The Pen Addict 690/transcript

From Relay, this is The Pen Addict, episode 690. Today's show is brought to you by our friends over at Pen Chalet. My name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad. I literally almost said, hi, Brad Dowdy. Hi, Brad Dowdy. Hi, Mike Hurley. How are you? You know, he's saying about that, I listened to the episode of Rob. Thank you very much to Rob for filling in. And Brad, yes, I do listen. I told you, I had your back. I had your back. And so Rob did a fine job of the song, but come on, let's be real.

Yeah. The thing that I found interesting, and this happens all the time with guests that listen to this show, and I know they listen to the show because they say they do and they do, that when you say, say goodbye to them, they always just say goodbye. They never say, like, he didn't say goodbye, Rob. You know, he just says goodbye. Because no one listens to the end of the show. I guess that's it, right? They stop listening. As soon as you're running the outro, we're hitting stop. No, I'm out of here.

Yeah. None of this. I don't even know. Nobody even knows what happens at the end of this podcast. Yeah. So I could just say, like, at the end of the show, anyone who sends me an email, like, after you do the outro, you send me an email that says, 6-7, like, don't do this, please. You know, you win, you know, like, you win, like, a big crystal pin. And, like, I would get, like, two emails because everyone's already deleted it by that point. Let me tell you, the reason I know that nobody listens to the end of the show is there was a point where I added an outro jingle and nobody ever commented on it ever.

Exactly. And I figured at some point someone might say, like, oh, I like the way that sounds at the end. But, like, nope, no one. Nobody. And I, like, I take great pains. I will say right now, this show does not get a lot of editing, Brad. I think we all know that, right? Yes. I try and clean up the most egregious times that we talk over each other. If I hear any big, big sniffs from old Brad Dowdy over there, I try and take out as many as I can. I write some stuff down. But the thing that I spend the most time on every week is lining up the outro sound to be, like, just right.

But no one knows it's even there. Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. If we were on YouTube right now, our watch time would increase massively this week because everybody listens to every single second of the show. No, they'd just scrub us to the end. That's true. And, like, forget these guys. It would actually hurt our watch time.

So, yeah. Okay. Well, let's get into some follow-up. This is some long-time coming follow-up and some current follow-up all wrapped up in one. So, our friend Elliot, who was going to the Tokyo International Pen Show or asked the question was, should I go? Like, I'm just going to happen to be there. Should I just walk up and do this thing? And we were adamant that he should. Yeah. And then we followed up. We got feedback on people telling Elliot to go do it and with some wonderful tips and some links and everything to do.

So, we got a follow-up. This is from Elliot. We talked a couple times on email about him, you know, getting ready to go and things like that. So, it says, a quick follow-up to the follow-up. We went to the pen show yesterday, which was day three. The organization was on point. Super easy to get checked in and sorted. It was busy, but not too busy, and things worked well. People were really friendly, and we had a great time chatting to exhibitors as well as some other attendees. Highlights include trying some different papers, an ink-mixing robot mic.

I have not seen that before. And someone dressed as a hyper-realistic cat, which, like, I totally get that. That's going to happen. I mean, yeah. Yeah, clearly. Why wouldn't that be? My shout-out of the show, I appreciate it. Do you want to sing that? Shout-out of the show. Is Gina Salarino from Custom Nib Studio, who made both me and my non-pen addict partner feel really welcome and talked us through various nib grind styles, letting us try some out, and telling us about their pen journey. Thanks, Gina.

So, we definitely stand Gina here on this podcast. They're the best. And then, that's Elliot's email, and then it falls just straight off the cliff. Like, all this good stuff, and then he ends it this way. Just caught up on the Rob Knight episode on the bus this morning. It was great to hear another appearance from him. So, Elliot, you know, you started off strong, and then you just had to drop that on us. So, he also says keep... Well, what's wrong with that? I don't know. I just want to give him...

You add him on. If you don't like him, you know, don't bring him on the show. I just want to give him on. I like to give you all a hard time. I know. I like to give you all a hard time. So, no, Rob was great. So, I did appreciate Rob. And Rob, you have at least one fan out there. One fan. Which is always good to have one. It is. One's good. One is enough. Yeah. Yep. So, that was... I'm really happy that we got this feedback. Yeah. Like, I told him, Elliot, that people were genuine... I was getting emails from people that were generally interested in it.

And the whole concept of this was, basically, I have no plans. Can I just show up and go? And should I? And that's what, like, Elliot took. You know, we had some people mail in with some advice, some tips and tricks. And he just went for it. And that's great. Like, that's, like, the coolest thing ever. So, people wanted to know how it worked out. Just kind of winging it to what us outside of Tokyo think is, like, just a big, massive undertaking to manage this. But, like, just show up. Go do the thing.

It's a stationary show, right? It's not like you're going to, like, the Comic-Con, like, which is, like, a massive, like, convention center type of situation, right? Where it's just big and massive and, you know, don't know how to get tickets. Like, pen shows, even if they're huge like Tokyo, like, it's going to work out, right? It's going to work out. So, really cool. Glad that he went. Glad he had a good time. Yes. This is wonderful feedback to get. Yeah. So, and thanks for taking the time, Elliot, to send in this feedback.

So, glad you had a good time. All right. You want to hit these other follow-ups here real quick? Oh, you know I do. You know I love a good follow-up. This one comes from James. It says, This sounds like an ink that you were both describing and looking for. It has an extremely cool bottle as well. Yeah. This is one of my favorites. I actually have a review of this one on the blog. We'll get it on the show notes. Brad, first link on Google is your review. Yeah, boy. Yeah, boy. Hashtag SCO. Yep. I forget what you call that type of label on the box, but it's, I mean, on the bottle

where you like shift it and it like you see the Cheshire Cat like smiling. Lenticular? Kind of thing. Lenticular. Yeah, yeah. So, it's pretty cool. So, that's one of my just favorite colors, period, out of any color. Maybe my number one pink. I don't know. So, I owe Rob an ink sample of Pilot Orochizuku Tsutsuji, which is hotter than this. So, it's like a hotter pink than Cheshire Cat, which is a little bit more subtle in its pinkness, but I think I prefer to write with Cheshire Cat. My recommendation is Sailor Ink Studio 731.

Yeah, I remember looking at this because you've talked about this before. I love. It's my favorite pink. It's kind of like got a bit of orange in it, which is fun. Yeah, that's cool. I like that. All right, then we got another one here from Laura, which I definitely appreciate. Regarding your paper top five, Brad, I agree that Midori is one of the very best, but unlike you, I love Leuchtturm. I use the five-year... Wow. Wow. Brad, do you love Leuchtturm? I think on that episode, you made it quite clear that at best, you suffer Leuchtturm.

No, I like Leuchtturm. I use the five-year memory books, says Laura, with a variety of pens and inks, and they always perform superbly. Parker's washable blue, for example, looks so nice, with a bright orange sheen that I have not seen by using any other paper. Also, have you tried Fabriano Icoqua? Yeah. It has a lovely feedback, as Midori's shade and sheen display beautifully on it, and it's inexpensive. All right. So, Laura, amazing feedback. Laura is not wrong about Leuchtturm in that it is good paper for fountain pens.

It's just not my favorite, right? I don't love Leuchtturm. I like Leuchtturm. I would use an entire Leuchtturm notebook. I've used tons of Leuchtturm in my day. Right now, I tend to choose something else that doesn't mean it's not great. I do think it's probably deserving of a recommendation. It was in the previous top five list, and I kind of bumped it off. I think it's in the notes section. So, yeah, like it can go back and forth. It's the only or one of the only hardcover notebooks I recommend because a lot of the

ones I put in the top five list, like you mentioned Midori. Midori, Morimon, Kikuyo, and Life are all, they just kind of, some of them don't do a hardcover and some of them dabble. Morimon's starting to expand that. And a lot of people just like that traditional Moleskine style that we all know and love as a notebook. And like there's a reason that the Moleskines became popular because that simple design is beautiful, right? It just really, really works. And Leuchtturm does that well with great paper.

And it's good for fountain pens. So, yeah, Laura is absolutely right about Leuchtturm. And while I don't love it, I do like it. I do like it. So, nothing wrong with Leuchtturm at all. As far as the Fabriano, I have tested it. I have enjoyed it. I think I reviewed it once. It wouldn't make the list just because it's harder to acquire. Like, you could be on like a personal list of a personal notebook recommendation. But just for broader recommendations, I tend to go for things that are a little bit more

easily. Like, at least like, you know, many retailers have them as opposed to like hunting down, you know, where they're at. So, yeah, it is good paper, though. I've tried it. Just like there's other papers like Graffalo I didn't mention, which is fantastic. And, you know, there's a lot of paper, a lot, a lot of good paper that could land in the top five list. That could be one of the longest lists on the site if I wanted to make it much more so than some of the other ones.

All right, Mike. I want to cover. You're ready for this, aren't you? Yeah. I mean, I'm not. I'm not because like I'm angsty about it. So, I got one link in my email a lot this weekend. And then I just happened to run into two other links. And I'm categorizing these three links as pens in traditional media is what I have titled this section of the notes and for the show today. But let's hit the big one first, the one that everyone sent me. It's called Fountain Pens Are More Popular Than Ever and Purists Are Fuming.

So, this is from the Wall Street Journal. So, this was this weekend, I believe it was this weekend. Yeah, this past weekend. And it is just, I hated this article. It's so dumb. It's such a bait article. Yeah. Like the title. It's just not well written. It's not. This feels like an article that was assigned to someone who just didn't care. Like, look, nothing against the authors, but like, I just don't really understand what's going on here. So, this is an article that's essentially talking about Chinese knockoffs.

Like, that's the, that is what the article is about, but it is framed in a completely different way. I mean, they went and got some good interviews with some, like, they had a friend of the show, Michael Gubrele. Yes. On, on, in this, in this article. But like, there's just like a bunch of language in this article, which is just like so strange. Like, the thing for me is the phrase old timey is used multiple times to describe fountain pens. I'm like, what are we doing? Like, what are we doing? It's a, so you touched on what I wanted to bring up.

The story is Michael Gubrele going after IP theft in the fountain pen industry. Yeah. That's your article. Yeah. But this article decided to take it in all these ridiculous ways, talking about, you know, a person with a $20,000 Mont Blanc or whatever, like, they don't care that these other pens exist, right? That's not going to stop them from buying their $20,000 Mont Blancs. And then the people who do buy these, there's a different, there's a whole podcast and like, like a whole what about ism podcast about what is considered a knockoff and a copy and things

like that. So without getting like completely derailed. I mean, we've tried to have some of those conversations in the past. Like it's an impossible conversation. But the people who are buying these, I'll call them entry level pens, are just getting into fountain pens or know exactly what they're buying and they just want like something to have to like beat around and have like a, you know, just a regular fountain pen to use. Because they're also, this is not the customer that's buying the $20,000 Mont Blanc, right?

Like it's so unrelated. So they missed the point of the story. They missed the point of the story. Reference in this article, right? Yeah. But it's like, it just feels like, like there is a very, I feel like I'm, I'm really going at these people and I don't know anything about it, but like there is such a lazy trope today of people going to a Reddit thread and then using that to write an entire article. Yeah. Right? Like, yeah. While someone said it on Reddit. And this happens like in a lot of games media.

One person on Twitter. Oh, sure. They've written an entire article about it. Right? And it's like, this is like a similar thing. It's just like, oh, they, they went to slash to R slash fountain pen and they were like, they use this as a basis for a bunch of stuff, which is also, it's like the Reddit group dedicated to fountain pens has doubled over the past five years to about 368,000 users, which is great. But then there's, they're still calling it old timey, which doesn't make sense. And then saying that the, that, that, that the fact that the Reddit group is growing is

somehow upsetting fountain pen users, like, which is absolutely not the case, especially the people on R slash fountain pens. Like there's just so many claims being made in this article that just don't make any sense and they don't even tie together. They said this article is about Chinese copyright theft and like copyright infringement. And we're somehow relating this back to the old timers. Like when they have an old timer in the article, quote unquote, right? Like Irv Tepper, an artist who he is saying, oh, I just, I think, why not let people, you

know, get involved. The only person they bring into the article that they're talking about in the lead, they they called to one person who was a fountain pen collector and he's like, I don't worry about it. Yeah. He blew up their article. Yeah. It was, it's a horrible article. It's so bad. It's just not, it's just not good. It's just not good. And like, I really honestly, like I disliked the repeated beating on China as the sole issue here when there's plenty of other countries that are like, it's not a country issue.

Like it's a business issue that businesses are like having IP. The story is, you know, the companies that are doing this IP theft, they can be anywhere in the world. Yeah. Like it was just the way it was, the whole thing was posed was just frustrating. I really disliked this article. Um, except like, just give me an article with Michael talking about the challenges he had in hunting down. Which is interesting. The people that sold his design. Yeah. That would be a great article. It's an interesting story.

And it's like, you know, this is something where you'd kind of end that story and be like, well, you, you decide, like, do you think it's worth him doing this? Is it good or bad for the fountain pen industry that he is trying to get these knockoff cafe codes taken away? Should they exist because they become entry level for his products that are becoming more expensive? Like there is a really interesting story in this, but they've, they have failed to do it, which look, if you think fountain pens are old timey instruments, I can't blame you for

writing this article because it shouldn't have been assigned to you in the first place. Right? Well, can I interest you in some more old timey articles, Michael? You cannot. You cannot. All right. The next one, I'll write in the same time window. This one's from the Financial Times. Can a bespoke Montblanc pen fix my horrible handwriting? So what's the law? If the, if the title ends in a question, the answer is no. It's like, is it Betridge's law? It's something like that. So yeah, like I'll go ahead and spoil it.

No, it did not fix this person's handwriting. But as I wrote in the notes, this is some ye olde BS, just like the old timey stuff in the previous article. And it drives me up. Like just y'all will have to go read this article and your eyes might be permanently stuck in the back of your head from all the rolling you're going to do. It was like, this guy had a cool experience to go with basically like a Montblanc nib fitter. Right? Like, you know, go in person, get your customized bespoke fitting basically for a nib and a pen.

And he went through the whole process. That's a cool story. Right? But it was just all this ye olde BS that just drove me up the wall. And it was, it's like, man, like we can't get past this old timey stuff. This entire article, right? Is just about the experience. Yeah. The question, can it fix my handwriting? There is one sentence at the end of this article that answers that question. The rest of it is just about his Montblanc experience. Why not just say like, you know, there is a better title for this, right?

Which is the experience of buying a $20,000 pen. That should be the title of this article. I mean, I do know that, like just from people that I know that work in this world a little bit, sometimes the headline is not written by the person. Who wrote the article. Correct. So.

Yeah. That was a good one. So follow that. That's the, that's the shot chaser. And then we get into the palate cleanser. This is, this was such a good post on Instagram from CBS mornings, Patty Smith on her love of stationery. I could watch this 500 more times. She is so passionate. And it's, so it's basically like, it's about a two minute and it's, it's, it's a, it's a long Instagram video where the, I, for the, the journalist or the author is walking Patty Smith through goods for the study, which is a store we've been.

I thought it was good for the study. I wanted to ask you like, cause I remember this store, but you know, like in theory it could be somewhere else, but that's. Yeah. So in New York goods for the study, Mike and I have been there. We went to New York and Toronto on our trip. Um, she is so into this stuff. It was fascinating to watch someone who is like, you know, is, or has been like one of the most important artists, you know, musician, artist, writer, you know, in, in my time and her just fawning over the stinking Midori notebook that she loves.

It was so good. And I needed this in this, in this trifecta of articles to where Patty Smith, just like, man, this stuff makes a difference. Right. Right. Me writing stuff down makes a difference. And like the, all the things she would do to practice and her handwriting and just getting her thoughts down. It was like, it was so good. Like, so if you get, if you get a little baited by these first two articles, like I did, just go watch this Patty Smith, um, link on Instagram and, uh, your, your sanity will be restored.

Um, in the stationary world. So it was, it was so good. It was just fantastic. So anyway, the, uh, quite, quite the run in, in traditional media, which doesn't happen all the time. So it was like, um, it was interesting to see all this stuff drop like within a day or two of each other. So pretty wild, pretty wild. This episode is brought to you by our friends over at Penn Chalet. They sell the products that you're going to love. They're going to sell the stuff that you want from the brands that you're a fan of.

Whether you want a new Pelican, allow me a pilot, sailor, it doesn't matter. Just go to their website. Take a look at the probably over a hundred brands. I haven't counted, but it's got to be. There is new stuff being added to Penn Chalet all the time. Like it's one of the things that's been so incredible over the time that we've been working with Penn Chalet, just how much, how much new stuff they carry in that, in that period of time. Cause they're always adding every month. You'll find new styles of products, new companies being added to the site and Penn Chalet do the

best prices around as well as having special discounts every couple of weeks and very fast and reliable customer service, as well as selling fountain pens and ballpoints and mechanical pencils and so much more like the implements. They also sell the accessories, whether you need some new ink, maybe you need a converter, a pen holder, a carrying case, no matter what it is, they got it over at Penn Chalet. You do free shipping of orders of over $75 in the US with great shipping rates internationally

as well. Penn Chalet has low prices and high quality pens and offers a 100% satisfaction guarantee. But there is a simple reason that if you want to buy something new for your pen collection, you should always go to penchalet.com slash penaddict first because as well as seeing a selection of exclusive offers because you listen to the show, maybe there's something you didn't know you wanted until you go to that website. You will also get 10% off anything over at Penn Chalet. So it makes them the perfect place to begin your pen buying purchase.

They have some elite deals this week. I mean, they always do, but sometimes some of the deals stand out. So these Aurora 100th year special edition inks. So Aurora has historically, they're a pen maker, an Italian pen maker, and historically they've made one of the best black inks on the market and then they had blue and that was it. It was like Aurora black and blue if you want it, which I appreciate. I appreciate a pen manufacturer saying here are our inks for our pens. Well, around there for their 100th year anniversary, they did about eight colors, I think, and they're

mostly sold out, but they have gray and orange left at Penn Chalet, which would probably be like my top two colors in this list. And the price is like half off. I thought they were, honestly, I'll admit that I think they were pretty expensive when they came out. Like it was like, you know, it's a pretty standard color and it's probably a lot for that. But now at this price, it's kind of like a no brainer. Same with the Caran d'Ache 849 ballpoint, which, you know, I'm a super fan of. They have a couple of models here that are lower than any price you'll ever see.

If you've been 849 curious, this is the time. And then the endless captive of fountain pen. This has been on my shopping list for a while. And I think today is the day where I go click add to cart. It's the one with the weird little piston twist mechanism built into the backside of the barrel. And I've always been kind of curious how this works. I think it's gotten pretty good reviews from people. I think people enjoy it. And the price at pengellet is obviously just like too good to pass up. So I think this might be my time to jump in.

I just can't decide if I want infinite space, Mike, the two colorways where it shows the mechanism in the barrel, or do you just go stealth all black? And then like the mechanisms kind of more matched in color to the rest of the barrel. So that's, that's a problem for me to handle later. Then we also have a bunch of color verse inks and all kinds of other stuff over there on our pengellet page. So really, really elite stuff there today. Take yourself over to pengellet.com, P-E-N-C-H-A-L-E-T.com slash penaddict, where you can find information

about all of this fun stuff. Our thanks to Pengellet for their continued support of this show and all of Relay. All right, Mike, we got our shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. Take that, Rob. I'll give you a bit of extra. Give me something. Well, you know what? We have two shout outs, Mike, this week. So we need a little bit of an extra. So number one, Fig Boot on Pens, 10 years on YouTube. Amazing. What an accomplishment, David. Yeah, huge congrats. Yeah. He did a short video, just kind of like a quick thank you and recap and all that stuff.

So some really good stuff in there. It's like a nine, 10 minute video. So y'all go watch that. David is one of the best, if not the best pen review YouTuber out there and just a good guy. He's always been great to the community and super supportive. Never forget you have the king's pen. Never forget that. He did bring that up. And the man wore a suit. The man wore a suit. All right, he knows how to do it. He happened to mention that in this video. No way. Brad, come on. Did you know the time I had the king's pen?

If I had the king's pen, it's how I would start every episode. My name is Mike Curley, a user of king's pen. That would be me. He also had something he mentioned in the video that I took offense to. He was talking about how one of the things he enjoys doing, which is why I enjoy doing David's content, is he likes giving back and helping people. And he's like, sometimes people doing YouTube or wanting to do stationary YouTube will send him examples of their work. And he's like, at one point, I'm always glad to help, but I don't need a 40-minute review

of Alami Safari. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa. I think everybody needs a 40-minute minimum, minimum review of Alami Safari. So I had a little problem with that, David. So we'll take that up in person. So I see that. That might be a challenge, Mike. I think this is a challenge that we need a 40-plus-minute review of Alami Safari. So we'll see. We'll see what the possibilities are there. But anyway, congratulations, David. It's a really great, huge accomplishment, massive accomplishment. So the double shout-out this week, Mike, it is Fountain Pen Day tomorrow, if you're listening

to the podcast on the day it drops. So November 7th is Fountain Pen Day. So go check out FountainPenDay.com if you're interested. A lot of people have a lot of things going on for Fountain Pen Day. A lot of stores are doing, like brick-and-mortar stores are doing some in-store stuff. So a lot of fun stuff going on. So I didn't want to forget to shout-out Fountain Pen Day, which is literally tomorrow. So there you go.

All right. We need to put a bow on, well, hopefully, the IA Writer Notebook, Mike. Long-running content farm here for us on the IA Writer Notebook. I did my review, finally, just getting into the paper and testing the actual, performance of the page. And, you know, go read my article. I thought it was, you know, I mean, I'm shouting out my own stuff. But I thought it was pretty balanced in trying to explain what this notebook is, what they're trying to do, and how it could be better. The short version is, I give it an A-plus on construction because this is the style of book

that I like. I don't mind and actually prefer a really, really hard cover and then nothing on the side binding. It's basically cloth-bound, right? It's just paper in between two pieces of huge, huge pieces of, like, cardboard with the glue and cloth binding on the outside, which I particularly find that aesthetic great. It's uncommon. Like, I have another notebook I use that's built that way and I enjoy it so much. It was an old Yoseka notebook that they had made. I like it. And then just the way they assemble the product, assemble the packaging,

consistency with the design, like, all of that is great. But you still have to use the notebook, right? Like, it's a product meant to be used with various pens and pencils and inks and all kinds of things. And I thought it was just okay. It has, and I've seen this in other papers, and you might can speak on this as well, where the performance of the paper, so let's take a fountain pen ink and a medium nib. A pretty wet pen, okay? Pretty wet fountain pen, like medium king of pen, whatever. You put that ink on there.

It's going to put a lot of ink on the page. The ink goes into the top half of the page and then stops, and it doesn't go through the back. You can see it through the back like ghosting, but it doesn't bleed through. But what that causes is a saturation of the ink on the top, so you don't get the pure fountain pen friendliness of ink performance and characteristics of the ink because the ink is instantly absorbed. It dries quickly, but you lose character on any paper, not just this paper. On any paper that is a dry paper, an uncoated paper, when the ink absorbs fast, you lose

ink characteristics, which could be fine. Like, that may not be a thing for you. So what I found with the wetter nibs that I had, that ink got really saturated. But when I used my fine nibs, they tended to just like show off the shading and character of the inks that I like. So I had a better experience, which is weird to say, with finer nibs than like medium and broad nibs on the paper from fountain pens. And then one of the great litmus test pens or refills is the Schmidt P8127 Rollerball, because it's a very inky pen, straight into the page.

Like, it would be a bad pen to use. I called it out specifically. That's usually a very good guide of whether you're going to enjoy fountain pen inks, is how the Schmidt Rollerball works on that page. And if it holds up well to that pen, you can throw pretty much anything at it. And I think I like, I would not use that pen with the IA Writer Notebook, that refill, excuse me. But some fountain pens worked well. Like the, I used a fine Yovo nib for my writing sample. It was fantastic. I really enjoyed it.

And then the rest of the pens were okay. You know, gel, ballpoint. Pencils were fine. Sharpies had the same experience as the heavy wide nib fountain pens. And inks to where the ink stayed on the top half of the page and didn't just blow through to the back of the page and onto the next page like Sharpie's doing a lot of papers. So that was interesting. So it's got this interesting performance. Overall, like I graded the paper a B. Like it's totally usable for a lot of fountain pens. I actually called it the Leuch term of fountain pen paper because it's fine for almost everything

you throw at it. It's just not in the tier that makes it excellent for fountain pens. And that may not be what they're designing it for, right? I mean, they use fountain pens to do their marketing, but it's a fine black nib and a platinum 3776. And I imagine that's really, really perfect for this notebook. I just don't know that this is a notebook that I would recommend, especially at this price point to get the full fountain pen experience, right? Which again, that doesn't, that's not what they're marketing this as, right?

Which is fair, right? So overall, that's why I think it's actually a good notebook. Um, I just think it's for fountain pen users. I think it's too expensive for the results you get. You're paying for design. Like I told you, um, before this notebook was built to win design awards, not necessarily performance awards and it's accomplished its task and it performs well enough for the majority of people who would use this notebook. Yeah.

Yeah. I know you, you, you disagree even on the design aspects of it. Like this is not your style. Well, it's not your style. I mean, I, I, I agree with your assessment that it was made to win awards and it is a very beautiful and clever idea, but I think that's where it kind of like starts and ends. Um, sure. I don't think that it is a, for me, a fun, a product that functions very well. Yeah. And it, you use the pins that I disliked on this page. Yeah. Mostly. So I can see how you would not use this at all.

Yeah. Right. You used like the least, the pins I disliked the most on this page were broad nib fountain pens because the ink just completely dries out and saturates in the page. Fine liners, because the page is too dry. If you're a frequent fine liner user, you know, sometimes when you write on a page with a fine liner, it feels like a pencil. Like you're not even getting a completely thick line. Yep. That's how fine liners were. And then the super wet roller balls. So there's definitely some exceptions with this, with this paper that I would not be

happy with if I only use these things and, um, inky fountain pens would be one of them, but like my fine nib stuff works great. So, um, yeah, so that's, uh, that's my final thoughts. Um, you know, uh, I, I would be interested if they did a different notebook and charge less for it and had less going on with it. Uh, that just may not be their thing. I, again, I think this was built for design. I think this was a design, uh, performance here. And, um, I honestly, I think they executed it well. Uh, it's just not something I can easily recommend.

Like it's a specific recommendation. Like I would like back to our Lloyd's term conversation in the beginning, I would recommend the standard a five hard bound Lloyd's term over this notebook because you're going to get equivalent, if not better performance in a very high quality build for less than half the price. Yeah. So that's where this, the I writer comes in. So there you go. All right. Let's, uh, let's blast through a couple of more top tober. I know it's not top tober anymore, Mike. Top timber.

Top, uh, okay. Okay. We didn't need to go there. We're into top timber now. Well, this might continue, uh, until another couple of times. So there was a thing, uh, Nintendo many years ago did a thing called the year of Luigi. Okay. And it lasted for 18 months. So we could also still be in top tober if you want. Okay. Uh, well, I still, I've actually found my groove on the top five stuff. That's one of the things is if I'm, if I'm top fiving and I get it, in the, in the groove for it, I kind of want to keep going.

The top, top five in. Yeah. So I, at least after these two lists, I'm going to go to today. I, I at least want to hit one more, or if not a couple more lists after this. So I did the, I did the count. So today I'm going to talk about the top five next fountain pens and then the top five fountain pens between $100 and $200. And then the next category that I haven't updated yet is the $200 to $500 category. And as you'll see, by the time we get to the end of this, that has become like the, the more interesting category.

Right. So the top five next fountain pens, it's called this because this is the list I think people should look at if they've decided they like fountain pens from their platinum preppy. Right. If you pick up a platinum preppy and you use it and it's like, Oh, this works for me. Some people would just tap out right then. It's like, Nope, this isn't for me. Like I get that totally fair. Yep. So this is, Oh, I do like fountain pens. They work with my handwriting. What more can I do? That's this list.

That's why I didn't necessarily put a price point on it, but I have kept it below a hundred dollars, like just kind of as a stopping point. So I have them in order from one to five TWSBI eco, the Lamy Safari slash all star. I did combine those. Um, cause they're essentially the same writer, uh, the novel or original plus the opus 88 coloro and the Kaweco classic sport in the past. This has been a little bit more of a challenge to flesh out this list. Usually it's been the eco, the Safari, and then whatever.

Like, you know, I had the, uh, Lamy studio, another great choice in there. Um, in the past I've had some other things, but this category could actually keep expanding. Like in the notes section, I have like, like I said, the Lamy studio, TWSBI 580s, Kaweco student, which is their full length fountain pen, the sailor to zoo even, which I think is great. And, uh, I took a shot at the, at the pilot prayer calling it overpriced, but it's a fantastic freaking pen. I hate that it's so expensive because it's so good.

Was it always they, so historically they've had, um, regional price discrepancies and now they've just made it expensive for everybody. Right. You used to could get it. And this has been a while ago. You used to be able to get it for like 32, $33 in the Asian market. And in the U S market, it'd be like upper to mid forties. And now they're just charging like $65 for everybody. So it's a mess. It's, it's not like, that's a lot. And it's, it's so good. It's such a good pen. Um, I love it, but yeah, it's, it's a hard recommendation over some of these other ones.

Even the Opus 88 coloros and $99, like that seems like a better, more interesting pen for your next pen than the pilot prayer. Yeah. Um, the coloro has the Japanese eyedropper system, which I think is fun for new users, right? You literally just, um, you know, eyedropper ink into the barrel and it has a post that seals it off. You like, don't, it's like low maintenance and just great to use and great feeling pen. So really cool design. So that's those, um, yeah, like I feel pretty good about this list.

There's definitely questions and I did get some good feedback on like the eco and the, the novel or original plus that, you know, those, those breaks sometimes, Brad, I'm like, I know, I know. I just don't know that it's overwhelming to be an issue for me to not recommend them. Um, like I do get that people have sworn off like some Twisbees just historically, you know, talking about cracking and things like that, but I still think it's, it's, it feels like the right recommendation to me, uh, to at least be on this list.

And I have it at number one. Yeah. And I also just feel like, I mean, I don't, I don't, maybe I'm not plugged in in the same way, but the cracking thing doesn't really feel like a thing that still comes up. Every now and then I, it's certainly less in, in the grand context of things, but like, it's like people really don't like them. And like, I get it. Like people have been burned enough. Um, but like same with like the Kavecos had a huge nib problems for years, but you don't really hear about that anymore.

So I don't know. It's, it's a balance. It's a fine line. And there's definitely some, some products that people aren't going to like on these lists. But if I'm looking at from a general recommendation, like I feel safe recommending the Eco, uh, that people aren't going to have a problem with it. Um, so yeah, that's that list. Um, I think this is a great price range in like this next fountain pen level, anywhere from like 20 to a hundred dollars. Like you can get awesome stuff here. And that poses a problem for the next list, which is the fountain pens from 100 to $200.

This is now become almost the desert of the price point. Um, there's a ton here, but there is not a ton that I'm saying is so much better than the TWSBI Eco, right? There's, it's closer than ever. And I actually think in this group, which I'll list off in a second, I would actually, you could almost skip this group and save up a little bit more money and go into the over $200 range and have a better experience. So this was a tough group to flesh out. Um, pilot 74 is number one, but it is last call for that one because they now price it

at $200 flat, right? Where the previous price was one 65 to one 72, um, which made it a very, very easy recommendation. And now it's a, it's a gold nib. So it is, yeah, this one. So pilot 74 one Pelican M200 Leonardo memento zero pilot vanishing point, which is, I even find this interesting and the Bennu euphoria slash talisman. Uh, again, that's a safari all-star type of comparison where they're essentially the same shape, the same concept, right? The same. So, um, this list is just weird. So the pilot 74 is $200.

The Leonardo memento zero, which has been number one on this list before is $199 now that makes both the Pelican M200 and the pilot and vanishing point from going off this list. So now they're both back on the list because they're both in that 160 to 170 range. I actually thought the vanishing point had gone up a little bit more. It's consistently like 170s and it's a tough recommendation for the type of pin that it is, but that's the state of this price point now. And this is kind of like the last stop of learning to where you've decided now you're into this

stuff and you start to know what you like more. So the recommendations become a little less useful for some people because now they've learned what they like and they can just go on their own path. But I don't know. I think the category that I just went through the next fountain pens category is great. And I think once you get into like 200, the next category I call 200 to 500, but it's really probably like 200 to like 350 ish is a bunch of awesome pins. So this category I don't love in particular, despite I love all these pins that are here,

but I think that's the list, right? It's in the next fountain pens or in the future, the more expensive fountain pens. Those lists are huge, right? There's tons of options. Yeah. And the fountain pens 100 to 200, like this is the list. Like I thought about putting Le Bon in here, which I like their pins. Diplomat, the Diplomat Arrow has been on here before. It's now like 199 or $200. And I just don't know. Like this is a tough, tough scene for this range. What's the price range for the next fountain pens?

What is that like up to? It's like 25 to 100. Yeah. I am more excited about every single pen on that list than I am the 100 to 200 list. 100% agree. Because like, are you even getting gold nibs in that 100 to 200? Probably not, right? Yeah. Just the 74 and the vanishing point. Right. And then that's it. So the 3776, Platinum 3776 was the former number one in this. Which is one of the best pens in the world. It's one of the best pens ever made. It's like 225. Just spend that. Yes. Yeah. Wait. That's my point.

Yeah. Get an extra 25. I can't even explain it. But when you said vanishing point, I was like, I don't even know why I felt like. But it's just like, I just can't. That's fair. I can't find myself to get excited about that pen anymore. Like it feels so 15 years ago to me. So it is definitely held up with the current times because now I've tested a lot of people's variations on a retractable pen. Like that's a hot thing to make these days, right? There's a bunch of options. Yeah. None of them hold a candle to the vanishing point.

It is the, yeah. It's the money leader. It's like put some respect on its name type of pen. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Even if you don't like it. Yeah. Like it is a not for everyone pen. I'm very clear on that. Be kinder to left-handed people and then I'll be kinder to you. You know, that's how I feel. Right. Right. Right. So yeah, those are my thoughts. I'll probably cover at least that next group next week on next week's show, like the 200 to 500. Um, and then I just need to clean up some of the mechanical pencil, wooden pencil, ballpoint.

There's not going to be a lot of change and maybe not a lot to talk about on those unless I come up with something like super interesting. We might bring those up. So we'll see. All right. So late entry into the notes and it kind of relates to this last fountain pen price bracket, the $100, $200 range. And I'm very curious at what pilot has just released. I just saw this on Instagram this morning before the show. They have a new pen coming out. It's called the Pilot Custom NS. Um, I don't know exactly what that means.

Next stationary. Next stationary. Maybe. So I saw this picture before I read the description. I was like, what is going on here? It's like, um, it's like the 74 barrel colors, like the translucency of the barrel colors. But it has a new like cap finial design. That threw me off for a second. I was like, wait, is this actually a pilot? Because they normally do flat or very rounded. And this is kind of like, um, yeah, domed. This is like, this is a Mont Blanc shape finial. Um, to where it goes up into the snow cap.

But what this is, is this is, this is a steel nib fountain pen at the $100 to $110 price range. And this is what I've been waiting to see companies start to backfill their product lineup now that the gold nib pens have gotten so expensive. This is the category I've been waiting to see what people do. Like the Sailor Tuzu doesn't quite fit this to where it's a, it's a weird pen, right? This is a standard pen. Um, because again, this, the price brackets have shifted with the cost of materials. And the gold nib pens are just so expensive now that there's these huge gaps in these product lines from, I'm looking at, you know, pilot, sailor, platinum, you know, people like that, even, even, uh, like Pelican and some of the other manufacturers to where like the, the, the, the cost is they just have these huge gaps in their, in their catalogs.

And this is filling a price point from like the prayer, the overpriced prayer to the 74 is their gap. So you're going from like $65 to almost $200 with pilot. So now this is exactly what I anticipated would happen. And I hope this is good. Like we'll see, like, are you going to take this pen over the pilot Explorer, which is like $28. Um, just from a, a style perspective, when you get like the same dip performance, I don't know. I want to get one of these clearly and test it out. And I'm going to tell you like, it's a great pilot nib and is it worth the money?

I don't know, but it was clear that this was going to have to happen for some of these companies, right? Because they've just left a giant hole in the market, like out of their control, right? Like the, the cost of rare materials has just gone through the roof over the past five, 10 years. So now they're left with these huge holes and, uh, it's, and I like what pilots done here. And at the price point, um, I think this pen will probably do pretty well just from an aesthetic spot, but, uh, we'll see like TBD.

Like again, it goes back to that first, that next list, Mike, where you were saying like, I love all these pens. These are all great. I would rather have all these. Yep. Maybe that's still the case with this pen, but I at least like to see this in this spot. So, um, I, I anticipate we're going to see more of these. Um, this has been, this is actually overdue for people, for companies to start trying this. Um, because again, they just, it's the, the prices are too disparate in the entry levels to the gold nibs.

There's, there's nothing in between and, uh, pilots at least trying something. So we'll see how it goes. If you would like to send in questions, follow up or feedback about this show, it's very easy to do. So just go to penaddictfeedback.com and you can send them in there. You can also email longer feedback to hello at penaddict.com. At penaddict.com is where you also find all of Brad's great work. And along with a host of other very talented and wonderful contributors. Like if you want to read Brad's IA notebook review, you can go over to penaddict.com.

Keep your eyes locked to spoke design.com as well. Cause my understanding is something new is coming soon. Soon. We'll talk about it here on the show once it finally drops. But yeah, big, big, big update. You can find my products over at cortexbrown.com. And I write over at theenthusiast.net. I want to thank Penn Chalet for their support of this week's episode. Most of all, I want to thank you for listening. Now get ready to enjoy that jingle. As I say, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.