Advice for my first pen convention

Eclectic is an excellent word for my collection! :laughing: I definitely do like some oddities. I need to do a post sharing my collection at some point but that is for another day. On to the recent additions! In order of my ascending appreciation:

First up, we have a Platinum preppy fountain pen with a medium nib. It is a cheap basic fountain pen that was given out for free among with some ink in a fountain pen 101 session that was included in show admission. I am not a big fountain pen guy. I am a heavy handed writer but it mostly comes down to the fact that I do not want to deal with the maintenance. I switch what pen I carry around every few days which means a single pen may go some time in between rotations. The cleaning and risk of drying out is just not for me (currently). Maybe in the future I will dive into fountain pens. Just not right now. But hey, I cannot argue with a free pen! Although, it was odd that they gave us ink with a cartridge pen but not a converter…

Next is a bit of a novelty. It is a Monteverde Illusia gel ballpoint pen. It is a twist pen that when deployed, the diamond shapes around the grip are filled with colors. Here is a video with it in action and below are my pictures of it closed and deployed. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DHq_OMxPsmm/

The Swiss Army knife pen is just cool! It has a small knife, file, small flathead, scissors, a little red light, and I pen. That baby will do everything but tell what time it is! The metal grip is designed to imitate a GP-11 authentic Swiss Army rifle cartridge and has a Fisher Space refill in it. It came with the box and instructions which have a ©2000. The spring appears a little loose and may need replaced. Unfortunately, there is also a small crack in the plastic between the pen half and pocket knife half. So this will most likely not get much daily carry. But I still like in nevertheless.

I do love a Parker Jotter. They are simple, but elegant. Nice quality and affordable. And that CLICK! I picked up these from two different stands. The metal and black plastic one came from a guy who had a bunch of older pens and a good amount of Jotters. It does have a perpetual calendar and I had never seen this before and thought it was neat. I am relatively new to seriously collecting pens (2-ish years but appreciated them before that). The full metal Jotter came from a stand for a company called Grifos Pens of Italy. So @Leonov, I image that you could likely see them at some shows near you. Jotters are not their thing though. They make luxury pens with some beautiful metal work. The gentleman there explained that he uses Jotters and other metal pens of similar value to practice milling on as well as warming up the milling bit on. The picture below my new Jotters is one of Grifos’ pens that had a beautiful peacock design on it which is the same design milled in the full metal Jotter. It is hard to see in the picture but I liked it. The pens that Grifos’ make themselves run $450.00+ (US) and were not in my budget. I wish!

And my favorite for last, we have a kit pen that was done by a maker back across the pond in Michigan, USA called Lincoln’s Leathers. They have been leather workers for 10 years and eventually got into turning pen kits. The colorful grip is a bunch of layers of dyed leather that is glued together, turned on a lathe, and coated in acrylic. The hardware appears to be brass or bronze and has a nice mechanism. To deploy the pen, the pocket clip can be pulled like a lever on one of those old water pumps which pushes a plunger on the top that actuates the internal click mechanism. It is a heavier pen but I do not mind that. It came with a Parker insert.

I am very happy with what I got and the show was great! Everyone was so friendly and helpful. I have some pictures of things I passed on and I will post them later as this reply is already quite long. That you again for your advice. It was genuinely very helpful. Thank you @Leonov!

5 Likes