Editing The Pen Addict 254/transcript (section)

== Pen Show Purchases ==


'''Myke Hurley:''' As always, of course. Thanks, Pen Shelley. All right. So, we spoke last week about some of the stuff that we bought at the pen show, but there were more days. You know, there was still Sunday. Sunday tends to be a shopping day. So, what did you walk away with from the pen show overall?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' So, three new pens, two that I purchased, one that was given to both of us. So, the one I mentioned on the show, which I didn't really, we didn't have time to necessarily go into it. There was a bum rush of this table on Saturday morning when, so this lady set up and no one knew who she was. At least none of us. I've never seen her before. She wasn't there on Friday. She gets her table, starts setting up, and then I forget who came over and told me. She was in the same room just down the aisle from where the knock table was. And I think it was Stacy. Yeah, she's laughing in the chat room, so it was probably her. She said, hey, she's got these Sailor Sapporo minis on her table for sale. So, I was like, oh, cool. Let me go look at them. And she had about eight of them. And she had a yellow one, which is, this is a pen that's discontinued. It's one that I've always wanted very much. And I would have taken any color. But she had yellow. She had blue. She had a bunch of black and rhodium trim, black and gold trim. I think that was it. And I was sitting there looking at them. We were going through, checking out the nibs. And our friend Casey was with us, too. And Casey goes, how much? And the lady goes, $50 sold. That's all I hear, like in my left ear. So, I said, okay. At that time, Stacy had the yellow one in her hand. I said, if you don't want that one, I'm going to buy that one. I said, and if not, I'll get one of these black ones. She's like, no, you can have it. So, that was really nice. So, I have a $50 Sailor Sapporo mini. So, the story gets even better. So, after we made our purchases, which is what you do before you start telling other people, I noticed that this lady also had Sailor Shalanas. Which, if you're not familiar with the Shalana, it's a long, skinny pen. It's kind of a fountain pen. It's kind of reminiscent of a big crystal. So, it's long and skinny, but it's metal. It has this really small nib. And I know that Lisa Van Es's husband, Myke, collects these. And this lady must have had 20 of them on the table. So, I said, well, I need to go tell Lisa that these are here because there might be some that Myke doesn't have. Because they don't really do them much anymore. You know, one or two designs a year. So, I went over there. And I'm telling Lisa. And then there was, like, several other people at the table. I was like, yeah, and they got these Sailor Sapporo minis. So, we had a little conga line heading back over to this table. And I think everyone had just wiped her out, like, in the next five minutes of all the cool stuff. And Lisa Van Es got a Shalana for Myke. And all the Sapporo minis were gone. And as it turns out, I started seeing people going over to greet this lady. And I'm sorry I keep calling her this lady because I don't know her name. I apologize for that. But she is apparently an old sailor distributor from the area. So, like, a bunch of the local people, like Mark Bacchus, knew exactly who she was, right, by name. And so, this was all just stuff that she had, I guess, sitting around the house. And it was time to offload it. And she did. And it ended up she had some Sailor Bespoke nibs in there that I missed. Like, I didn't spend enough time digging through anything. So, people got, you know, some really, really good buys from this table. And then by Sunday afternoon, she was gone. And she didn't, I mean, Saturday afternoon, she was gone and wasn't there Sunday. So, she blew out whatever she needed to. She had some really, really killer stuff. Obviously, because you're going to see a lot of pictures of Sailor Minis floating around now on Instagram.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I went for coffee for 20 minutes.

'''Myke Hurley:''' 20 minutes I'm gone from the pen show. So, we were on the hunt to try and find one of those unicorn Frappuccinos because they thought it would be funny to video me drinking one. And we couldn't find one. The Starbucks was out. Exactly. So, I had a coffee there with Stephen and Mark. Came back. And everyone's walking around with these Sailor Minis, waving them in my face. Look how good this nib is. Look how lovely this color is. $50.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' All these minis had weird nibs in it. There were Zoom nibs, music nibs, just stuff you just don't see. It was crazy. Sounds great. I'm glad I got one. Yeah, I'm sure you are. Because I've been wanting one for years. Just not available.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, that was... I will say, though, I'm not too bothered about it because I really don't like the size of the pen. And I don't like that you kind of have to post it and it's got the screw, like the thread to post it. It's not my kind of pen. Would I have spent $50 on one? Yes, I would have. But it's not like she had a pink love in there or anything. Right, right, right. Because I would have been elbowing people out of the way to get to one of those things.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, you could tell this was stuff from whenever she had last had inventory, I'm guessing. Like, there was nothing, like, recent in there. So, it was good. So, that was, like, between Friday and Saturday, that was the only money I spent. You know, $50 on that pen. And then Sunday, we were really slow, like you were mentioning. Sunday's the day that I generally get to shop at a pen show because I can spend some time walking around. And I'd seen a few people bringing over Ryan Crusack's Legend model, which is the newest model he introduced last year. And I bought the L14 model from him, all wood barrel, at the San Francisco pen show last year. And I loved it. And since then, he's introduced a model called the L16, which is a little bit wider diameter barrel, a little denser, a little heavier. And several people came over to me showing me that they had bought those. And the new ones have little, I guess, jewel or stone type of inlays in the finial, which is real subtle. He has some, like, black ebony wood and we'll get, like, this tiger's eye, you know, jewel in there. And it's real subtle. Like, it's flat. Like, you can't see it if you're looking at the profile of the pen, right? You have to point it at you and look at it. So, I was going over there looking.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Wow, I found one of those with a tiger's eye.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah, so he has those on his side. They're stunning. Absolutely stunning. And so, I just wanted to go see and check those out because I actually like the feel of the L16 more than the L14 that I already own. So, I'm over there. And one of the things that's always fascinated me with Ryan is he does scrimshaw work on pens. It's moose antler. So, it's naturally. Scrimshaw work. So, it's basically the scratching of an antler or in the old days, it was ivory. You basically take, like, a knife or a nail or something and you etch in a design. So, it's basically bone artwork, if you will. Yep. So, he uses naturally. I don't know if the word is shedded. But naturally shedded moose antler for his barrels. And he's always had them. He's always done them. But I never liked the section on the ones he was doing. But I love the artwork. Well, he decided to make the scrimshaw barrel in the L16, which is the legend shape barrel design, which is my favorite design. So, it was kind of like a no-brainer. It was like one of those things where everything kind of lines up perfectly. Like, it's the size and shape of the pen that I want with the material and artwork that I want. And I just had to have it. He also, you know, he also flame-torched the nib. So, it just matches the artwork on the pen very, very closely. So, the artwork is called Tempest. So, it's basically a ship, a large ship riding on a wave. And, you know, it's kind of an ocean scene. And it's just stunning. I haven't inked it up yet just because I've been so busy. And I haven't taken any pictures of it yet just because I've been so busy. I want to wait to ink it up. But I did find a picture of the exact pen. Maybe not the exact one that I have, but the exact model he does. I think this is like a numbered 150 of the 150 units of them. But he does lots of limited runs because all of this stuff is done by hand. And it's just fantastic. I'm in love with the pen so far. And I know I'll love it even more once I get it inked up and writing with it.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So, it's very protein.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' That was it. I didn't buy any ink. I actually, I was so wanting to ink the Tempest up that I was over at the Anderson shopping for ink. I was like, you're dumb. You have so many blue inks at home. Just wait till you get home. I was like, so I somehow talked myself out of not buying another bottle of ink.

'''Myke Hurley:''' Why were you going to go with blue?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Huh?

'''Myke Hurley:''' Why were you going to?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because ocean. I want an ocean.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I thought that would be the case, but I wanted to check. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Duh. It's like me. Like, my Maui Makai, my canalea, I waited till I got home to fill it with rubber oster. Is it Fire and Ice it's called? No. Right. Yeah. The blue ink. Yeah. Right? And I put a picture in the show notes, or video actually, of my canalea with ink in it. Yeah. So you can see it sloshing around because I had dropped it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. Yeah.

'''Myke Hurley:''' So have you seen it? Did you see the video?

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Not yet. I got to go watch that. I don't want to pull it up. It's in the show notes. Yeah, I don't want to.

'''Myke Hurley:''' I'm going to destroy your connection if you do it right.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Yeah. So I'll wait till we're done, but I will take a look at that.

'''Myke Hurley:''' See it.

'''Brad Dowdy:''' Because I want to see how that looks. I want to see how that looks. So what do you think now that you have it like inked up and rolling?