Hello everyone, I am fortunate enough to have discovered this forum a couple of months ago and finally decided to make an account myself. I’m Haykal and I’m from Jakarta, Indonesia. I’ve been a casual collector of fountain pens and ballpoints since I started my first ever job around 5 years ago. My background is in Architecture, so I’ve been curious about niche fountain pens and niche writing instruments in general since my architecture school days, but only recently have I finally been able to buy some myself. Later on, my collection started to grow when my parents also joined this collecting venture.
In the last few months, I’ve developed a very deep interest particularly in mechanical pencils, so now I’m more focused on that, while my fountain pen collection still grows through my dad. That’s when I found this website and got exposed to the beautiful world of mechanical pencils, which resonates more with me due to my background, as it feels closer to home at some point.
Recently I also started to archive and post my collection on an instagram account @alatmenulis (Indonesian words meaning “Writing Tools/Writing Instruments”). I plan to post and identify all of our current +140 instruments on that account, slowly.
My mechanical pencil collection isn’t big yet, since it’s much harder to find vintage mechanical pencils (especially vintage Japanese ones) here in my country, but I hope that I can grow it slowly and enjoy what I currently have!
Yes! Particularly my dad. He has been collecting diecast and military models since early 00s. Last year, I introduced him to vintage writing instruments, and how they can possess similar ‘nerdy’ and ‘geek’ values (that we both love haha). Since then, he already bought around 40+ vintage FPs and pens that he got mostly from local pawn shops and junk men. There are quite amazing deals that he got, due to the fact that these people who collect and sell second-hand items from abandoned houses, closed office, etc don’t really know the real true price value of their pens. One of the recent example:
I got this GvFC pencil with slight spot on the cap but perfectly fine mechanism, from one of our go-to junk man, for ONLY Rp 75.000 (around USD 4.60)
Welcome to Knockology @haykal !
I managed to find some relatively old Pilot, Mitsubishi and Alessi Pen models when I visited Jakarta and Makassar several years ago. Happy hunting!!
That’s kinda surprising. I’m going to a fairly big ‘second-hand’ market tomorrow and let’s see if I can find some old Mitsubishis. So far I’ve only found two…
But in terms of a very personal favorite, I think if I have to choose, I’d lean towards this Sailor Lecoule All-black MF Nib because it’s so cheap ($30 - $40) but the nib is subjectively so good, sits comfortably between the vintage and the modern aesthetics, durable, and a perfect EDC, been using it almost everyday for the last 2 years. Even I prefer this one more than my Sailor PGS 14K MF even though it’s the “OG” but the price is 4x with a relatively similar writing perfomance.
Beautiful pens! I really like that vacumatic. I have never gotten one myself but it’s in my shortlist. The sailor leocule is similar to the sailor imperial black I have, mine is the modern version of the leocule I must suppose. Thanks for sharing
At a glance it belongs to the rOtring Tikky family, but… a lot depends on whether it has a fixed or sliding sleeve, and what the markings say on the side. I think this Tikky deep dive video by @Pdunc67 is appropriate viewing!
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