Visited my local Kinokuniya

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Sorry for the poor photo – those “white ice cube trays” are reflections of the overhead lights.
They had 5 KT Dive’s there, one with the cardboard box lid lifted over. Aurora purple. Nice color. They were moderately busy and very light on staff, so I couldn’t get anyone to assist. The Dives sat inside a locked case. Curiously enough, a Platinum Pro-Use 171 Black was inside. $34.95. I bought mine NIB for $20 shipped off of eBay. Over in the pencil aisle they had metal Uni lead containers. $29.95 each. The “Midnight Blue” limited edition slots were all empty. The store has a real thing for LAMY. There’s a rotating free standing display nearly 7 feet tall. 4 sides, all stacked with LAMY Safari pens and pencils. Overpriced, IMHO. Rollerballs at $39.95. Pencils at $26.95. On top of the locked case, they had 2 sets of LAMY Pico pens, one black and the other a satin finish white that looked really nice. $49. For a Pico? :crazy_face: They had a couple of PILOT Vanishing Point fountain pens. One was matte black, for $239.95. You can get that same one at Jet Pens for $168. The wood one didn’t even have a price tag on it, but I’ll bet it’s even more costly. You can grab those off eBay sellers for $182.

Anyway, I plan to swing back on a better day and see if I can actually get to test drive a Dive. Or at least just hold it. If it’s going to be very light… I’m probably going to pass and just wait longer until prices are more reasonable.

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How much were the Dives ?

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I was told they are $73 USD. Of course, a much better price than what Uniball Co was asking on their site ($99 USD).

There were some listings on Mercari at times where you could get an orange Kuru Toga Dive just “lightly tested” without box for ¥6000. And then the new Aurora purple edition comes out and all of the other colors have suddenly spiked up in price. Most ranging from ¥8,000 to ¥10,000. It has been like that for over a month… not much sign of them easing back. The purple ones are tending to sell higher, over ¥10,500.

Just checked again and a Abyss Blue model sold for ¥7499- (about $50 USD). So it does look like there’s a little bit of inching down on prices.

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I’m still feeling lucky that I got my orange and blue one for $40 each.

Edit but then again, I was checking that damn website like every 30 minutes for a few weeks lol

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Yeah that was smart. I’d missed out on the notification… wasn’t but a day later when they’d all sold out at that price. You were lucky! Probably should have sold them at the peak when people were paying $150 for them.

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Then he’d be considered a scalper and you’d all burn him at the stake. :joy:

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