I stumbled upon this site thanks to a long-time (fountain pen and) pencil collector I’ve known for years. And I’ve had some interaction with Cytherian and 2nd_Astronaut via DMP (you know if you know) and a post started there by “Pencil Paul” way back in 2012. In that post, Pencil Paul gave his opinion of the “Magnificent Seven”. That started a quest, which I finally achieved over two years later.
But I started collecting mechanical pencils even further back, if memory serves ca. 1989 in the infancy of the internet. I somehow landed on a site with a set of Montblanc (I know not particularly revered here) Pix MPs in red, blue and green. (I now see that being such a new member I can only upload one image. These will have to wait until I achieve enough posts to be worthy.)
But many years later when I landed my first Tombow Zoom, the V472, from Studio La Nave I was on the hunt. Over ten years later I finally got my hands on the España. Granted, it’s not a MP (that one eluded me last November at a price that was just too outrageous). The BP will have to suffice.
The Mano has both mechanisms. It came as a BP but I reached out to Tombow USA and the incredibly nice VP there was able to source a mechanical pencil insert in Europe and sent it to me. And gratis on top of it!
The V472s are amazing, both MP and BP.
The Oceanic was a gift from Dani Nebot, the designer. He even autographed the Tombow tin to me. Talk about above and beyond! And he has an amazing story behind the “hieroglyphics” on the V472, and even the nickname Titan
I didn’t meet Dani in person, but I did cold-email him about another mp he designed back in the early 90s. That mp never made it out of prototyping and stalled when the economic bubble exploded in Japan in 1993.
We started chatting back and forth (he offered to send me a V472 mp but couldn’t find one in his studio.) But he gifted me the Oceanic in it’s place.
The “hieroglyphics” are there only because when he designed the V472 he left a series of numbers when labeling the prototype as neutral text. They were merely placeholders and he thought would be replaced when it went into final production. He thought it was by chance and because of language difficulties, he being in Valencia, Spain and Tombow being in Tokyo, Japan. Also of note is Titan is not the name he used when designing it. Tombow replaced his designation with Titan. But I won’t divulge his secret.
Welcome, Elliot! Glad you made it to Knockology and showed off your wonderful La Nave collection. I’m glad to see Dani Nebot is still around and designing things. A lot of wine bottle labels! But it appears his 3 TOMBOW pens/pencils are still cherished accomplishments for him.
