s more a case of ‘entrenched Corporate culture’ of the ‘Not Invented Here’ kind.

 

The company seems to have a belief that ‘Europeans don’t buy LE inks in bottles’. I don’t expect them to risk the expenditure of any money on extensive production of in-store promotional materials, but I honestly cannot understand why they don’t let European online retailers purchase whatever level of stock the retailers think they could sell to us.
I mean, doing that might actually constitute ‘sales income’, no? And I’d have thought that it would have to cost the company less than shipping their bottled LE inks e.g. across the Atlantic does, no? But what do I know? 🤷‍♂️

 

That all said, Lamy’s ink makers and marketers are in Europe, so they are familiar with European people.
They are indeed surrounded by European people, and all day long at-that.

So perhaps it’s just that, having met us, they have developed a hatred for us? 

[Bill P]

18 minutes ago, Mercian said:

I suspect it’s more a case of ‘entrenched Corporate culture’ of the ‘Not Invented Here’ kind.

 

The company seems to have a belief that ‘Europeans don’t buy LE inks in bottles’. I don’t expect them to risk the expenditure of any money on extensive production of in-store promotional materials, but I honestly cannot understand why they don’t let European online retailers purchase whatever level of stock the retailers think they could sell to us.
I mean, doing that might actually constitute ‘sales income’, no? And I’d have thought that it would have to cost the company less than shipping their bottled LE inks e.g. across the Atlantic does, no? But what do I know? 🤷‍♂️

 

That all said, Lamy’s ink makers and marketers are in Europe, so they are familiar with European people.
They are indeed surrounded by European people, and all day long at-that.

So perhaps it’s just that, having met us, they have developed a hatred for us? 

Bizzare

 

[AmandaW]

Well, the pens have appeared on an Australian retailer's website, but no sign of any ink.

 

No ink = no pen! Going on strike.

 

 

[Misfit]

11 hours ago, Glenn-SC said:

You mean “In my opinion”.

I didn’t watch The Good Wife when it was on. I did binge watch it. There was a recurring judge played by Ana Gasteyer who insisted the lawyers follow up their comments with “in my opinion”.  I’ve started adding that in comments when it is fitting to add. In my opinion. (It makes me smile.)