What lead sizes where available for the 95 and 85? I’ve only seen 0.3 and 0.5mm.
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0.3, 0.5, 0.7 for 85 and 95, 0.9 for only the 95.
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Uh, ask Pilot JP directly maybe better? My friend is digging the history of fountain pens, he told me that he has sent dozens of emails to Pilot customer service, according to his description, they have access to vintage catalogs, but will not send any information in the form of pictures. So basically, you provide a certain picture or model number or name, or other questions, he tells you its model number or release year. (But they don’t know much thing about limited edition products). Their reply time was random, probably it’s during their free time
(The reply itself is slightly confusing , saying the white etched version Myu was released in '72, but the black one was said to be released in '73 in multiple information sources, which just vary from usual assumption)
I’ve also seen other people ask Tombow for information about their vintage product (one 2 color ball pen, using a special mechanism to switch between 2 color) and he got a nice response too:
https://twitter.com/altis0510/status/1533762214121062401
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In this case, I don’t feel that you need ask overseas customer service, as we all know that the products sold overseas are often much fewer than those in original region, and there is no guarantee that they will be released at the same time, or even have different models. The main thing people care about is the information of the product itself, right
A special example might be Rotring, Japanese market is quite special for them, I saw a spring clip version of 3,5,7 multi pencil in 2002 JP catalog, and I have never seen it in the European catalog of nearby years
In fact, even if we have to use such roundabout way, their customer service staff’ performance still exceed my expectations. I thought they were at a similar level to some shop assistants, answering questions about the products on sale, and some pre-sale and after-sale questions, haha. In any case, at least in isolation, answering information about products that were discontinued decades ago isn’t going to help their current sales anyway.
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I never took these pricing difference seriously, after all, in those days, a common trick was to fully gold plated the average line product and then ‘naturally’ raise the price by 3 to 5 times.
And I also definitely don’t believe that some bp that priced close to a 2500円 E, just having a colored plastic rod, can have the same level R&D or manufacturing cost.
Or, for products like grandee priere or archi y2, their mp and bp are priced the same, but obviously there’s a bit of a gap in manufacturing costs
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