Re-introduced Man 100

[Mr. Pink]

I am pleased to see that the Man 100 is back.  I think it is one of the most beautiful pens ever produced.  I love mine.  Has anyone bought the new one?  If so, is it identical to the one from 30 (?) years ago?  What are your experiences with it?  Does anyone know if it will come in any other finishes?  I have always regretted that I never bought one in silver.

[Mr. Pink]

Am I totally wrong?  I see the Man 140, and THOUGHT I saw that the 100 was returning.  Am I taking the wrong drugs?

[Mercian]

37 minutes ago, Charles Rice said:

Am I totally wrong?  I see the Man 140, and THOUGHT I saw that the 100 was returning.  Am I taking the wrong drugs?

I have no experience of the ‘Man 100’ model, other than knowing that it was well-liked, but I do know that the ‘Man 140’ is a Limited Edition offering.

And its price in the UK - read it here and weep/laugh - is of a piece with the price of NR’s latest Parker Duofold LE pens.
Like them, it can be bought with a nib of any width/grind that you would like (as long as that falls somewhere within the vast range of ‘F’ or ‘M’).

 

Whether or not the LE ‘Man 140’ strikes anyone as being worth paying that much money for (e.g. it is more expensive than a solid Sterling Silver Yard-o-Led Grand in the hand-finished ‘Victorian’ pattern) is, I suspect, a matter of personal taste/disposable income.
At those prices though, I would have expected NR to have sent out review samples of the LE Duofolds and the Man 140 to the better-known pen-‘influencers’.
Unless of course the company itself feels that the prices it is asking are unjustifiable.

 

It would be nice to think that Waterman might go on to release a non-LE range of ‘Man 140’ pens, priced at similar level to the old Exception range.
But will they?
NR Waterman has reduced/killed its Exception range, and it has also far reduced its range of offerings in the (IMO beautiful) Carène range too.

 

NR’s marketing/product ‘strategy’ - for both its Parker brand and its Waterman brand - is a completely-impenetrable mystery to me  🤷‍♂️

[Mercian]

Here is the YouTube review of this pen by Doctor Brown: clicky!

 

His observations - particularly about its price, and the ‘market segment’ at which Waterman is aiming it - are far better-informed than are mine 

[jchch1950]

Waterman Man 100 was issued around 1983 and was a good pen. The Man 140 is too expensive for my wallet, but not an ugly design. Maybe one of the owners of the Man 149 can write a review.😊

[Mercian]

5 hours ago, jchch1950 said:

Maybe one of the owners of the Man 140 can write a review.😊

I don’t know if anyone on here has one.

 

If I go by the responses to the previous thread about the pen…

 

…I would guess that nobody here has bought one.

The Man 140 seemed to mostly prompt the same reaction from everyone in that thread that its price (and its lack of nib options) prompted in me.

 

If I were to summarise SBRE Brown’s review of the pen, his opinion of it seems to be ‘looks interesting; writes nicely; but [he] wouldn’t pay this much for this pen’.

 

I suspect that, while some Man 140s have been bought by die-hard ‘completist’ Waterman collectors (to put in a case and not use), many of the ones that have been sold to-date have been bought by those people who buy-up LE pens with the intention of sitting on them for a few years, and then trying to sell them on for vastly-inflated prices.

 

Now that I think of it, perhaps Waterman’s stratospheric MSRP for this pen is partly intended as a way to prevent those people from profiteering in this way 🤷‍♂️

[senzen]

Not too many people have shared their experience about buying a 140, it looks nice but is four to five times my max budget per pen; the 100 is a nice pen but suffers from collar corrosion, which is quite disappointing in a higher end / more expensive pen, hopefully they finally remedied that in the 140.

 

I enjoy mine with its F nib perfectly married to Vert Empire and then discovered the silver (Gentleman 33?) which has the same nib in a more pleasing (to my eye) design, even if the body doesn't line with the cap and it seems to dry out faster than most.

 

 

Oh and the 33's cap doesn't stay in place when capped but I almost never cap my pens.

[Mercian]

58 minutes ago, senzen said:

the 100 is a nice pen but suffers from collar corrosion, which is quite disappointing in a higher end / more expensive pen, hopefully they finally remedied that in the 140.

If anyone fancies buying a Man 100, and isn’t bothered by nib-collar corrosion, a UK children’s charity currently has what appears to be a black one with gold trim for auction on eBay:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/176327922116

 

The auction ends on Wednesday 17th April, at 13:42 BST (which is 12:42 GMT/‘Zulu’).

 

I have no connection to the charity, I just thought that folk here might be interested (my apologies to anybody here who has been eyeing-up this auction, and hoping that nobody else sees it).

[Bo Bo Olson]

On 4/14/2024 at 5:07 PM, senzen said:

the 100 is a nice pen but suffers from collar corrosion

200 also?............that is my 4th of 4 Waterman.

Mine is in near mint condition with the little f gold colored glued on little dot.

 

In mine seems fine...is there a trick to keep corrosion away?? Use mild inks???

 

That Waterman F is as narrow as my Pelikan 200's EF.

 

There were a long time ago...12-15 years, flame wars between change the nib Pelikan and narrower nib Waterman...until the Japanese even narrower nibs came in to the main market, from being a nitch product of Japan......that made Waterman a fat nib.