Editing The Pen Addict 418/transcript (section)

== King of Pen Discussion ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' Hmm.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' The Tangerine?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, the 800 range feels, that's just, like, for me, that feels what I expect for a King of Pen.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, but man, that just makes them even worse. I still have them pictured, like, the Pro Gear 1911 models, like, in the 600 to 700 range, like, a little over 700.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It's probably what you can get them for from the right person at a pen show, but not at retail.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Which, at that price, is just ridiculous, so even paying even more, it's a big ask. Like, this is, I'm on record saying I love the King of Pen. It's the most overpriced pen on the market. It just is for what it technically is. But that's not going to prevent me from buying one. If the Witch one came out, the Wicked Witch of the West had a King of Pen, I would have bought it. I promise you.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Man, my Wicked Witch of the West is stuck somewhere right now.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Oh, yeah. That's not good. Has it made it to the UK?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' It has been, like, in transit from America for, like, a week now. So, like, the most recent tracking information says dispatched. So, it was preparing for dispatch from June 24th, then got dispatched on July 1st to the UK. Not from Pen Chalet. Pen Chalet sent it out on June 22nd, I think. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's been, like... I mean, I've had this as something else recently. I think... Well, one thing I know is that cargo flight is harder right now to get on. And the other thing I know is when things are arriving, they're being processed more slowly. So, I mean, I've already had this kind of thing happen, but it's just frustrating. Especially when I get the customs bill.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah, for sure. So, King of Pen Midnight Sky looks great. I love the story behind it. You know, the story about a court lady in late 900s, early 1000s Japan in the, you know, the emperor's court or the empress's court. And the stories that she wrote and, you know, described... This was to describe the night sky and things like that. So, that's what it's based on, which is great. I think it's a cool story. So, you know, we'll see. We'll see how this one does. I would be much more compelled to buy one of the slim or the standard in this one than the King of Pen, this one. Whereas the Wicked Witch, I would be compelled to buy the King of Pen as opposed to the standard ones. I don't know why. I can't really explain that. But, yeah, that's just my thoughts on it. This next one, Myke, the new Sailor Cocktail Series. I didn't realize how long the Sailor Cocktail Series has been running. I put a link into the show notes that Pen Sachi did where they started at Cocktail Series number one. And I was curious, being the Sailor super fan that you are, how many Cocktail Series pens do you have? Because I have zero.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I have zero.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You do? I thought you had the... What's the orange one that I like so much? Tequila Sunrise? Tequila Sunrise?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' No, I don't. The Tequila Sunrise has some similarities. You bought the chocolate one. With... No, yeah. Did you buy the orange jet? Yeah, I bought the orange jet, which is not in this, but it has similarities, right? The orange jet was a bong box.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Gotcha.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' What? Who...

'''Myke Hurley:''' And they came out around the same time. The Cocktail Series. It's got to be Sailor directly, I guess. But the way... Okay. I don't know the way I'm reading this page on Pensachi, which is great, because I didn't see... So the first one was called The Asian Way, and it's saying it just came from Sailor directly, and the second one was Mojito. The first one was in 2011. The second one, Mojito, in 2012. It looks like these are just being released by Sailor, and on and on and on. So the first one I recall seeing was Piccadilly Night, and then Tequila Sunrise was super popular, than Angel's Delight last year. Where's the White Russian? Is the White Russian not in part of this series as well? Anyway, I don't know. But the new one is called Curie Azur, and I wanted to know what you thought about it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So one, I tend to actually quite like the Cocktail Series, but I just have never been in a position to get one when I've seen them. So I really like Tequila Sunrise. I like Apreski. I like Piccadilly Night and Blue Lagoon. They're the ones that I really like from this series, but I've just never, for whatever reason, have never seen them when they've been on sale. The new one that's coming, which is Curie Azur, is also, that's a really nice one, but it doesn't excite me enough that I'm going to hunt it down. Because this series I know is quite coveted by people. Mm-hmm. Like, people that I know that are even more heavy collectors than me, which, believe it or not, those people exist for Sailor Pens. Oh, absolutely. They really, this is like a series that everybody really tries to get their hands on. Like, because it's a limited run thing, they tend to do peculiar styling, especially like, which is becoming stranger and stranger or harder for Sailor is to like, get a piece which you've not seen on another pen. And they do seem to do that a little bit.

'''Myke Hurley:''' This is going to get to the meta question after the next topic, right? There's so many questions. It's like, yeah, I love the pen. Like, it's great. I probably won't buy it. But just like, the Tequila Sunrise was the most perfect pen ever for me. But it's just like, you can't buy everything, right? So you just got to wait. And because, you know, there are some things you just need to skip because there's going to be other things later. And that's the thing about FOMO, which we're going to talk about that later.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I will probably, even given the opportunity, not buy the Tequila Sunrise because I have that pen in different pieces, basically. Right. I could make my own if I wanted to. Right. You know? Right. Which is something that I was thinking about recently that I have yet to do, but could do, which is, I know you did it a little bit, to start mixing and matching some of my Sailor pen parts. Yeah. But there's just something about that that makes me uncomfortable and I can't really explain what it is.

'''Myke Hurley:''' No, I agree with that because I think the idea is that it's not, it's no longer as intended, right? It was intended to be this piece.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' I kind of can't help but respect the artist's decision.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Especially on the limited editions. Like on stock editions, if you have five colors released and you buy two pens with the intention of mixing and matching, that's a more comfortable situation to me than taking like these limited editions made by different companies and just kind of swapping the section to the barrel. Of them. It's just kind of, it's, it's more of an oddity than, than like a comfortable fit for me. That's just how I think about it. But some people will just go ahead and, and, and do all that, which I think it's cool. Like, you know, when I wrote about it, I was doing it with like Kaweco sports because they're all just so similar and they have all these bright colors and you just swap the sections and barrels and caps and you can make fun little things. It doesn't work for me with something like the, the sailor pens for reasons like, like you mentioned. I had, I bought the 4am knowing that I had a black ion nib because that was the argument with that pen is like, why didn't they make, they ionize the exterior hardware?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That doesn't feel so much to me. Like changing the nib feels kind of a bit more par for the course, but changing part of the coloring of the external body seems a little bit like a, like, I don't know, like something I just don't feel like I want to do.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about this last little topic, which I just find hilarious and it's kind of the subscript to what's been going on with sailor these past few years, business wise. And this is that the sailor gentle ink series is discontinued. And you have to say again, because they already discontinued this once sailors tracking sailors ink machinations probably line up with the unevenness in their business at the time. Right. So I think the ink business for sailor, it seems like it's like a, it's a good money. It's gotta be a good minute moneymaker for them. Um, and the way they have manipulated their ink lineup to go from small to gigantic to somewhat reined in, but not really to, I don't know what they're doing these days. Um, it's just funny to me. Like now that the sailor gentle inks, and these are, I didn't realize they were North American exclusive, but they've been worldwide before, uh, the standard colors, grenade, Epernard, apricot, sky high, ultra Marine and Pesh. So these are the classic sailor gentle inks from like a decade ago. And they went away five or six years ago. Then they came back like two years ago. And it's just a whole nightmare of what sailor has made out of this. But I am not, I don't really care about this because they released series two of their manual ink lineup, which is the complete replacement for the sailor gentle ink. Um, I know you really don't care about this as much as I do, but I just find it funny and odd and strange business. The way sailor does their inks. Like we had a real problem with them two years ago. I want to say when they really upped the price on their inks without having with, this is when the gentle inks were not available and you couldn't buy your base level sailor inks, which is what the gentle is. And now the manual lineup, hopefully that's the base level ink. And I'm happy with that. Like that's, it's a really good ink. It's a good quantity for a fair price. And I, that's fine if that's the replacement of the gentle inks. So early next year, they'll probably just cancel the manual ink lineup. And then we'll have to put a topic in the show notes again. And then I'll yell about it.