Another price increase?

[Cyrille81]

Even in Europe and prices in euros increased excessively too. Brands are just seeing more and more people buying limited edition whatever the prices are so they take advantage of it to increase again and again the prices. Pen collectors will no longer be able to buy the pens, only investors, like it was before with the watches.

[jchch1950]

The price increase in some limited editions has left me out of the group that collects them.😒

[Beechwood]

2 hours ago, Cyrille81 said:

Even in Europe and prices in euros increased excessively too. Brands are just seeing more and more people buying limited edition whatever the prices are so they take advantage of it to increase again and again the prices. Pen collectors will no longer be able to buy the pens, only investors, like it was before with the watches.

 

This is true,

 

I know that there is a MB boutique in the City that has standing order from investors who buy every new release whatever the price.

 

 

 

 

[invisuu]

11 hours ago, Opooh said:

@invisuu  part of price increases are due to the volatility of currencies. Not to mention import taxes, VAT. 
Some years ago, a friend ordered a new Corvette, direct import from the US, in that period $ was constantly rising in value. So he bought the amount of US dollar he needed for the car and paid in dollars, otherwise the car would have cost him 40 % more.

Well, I'm from Europe buying European goods, so the dollar valuation shouldn't affect me. Besides, wouldn't the opposite be true? With weak dollar plus new import duties, the pens have gotten more expensive just from this fact for the americans, and if you wanted to boost your sale you would actually lower the prices or at least keep them the same, not increase them? I honestly don't know, I'm not an economist, but that kind of makes sense in my mind...

 

I am also slowly getting priced out. I want to put my 1912 Heritage to refresh while still possible, and get a 149 in burgundy red, but then it will take something truly special to move the needle for me. Probably something custom by Fritz Schimpf again anyway...

[soapytwist]

On 1/16/2026 at 9:36 PM, Ron Z said:

...and gold is now $4,500 an ounce. 

 

And now over $5,000.

 

I'm reminded of how I started collecting fountain pens back in the 1980s:

My dad (a jeweller) had two boxes marked 'Gold Findings' and 'Silver Findings' which contained small pieces he'd come across in his work. Things like broken bolt rings from necklaces or rings with the shank worn through or with broken claws unable to hold their gems. At the point where he had enough weight to make it worthwhile, he'd take it to a precious metals company near Hatton Garden in London and sell it.

 

Anyway, in the silver box I discovered there was a silver nibless fountain pen*, which at some point in the past had been divested of its gold nib in a period when the gold value vastly outweighed the value of an old pen (silver or not). This must have happened to countless pens in the sixties and seventies before fountain pens had their renaissance. Luckily newer pens with gold nibs are at least seen to have more value than their scrap content these days!

 

*Thanks to Andreas Lambrou's first book, I identified it as a 1921 Onoto 3000, and managed to find a poor condition hard rubber version to do a nib transplant.

[Beechwood]

35 minutes ago, soapytwist said:

 

And now over $5,000.

 

I'm reminded of how I started collecting fountain pens back in the 1980s:

My dad (a jeweller) had two boxes marked 'Gold Findings' and 'Silver Findings' which contained small pieces he'd come across in his work. Things like broken bolt rings from necklaces or rings with the shank worn through or with broken claws unable to hold their gems. At the point where he had enough weight to make it worthwhile, he'd take it to a precious metals company near Hatton Garden in London and sell it.

 

 

 

There is even a company who goes to Hatton Garden and the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham and uses a machine that works like a vacuum cleaner to pick up metal filings from the floor and even under the floor boards, anywhere that the tiniest piece of gold might have fallen, the jeweller is paid depending on how much is found.

[Christopher Godfrey]

Well, come to think of it, back in days of yore when gold was right up (1970s?) I seem to remember that the gold mining houses were re-refining the mine dumps around Johannesburg in order to recover <more> metal from what just looked like giant yellow heaps that did, admittedly, dominate the surrounding landscape.  Some more of them (the dumps) disappeared when it was decided to incorporate this plentiful resource into the roadbed when making new roads -- so perhaps some of the streets really <are> paved with gold?  (In a manner of speaking -- and very loosely, too) 

 

Forgive my digression, please...

[Opooh]

In Antwerp, near the Gevaert factories, a producer of photographic material, one of the local residents attracted the attention of the tax authorities because he spent much more than he could earn working. It turned out that he had found a way to recover the silver from Gevaert's wastewater. It flowed through the brook, which bordered his garden.
He received a large sum from Gevaert, because they bought his invention.

[Christopher Godfrey]

Good one, @Opooh!

[KAC]

A lot of dough for a pen in my opinion but that likely misses the point of the price increases: they add to the aura of exclusivity and elitism conveyed by these machine-age wealth totems. They're like high-end mechanical watches though not functionally obsolete (yet).

Personally, I prefer vintage (MB, Parker) due to the classic "form follows function" ethos and the much more reasonable prices (certain exclusions apply, of course). The only modern MB I own is a 90th anniversary model and that's only because someone boosted my older 149.

[mke]

On 1/28/2026 at 8:47 AM, Opooh said:

So he bought the amount of US dollar he needed for the car and paid in dollars, otherwise the car would have cost him 40 % more.

 

I fortunately have Euros. If I would buy something from the EU in Yen, that also would be much more expensive.

 

On 1/28/2026 at 7:50 PM, Beechwood said:

from investors who buy every new release whatever the price

 

I follow a bit the auctions of expensive pens. It doesn't always work out. I remember a sale of LEs from Montblanc. It was a disaster for the seller.

[Karmachanic]

Cost of McVities Digestives keeps rising too 

[AmandaW]

10 minutes ago, Karmachanic said:

Cost of McVities Digestives keeps rising too 

Yeah. $5.50 here. 

[Uncial]

We like a very niche hobby and there's a limited number of buyers who are also, crucially, repeat buyers. There did appear to be a peak of hobbyists that seemed to steadily rise from around 2010 on, but it is almost certainly on the wane and steadily falling. This, with economic silliness that creates global jitters and bouncy ball markets means all fountain pen prices (along with just about everything else) are on the up. Some of it may of course be greed, but I suspect the larger concern is about survival. Look at the insane prices of Visconti (and that ridiculous skeleton nib) or the rapid price rises of Leonardo. I looked at the price of a Pro Gear Slim today and was shocked. Even cheap Chinese pens that not that long ago could have been purchased at a couple of euro with free shipping have recently and literally quadroupled in price, if not significantly more. The argument that the price rises we are seeing on literally everything is about creating an elite product snobbery doesn't really hold water. 

[arellano81366]

The first Montblanc that I bought maaaany years ago had a tag price of $600 USD. OMG, time flyes and prices keep going up.

[jmccarty3]

My first Montblanc 149 was purchased for $29 in 1967. I still have it, along with numerous others. $29 in today's currency would be $281, according to GrokAI. This, of course, was when MB was a manufacturer of functional fountain pens, not luxury items.

[arellano81366]

On 2/7/2026 at 11:41 PM, jmccarty3 said:

My first Montblanc 149 was purchased for $29 in 1967. I still have it, along with numerous others. $29 in today's currency would be $281, according to GrokAI. This, of course, was when MB was a manufacturer of functional fountain pens, not luxury items.

Wow, that was looong before my acquisition! By the way, I love your signature! "Rationalizing pen and ink purchases since 1967."

[Opooh]

 

The older the pens I buy, the higher the price I pay for them.

[georges zaslavsky]

Price have skyrocketed . I have pruched 15 years ago various vintage 149s and vintage 146s, now those are expensive.