Editing The Pen Addict 249/transcript (section)

== Pen Repairs ==


'''Brad Dowdy:''' But this had a good selection of everything. Lots of vintage, lots of modern. Um, there was two pen repairs or two nib grinders. There were people like Anna and Bob selling things that weren't like straight up, you know, with traditional pen show fare. Um, like for example, Anna had four vintage typewriters and she sold, sold all four of them. Wow. How cool is that? That's really cool. Like that says a lot about like the type of vibe that the show was, show was, it was very cool. And of course, Anna had the new, uh, coloring notebooks, the ink swab testers. Oh my God. I just got the name.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Um, get it, get it, get it. I just got it. Why is it taking, I don't think I said,

'''Brad Dowdy:''' if I said it out loud, I must've done right. Unless you, until you say it fast. Yeah. If you're reading it as with the, with the dashes, I mean like everything is perfect about the name.

'''Myke Hurley:''' It's just hilarious. Oh my God. I can't believe I just got it. Hey Myke, welcome to the banana. It's a pun guys. Wow. Do you have your coloring book? Yeah. Coloring. Coloring. Oh wow. I got it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's really funny. I like it. It's amazing. And, uh, they sold up, they had great feedback on that and sold a bunch of them. So it was really, really cool. I mean, I had a blast and just like a complete

'''Myke Hurley:''' blast. Something that you did that I thought was hilarious, uh, was you made up little badges or there were badges made up, uh, to, to finally try and settle the Safari versus AL star debate. There were an orange badge that said hashtag Safari forever. And one that said hashtag all star always. And, uh, so what was the deal here? Were people kind of making their votes?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So this was a hundred percent Ana's idea. She texted me like a couple of weeks before the show. She says, Hey, I think I want to make pins for our Safari versus AL star battle. Um, that we could give out at the pin show. I said, Oh my God, that's an awesome idea. So she got the pins made and brought onto the show. So when we were talking to people, you know, and if, if it came up, um, you know, we would ask them, you know, to pick a side and some people wouldn't, and some people would say neither, which is funny. Um, and then a lot of people were picking, you know, either the Safari or the all-star. And it was just a fun thing that we can do. We'll have the pins, um, at the Atlanta pin show as well. Um, although the rest of the order actually left them behind and Lisa's going to bring them to me in Atlanta. So come see myself or Ana in Atlanta and choose your team. Um, Safari forever. Yeah. Safari forever. And it was just a fun, like we wore them all weekend long and people were asking where they could get those. And it allowed us to have like fun conversations, you know, about the Lamy and that's what it's all about. Just having fun, you know, do silly stuff like that to, you know, open up the conversation and do silly things and, you know, put a smile on people's face. It's pretty cool. So what purchases did you make

'''Myke Hurley:''' at the show? I can't imagine that walking around all of the time really did much good for you. I bet

'''Brad Dowdy:''' it was worse than usual. In fact, well, the kicker was I bought those two pins essentially before the show. So I was kind of tapped out before the show even happened. And I wasn't, I didn't know those were coming on the Thursday before the pin show and they both came. They both just happened to get there on Thursday. So I wasn't really expecting that. So on Friday, I don't think I bought anything, but like you say, you know, you end up walking around. It was, it was different to be able to walk around and talk and hang out with vendors and go through and learn about some of the pins and things. And on Saturday was the first pin I bought was a small, excuse me, platinum pocket pin. I need to take some more pictures of it's like the pilot elite 95 or sailor like sailor pilot and platinum. I'll make these old school looking pocket pins. Um, you know, there's small plastic barrels, small black plastic plastic barrels, gold trim in a kind of integrated looking nibs, um, 18 karat gold nibs or 14 karat gold nibs. And this was, I have a pilot one. I have a sailor one. So this was a platinum one and I thought it was cool. It was only 40 bucks. So I was like, yeah, I'll have this one. Um, it was brand new. It had never been inked before. So that's another pin I haven't inked up yet. It's just, I haven't inked up anything that I bought. Um, um, you know, at the show. So I love that pen. It's just a neat pen. It's kind of one of those pens, like the Kaweco's at the previous LA pen show. I like the pocket pen stuff. That's the kind of aesthetic that appeals to me. And that one's just another one like that. And I mean, for 40 bucks, I couldn't pass that up. I mean, it's not an expensive pen by any means. I didn't get some hot deal on it or anything. It's just a cool to have pen. Um, and that was it on Saturday. And then on Sunday, it was pretty quiet at the show and all throughout the show, Friday and Saturday, I learned so much about vintage pens just from talking to some of like the Arkansas pen club members that have been doing this for decades. Um, there were some serious big time collectors there with monstrous vintage, rare collections. Um, where we could talk about these things and be able to sit and spend some time with a lot of people. I learned so much about vintage pens. I mean, believe me, I know, uh, like one half of 1% of what they know, but still it's like, I have the, I got the bug at this show for the first time, because it's the first time I've been able to walk around and focus on learning and sitting with people, picking their brains. Hey, tell me about this pen. Why is this pen this way? What's the difference between this one and this one? That kind of thing. So I found, I did pick up two vintage Schaefer's. Um, one of them's called a tuck away, which like we were talking about the platinum a moment ago, it's a small pen. And I just love the design. Um, it's a shorter pen design with a short clip and it posts, you know, to the full size. But what made me purchase this pen was this nib on it. And I'm, I'll take some pictures. Like I owe all kinds of pictures and details on all these pens. I just have to get to it. When I opened the cap on this pen, I could see that the nib was like a needle. And not only is it practically a needle, it's firm as a nail, which on a small pen, I like having a small writing experience. Like on my small pens, I don't normally have like a stub nib, right? That kind of goes against what I'm doing. So to have this type of nib on this pen, and I looked at several of them, I bought it from Myke Beiler, which some of you have been to pen shows will know Myke and his brother, Tim, they're from Arkansas. Right. Um, and part of the pen club there. So, you know, I got to spend, you know, an hour with Myke, going through all these Schaefer's. Why is this? Why is that? And he had maybe five or six of these tuckaways. And this was the only one with this nib like this. And I said, I think I have to have this just for the way it writes. And besides the fact that it looks cool, I getting into vintage, it's like you don't buy, it's almost like a lot of people don't buy all the vintage, right? You focus on certain things. Everyone I talked to had some focus. It was Parker, this, or it was Schaefer. Yeah, you have your thing. You have your thing. And you're always like hunting down your thing. Like you don't hunt down all the things because there's a million of them.

'''Myke Hurley:''' You'd have to buy every pen ever made. Right. And there's only, you know, there's only one person in the world that can do that. And that's LeRex.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That's hilarious. That's true. Love you, LeRex.