Editing The Pen Addict 522/transcript (section)

== Hashtag Ask TPA Questions ==


'''Myke:''' All right. Let's finish out today's episode with some hashtag ask TPA questions. First comes from Jamie. It says, I applaud Lamy for their widely available left-handed nibs. But then I look down at my Southpaw writing style and see the upside down logo mocking me as I write. I'm looking at you too, Blackwing. Do you know of any pen company that has gone all in with a true left-handed pen? I love this question.

'''Brad:''' Such a good question. I was sitting here going, yeah, that's a great question.

'''Myke:''' To put a bit of context in this, just because like, you know, me and Jamie write similarly, where we are not on the left-handed, but we are, I think, what is known as like an overhooker. So like we kind of, our nibs are the other way around. Yeah, you bend it around. Right-handed. Right. So when I'm writing, I'm looking at the nib and the Lamy is upside down, right? To my eyes. So like, I think that this is a cool idea. And I don't, honestly, like if you're going to make a left-handed nib anyway, just do that. Why not? It's like upside down land.

'''Brad:''' Yeah, you're already doing the extra work for the nib, right? To put the oblique or whatever. Oh, and also, you know. Whatever grind you're going to put on there.

'''Myke:''' I know this much. We can reference what we were just talking about. It's the upside down, right? Yes, yes.

'''Brad:''' Also the upside down. You did know about that. That's good. That's good.

'''Myke:''' I don't know what that means exactly, but I think it's some kind of alternate reality. It is a stranger thing.

'''Brad:''' It is. It is. It's a good way to put it. Yeah, like no one, no, I don't know anyone that's going all in, but I think the, what you're discussing is exactly right. If you're going to go partway for a single skew in your product line, go all the way and make the aesthetics left-handed friendly as well, right? So we talk about, you know, I've talked in the past when I broke my wrist, I had one pencil that was left-handed, right? Where the stamping on the barrel was correctly oriented for a left-handed writer. And this is out of like a hundred, say a hundred pencils. I found one that was oriented for left-handed usage to look cool, right? To look appropriate. And like, I do think it should be more of a thing, especially like in the stationary world, there's left-handedness is so common because people are actually searching for the good things to work the best with them for their left-handed writing and to not have a company like lean into that a little bit more. Like that would be cool to see.

'''Myke:''' This comes from Franz. One of the grapevine is the pilot's going to release the Hiroshizuku inks in the smaller pilot 30 milliliter bottles. What do you think will happen to the other, to the even smaller 15 milliliter bottles that they sell? I imagine that that price point would be far too close between the two sizes.

'''Brad:''' So I haven't seen this and I don't know exactly what's going to happen, but this is completely a shrinkflation move, right? Right. To charge more for less, you know, relatively, it'll be a lower total price, but you're getting less. So it's actually more per milliliter type of situation. It's interesting for pilot because they are one of the few companies I recall ever lowering a product line price. From when I started buying Hiroshizuku inks to now the 50 milliliter bottles, they lowered the price and it was great. It's one of the best inks and makes it one of the best values. And they haven't raised the price as, you know, all of this has been going on in the world, right? Where everything is increasing a price. The Hiroshizuku inks have stayed the same. So now I'm wondering if this is, you know, kind of their solution to the raising prices issue to change. So my hope is that they're still going to be one of the best value products out there. I really, I don't see how the 15 milliliter glass bottles is a great product line for them. Those have to be, they're already like not priced well. They have to be just really expensive to manufacture and make in the profit margin. They're really small. Not great. Yeah. Like they're comfortable. It's a, it's one of, it's a great concept, right? Like let's make all these inks for you to try. And I love having less ink. Like I love not having to buy, you know, 50 or 60 milliliters sometimes, but I'm not sure that the 15 milliliter bottle needs to continue as I'm literally staring at one of my desk right now because they're so cool. Like I am totally pro these 15 milliliter bottles, but I could see how those are just not cost effective whatsoever. So will they combine everything into a 30 milliliter bottle? Who knows? We haven't seen the cartridges yet. They're apparently delayed release. We were hoping that we're going to get Orochizuku ink cartridges by now. It might be next year at this point. So I imagine it's just a cost type of situation. If they're going to rearrange the Orochizuku ink lineup, we'll see. But I imagine it's going to be just like a shrinkflation move. But I'd be okay if the 15 milliliter bottles went away.

'''Myke:''' And from Willem today who asks, whatever happened to the stark fountain pen stolen from the Montegrappa warehouse in the great Game of Thrones heist of 2017? Please update us and then maybe Netflix can make a documentary like the one about the Isabella Gardiner Museum unsolved robbery.

'''Brad:''' How great was that story? I'd forgotten about that. That's my favorite. It's one of my favorites. It was a great all-time pen story. Again, another show Myke has not watched, which is totally... Look, Myke actually ended up playing the long game in that one and won. Game of Thrones? Yeah. But there were several houses that Montegrappa made pens for. Lannister, Stark. I'm completely blanking now because I haven't watched it in years. But say like five houses for the families in Game of Thrones. And when they went to launch the products, do like the worldwide launch, the pens got shipped to the warehouse to be distributed out around to all the Montegrappa distributors and dealers. And the Stark models, it was probably one of the two best looking pens. The group of Stark pens got essentially hijacked. They got stolen from a truck. And so all the Starks were gone and they only had like four, the four of the five houses. They ended up having to remake them, I believe. But whatever happened to the stolen ones, I don't know. I'll have to follow up on that and see if I can find anything out. But that was a good times in the pen world because we're all just like, what? And it's like, how is someone going to move these pens? Because they're very specific, right? It's not like, you know, you've lifted toilet paper and it's just generic, right? This is a very specific item that was now lifted. Or even like an iPhone. Like, I mean, I know those are tracked like serially and stuff like that, but that's a way more generic market. What is the secondary market for a Stark fountain pen?

'''Brad:''' So it's pretty funny. So I'll have to do some follow up, see if there was any.

'''Myke:''' I would love to know if you could get more to that story.

'''Brad:''' I'm going to write myself a note and I will email when I'm done here.

'''Myke:''' That would be hilarious. If you'd like to send in a question of your own, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskTPA. You can use question mark AskTPA in the RelayFM members Discord, which is probably the best place to listen to the show live. We broadcast the show live every week at, what is this? We start at 10?

'''Brad:''' 10 US Eastern.

'''Myke:''' It's 10 Eastern we start at. 10 Eastern. We record live every Wednesday at 10 a.m. Eastern. You can go to Relay.fm slash live and you can listen there, but you can also listen in our Discord and we have a live chat in the Discord as well. If you want to hang out with us while we record, you can. If you want to find some more information, some of the links for this week's episode, you can go to Relay.fm slash PenAddict slash 522.

'''Myke:''' You can find Brad online. He's over at PenAddict.com, Spokedesign.com. You can go to Twitter where he's at Dowdyism. He's PenAddict on Instagram.

'''Myke:''' What was the... Wait. Jenny's something. Jenny's.

'''Brad:''' Photo Jenny. Photo Jenny. That's it.

'''Myke:''' Photo Jenny on eBay.

'''Brad:''' Hey, the auction's done. Auction's done. I'll be shipping out thousands of dollars worth of Black Wings today.

'''Myke:''' Yeah, buddy. Cha-ching.

'''Brad:''' That's crazy. That's awesome. That's crazy. So yeah, I'm working on that today. So I don't know if any listeners were involved in that, but yeah, we were shipping Black Wings today. Surely some.

'''Myke:''' I doubt it. I am at iMike, I-M-Y-K-E, and I make some products you can find at CortexMerch.com. A5-ish.

'''Brad:''' A5-ish. It's too late for me to yell at you. Too late in the game for me to yell.

'''Myke:''' A5-ish. A5-ish. You can go and check it out for yourself. Thanks to Squarespace and Uni Pizza Ovens for the support of this episode, and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. 

'''Brad:''' Goodbye, Brad.

[[Category:Podcast Transcripts]]
[[Category:The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript]]