Where are folks buying their Kuru Toga Dive pencils for the best price? Mercari still seems to be the cheapest place through a proxy, but unfortunately the introduction of the Aurora Purple caused a spike for all of the other colors by about ¥3000.
Pretty nice graphic, on mpuni.co.jp
They still have this up, though… which is pretty obnoxious considering the pricing fiasco:
I havent checked in a week but the UNI America site had them for $99 w/ free shipping, and a 10% off coupon.
I have 2 of the 3 orig blue colors, and the new blue, orange and green, but just can’t bring myself to spend another $90 on the purple. But is is pretty cool looking…
$5 says you’ll buy purple soon. 
I’m saving my money for vintage stuff. BUT if I get a gift card for Christms, I may be sending you that $5.
If you have all of those other colours then you’re a fan and that purple is the best. You can’t live without it.
You’ll order it before end of year.
Double down?
Devil Homer needs purple color 
A friend of mine in Japan got the purple one for me. Shipping is expensive so I’ll not have it for a while, but at least I can still say I have all models bought at MSRP haha
On the photos he sent me it’s not super obvious the color change. Not more than on the green one at least
Are you a lefty?
So is that an entire stick of lead?
When I first saw your photo, I thought you may be testing the auto-advance feature that advances the lead after 440 or so “touches” to the paper.
see 5:08 for how the auto advance works in conjunction with the sliding sleeve.
(this is the video that made me want to buy one)
I finally got around to picking up a Kurutoga Roulette. $8.20 on Amazon USA. Just needed a little boost to get to free shipping and this fit perfectly.
Body-wise, it’s so much better than my original all plastic KT pipe-slide from about 10 years ago. The writing is excellent. I went ahead and did a “tap test” to both the old pipe-slide and the Roulette. Interestingly enough, the Roulette rotates more slowly, if observing the Kurutoga engine symbol rotational movement is accurately indicative of it. I’d read complaints about the “mushy” feeling of most Kurutoga models, and that the Roulette and Dive write better in this respect. Well, I just test-drove both of them and the Roulette appears to be only marginally “tighter” than my old pipe-slide. My hope is that the Dive is an even better writing experience. One day I plan to have one. Just waiting for the price inflation to eventually subside.
I think the Roulette feels better partly because of the lower center of gravity… Even the new ‘standard’ KS defaults to the original rotation speed.
I have a small variety of the Kuru Togas: a Pipe Slide, a couple of the standard (fixed pipe) plastic model, and two colors of the Roulettes, gunmetal and silver. (The gunmetal Roulette is their best looking KT in my opinion.) The metal bodied Roulettes definitely outclass the plastic models, though I haven’t had any of the cracking issues with the plastic ones as experienced by others.
I don’t use them much anymore, I’ve found other MPs I like better. The Kuru Toga rotator seems like more of a gimmick than a feature to me, honestly - I don’t find it to be any kind of game-changing advantage.
The new Very Expensive ones are not going to be making it onto my radar. But to each their own, I don’t mean to yuk anybody’s yum. If I were to buy a Kuru Toga now, it’d only be the Roulette for me, is all I’m saying.
The Pipe Slide uses the “better” KT engine which takes 20 taps for a full rotation of the lead instead of 40. It should be better for English, but realistically I prefer the lower rotations of the Roulette. It just feels more stable overall.
That being said I don’t use either because I don’t really like the tip wobble. Also, the entire problem the pencil is trying to solve can be done by just rotating the pencil. It very much feels like a gimmick.
I was tipped off that Yoseka Stationery (Brooklyn, NY) had gotten in more stock of the Kuru Toga Dive. This time they had one cluster of 3 colors: Abyss Blue, Deep Green, Twilight Orange; plus the Aurora Purple as a separate product listing, because it was $5 more. By the time I got to the website nearly everything was sold out. There were only 4 of the Abyss Blue left. So I bought one. “NEW10” is a 10% discount off any purchase, which after taxes and free shipping brought it to $63 USD.
Prior to the release of Aurora Purple, you could if you were patient enough, grab a Dive for as low as ¥7000 boxed and “unused.” In fact, I was pretty much ready to grab the next Twilight Orange that listed… when suddenly the Aurora Purple dropped and all other Dive listings shot up 20% or more.
It’ll be interesting to see how long Uniball Co keeps up the overpriced game on the Dive. I feel like $40 USD is the sensible price (it was originally). More than that and I expect a metal body. Will Uniball Co eventually release a metal body version? I would think so… and they’ll play it the same way to ramp up prices again.
Welcome to the Hell Divers Club 
Welcome to the Hell Divers Club
I almost spit out of coffee laughing - needed that today.
Speaking of Helldiver… when I was a young teen and into building aircraft models, this one was a favorite:
Hmm. I’m in Brooklyn, not far but not terribly close by (Brooklyn is big.) Haven’t been yet. Their google listing & photos looks like a “bring a wallet/abandon solvency all ye who enter here” kind of trap, I’d better go see just to be sure.
I was telling Gary that I had picked up a white CDT Kerry from them (online) for about $40 bucks when they were selling everywhere else for about $75 at the time. I was happy to see they had somewhat reasonably prices on the Dive as well.
I learned of their Dive availability using the Shop app. I was using it at one point just to keep track of all the pencils I was buying from (literarily) everywhere and anywhere. It does a decent job of aggregating and tracking orders. But the app also has the ability to shop/purchase a variety of items, including MPs!. I “liked” the Dive under their store and was notified via the app when they had some available.
