The Pen Addict 585/transcript

From RelayFM, this is the Pen Addict, episode 585. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace and Enigma Stationery. My name is Myke Hurley, and I'm joined by Mr. Brad Doughty. Myke Hurley, how are you?

I'm good, Brad. How are you? I'm very good. I'm very good. I'm anxious to talk pens, as always. Unbelievably anxious, apparently, by my pre-game hype train that I'm on. I'm feeling it today, Myke. Who knows what's going to happen in this episode?

It needs caffeine. Just put the ink straight in the veins, you know? That's right. Right. Chokuro. We're going to put the black as black ink right into It Matches My Heart, Myke. Good way to clog up the old arteries. So I want to talk about a few things today, especially this first one, which may not have even been on your radar.

It was on my radar, kind of, but I saw something interesting happening at this past weekend's London Pen Show, or I should say this past Sunday's London Pen Show. Yep. In that, it seems to be escalating in a very positive way. I agree. I, you know, like, it's what I do is follow, like, stationary stuff online.

So seeing things on Instagram, seeing, you know, lots of pictures from the show, seeing all these things, more than I would normally see from the London Pen Show. And that's, this is a twice a year show, Sunday only, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., I think. And I think they might have, like, an early bird.

And it's part of the UK Pen Show's conglomerate, which does four different shows across the country. - They have the London show, the Birmingham show, the Newcastle show, and I think the curiously named Northern show. Yeah, I was going to say, is there a Scotland show? Is that the Northern show?

Couldn't tell you. Northern. Yeah. This was in Chester. I don't know why they called it the Northern show, but they do. Gotcha. So, yeah, I just noticed that, too, that there is now, like, an official kind of tour. Like, there's a pen show tour, and this singular group is putting on these events.

And we've talked about the London Pen Show in the past. You've been to the London Pen Show, probably pre-COVID. Yeah, but, like, pre-COVID, right? Yeah. Like, not in years.

Nope. And it's always been, like, a singular one-day show, right? Pretty much. Yep. Yeah, I think they've done it over a weekend in the past, but I've only ever been one day, and I always found the experience to be lacking. And this year, it seems like they have changed that.

Yeah, and I don't know exactly what it is, except they're getting buy-in from a lot of vendors and a lot of, like, stationary people on Instagram, just, like, attendees. It kind of almost felt like a destination show this year. Yeah. In a weird way. And I think it just, like, happened naturally.

Like, I don't think there's any, like, there was any, like, big game plan to, like, have this happen. But there was, like, just this coordination of people there. And I'm going to put a bunch of links in the show notes so y'all can go check out the goings-on.

And I'll talk about them individually as we go. But, like, I'm seeing some makers from the United States heading over, like, Adolphus from Derail's Pens was there. From Canada, we saw Sean from London Pen Co. We obviously have all, several, you know, the Londoners, the UK, and the European, side of things that were there, which is great to see.

I saw Annabelle there from Strings and Pedals and Apple Boom. And I don't know. Yeah, Galen Leather was there. Toyoka Craft, Brad. That was crazy. Yeah, I missed out big time.

I missed out. Look, here's the thing. I have disconnected my brain from the London Pen Show because I went multiple times and it didn't give me what I was looking for out of a pen show. But it feels, I think this is post-COVID, they've reshuffled and have put more focus into it.

So I'm going to be paying more attention again to the London Pen Show. There's one in March. I don't know if it will be of a similar vibe, but I will be endeavoring to make that show. Yeah, like, seeing someone like Toyoka Craft make the trip for, like, literally a six-hour show.

Like, that's what I typed in here. I said, this looked, my note in our document today is, this looked amazing. Nevermore have I wanted to fly across the Atlantic for a six-hour pen show. Yep. Because that's literally what it is.

Like, it is literally 10 to 4 on a Sunday in a hotel ballroom. But the way it went off this year and everything I'm seeing about it and all the positivity I've seen around it. Like, I know a bunch of just attendees traveled from, like, the U.S. to go to the show this year.

A bunch of my friends were over there. I don't know what happened and I don't know why nobody told me about it. You know what I mean? Well, same. This is one of the things I wouldn't have been able to make it this past weekend.

I had, like, a family thing going on. But I opened up Instagram and saw Taoka Craft was there and I was like, what's going on? What's happened? Wait, what's happened? So, that was very surprising to me. So, let me give a couple of Instagram shout outs.

So, y'all can go see the first one. John from St. John's Pens, who I believe is over there in the U.K., but took a bunch of great pictures of the event, showed a lot of the ongoings, a lot of the vendors, a lot of the attendees. So, this was kind of, like, my favorite just kind of go-to site to just kind of see or my go-to feed to see the ongoings there.

Then we also have London Pen Co., which is not London, England. Again, Myke, this is London, Ontario, Canada. No, that's just weird, right? That's just weird, right?

I feel like they're just trying to trick you. You know? What's going on now? He has every right to use the London as well, given his location. I think there's bananas that they came over.

Do you think they got lost, Brad? Like, they got on the wrong plane or something? Maybe. Did he just fly in a circle? He was like, oh, I'm going to go home.

He's like, oh, no, I'm in London. Do you think that's what happened? I reckon that's not happening. There were probably many London Pen Co. jokes at the show on Sunday between 10 a.m. I would have liked to have seen them just put up a banner.

If it was a fan of the planet just says, no, not that one, that would have been pretty great. That would have been great there. Penultimate Dave was there, who is like the OG pen reviewer in the UK, has a great YouTube channel. I always love following what he's up to.

He had a lot of good videos, a lot of good pictures from the show. And then I just threw up the Toyocacraft image just to taunt you a little bit. They had a huge display. Like, this is crazy to me.

So I actually, I should reach out to them. I don't know if I have Coru's direct email. Just out of curiosity to see how it went. Or maybe I can check with some of the other vendors if they talk to him and see how it went.

But yeah, this was impressive. Like, I'm not going to lie. And I am now, like, I need to put this on my list for like, you know, a, it's just like the Dutch pen show. Like, it's a big deal to travel for like a six-hour pen show.

And the Dutch pen show is pretty much the same thing. But the vibes there and just like the look and the feel and the vendors and the attendees. It just looked like I wanted to be there. Like, I was jealous.

I guess that's the long and the short of it. I was jealous. And that's a pretty good place to be if you're presenting like this thing out there on the internet that other people who weren't there want to be there. That's a pretty good sign. So it felt pretty good to me.

Well, I just bought my early bird tickets for the March. Nice. What day is it? March the 3rd. Okay. So early, early in March. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. So, yeah. I'm not tempted to that.

I mean, I am tempted, but I know where I'll be. It would be a bit weird for you to do. I don't need two trips to London. Yeah, I was going to say, it would be a bit weird to do March and then July again.

Spoiler alert, like, which we already talked about. I'll be there in July. That would be a lot. Maybe they should move the show.

Just for me. Yeah. Hey, can we get an addition to the calendar? Brad's London pen show. Brad's show. The Brad's show. Yeah. Brad's London pen show. And then I'll pick the date that works the best for me.

Then everyone can just work around that. I think that's probably what we need to do. Who wouldn't want to do that, you know? Yeah. I'll reach out. I'll see if I can get on their calendar.

Yeah. All right. We're going to take a hard turn here, Myke, and talk about pen cleaning. I didn't, I don't think I mentioned these on the show before. Okay. But I came back from the Washington DC pen show with some accessories from Shone Design. So Ian is always in the lab making fun stuff and useful things for us pen lovers.

And given his Monarch nib, which is like a cylindrical nib where the feed is like really, fixed is the wrong term, but it's not easily disassemblable. Like a Yovo nib, like you're not just pulling out the nib and the feed and the housing and just disassembling it. And he has this tool that could help you like flush out these nibs.

He's like, well, I'm going to make this and I think it will work really good for the Monarch. Well, how about I make it for other fittings and other pens? So what this is, is a syringe add-on, like it's a syringe tip. And there's different models where they fit different fittings.

And when I say that, the little post that comes out the back of your nib from the housing, the kind of like the connection between either like the ink cartridge or converter, there's different sizes of these. Like Yovo has a size, right? And then you know, like if you're using something, you know, if you have a pilot pen and a Yovo pen, they don't fit the same converter.

So they, you can imagine they have a different little fitting there. And Ian has made different shapes that attach to syringes that allow you to flush these pens very easily. So I wanted to talk about these real quick because I came home with the Yovo size, the pilot size, and the sailor size from DC. And there's a few other ones.

He's going to have platinum coming and lami coming and things like that. So they'll eventually be on there. And I assume that's to like account for the different fitments of those nibs, I guess. Yep. So what I've done in the past is had my nasal aspirators, right? The booger suckers.

And I would actually have two because you needed the fittings to be a little bit different. You needed them to work a little bit different way from a Yovo type of fitting to a pilot or sailor or platinum type of fitting. Well, these kind of cut to the chase and attach right on there for a better seal to draw water in and out.

And that's really all you do. So you take whatever fitting you need on your syringe. And they come with syringes, right? But you can add a higher capacity syringe.

Like if you're a degenerate like me and have lots of syringes for pen cleaning. Like this is a 301 level class, 401 level class. Like not just everyone's going out and buying these. But if you have a lot of pens and do a lot of pen cleaning, a lot of pens inked up, these are going to come very, very much in handy.

Because they're like 10 bucks each. Which like individually, like that sounds expensive. But for someone like myself who might clean a batch of 15 pens, man, that just makes it so much easier. So I actually did a live cleaning on Twitch yesterday.

So I have the little snippet. I have the time stamp marked if you want to see this in action. And the best thing I can say about it is it just works. And this is how I want to clean my pens now.

Like it's easier, simpler, and less messy than a nasal aspirator. Because the fitting of the tip that you use is perfectly matched to the type of pen you want to clean. And I really liked it. And I really appreciated that.

So I just wanted to point these out to people who may not know this was a thing. So I just think it's a really cool thing when you get makers making like this is not his main business, right? Ian makes pens. And then he made a nib. And then he wanted to think about cleaning the nib.

And then he thought, well, maybe I could make a little tool that would help do that. And then, hey, that might work for other things. And boom, now it's a product. And that's the kind of thing I love about this community.

And why I love talking about things as simple or as just boring as cleaning a pen. And you have these little accessories that make things easier. And I love them. Is this a worthwhile experience?

Like do you think this is a worthwhile accessory thing to have? Yes. For, again, for someone like even like you, like who has less pens than me, but you have a lot of pens in use. You have different models like Sailor Platinum. Like you have a lot of those two models of pens and then several Yovo type pens.

Like those types of things would be good. Like it's not something you use every day or every week or in your case every six months. Every year or so. Yeah. Brad, I have so many empty pens.

It's gotten so much worse since the studio, like bringing pens to the studio because the inks aren't here. So they just sit there empty, you know, and then at some point within the next few months, I'm going to get fed up. Like I'm barely using any of my fountain pens at the moment because they're all empty and I'm just too lazy to go fill them up.

And I also have like a million Mark 1s all over the place. So I'm using those a lot more, but I'm disappointed because I want to mix things up a bit. But I'm not doing that because my inks aren't here. But then I don't want to bring the inks here.

It's like a whole thing, Brad. So maybe I should just bring the inks here. I think that's probably what I'm going to do. I don't know. I think at this point, if I'm you, I'm bringing the pens home and cleaning them maybe with a lure.

Well, I'm not saying I won't clean them, but I'm just meaning like as a long term solution, right? Oh, I see. Because I'm not getting the same level of use. But then the other issue is a lot of the inks I use are Adina's inks. And I don't think I was going to be able to get away with bringing all those here.

Oh, like this is a conversation we should have. Well, because she bought all those sailor ones. I know. I know. And you're not allowed to use them. Let's explore this for a second.

No, no, no. I'm allowed to use them. But I don't want to remove them from her office at home, right? And like they're the ones I want to use. So like that feels a bit mean to be like, oh, I like this ink.

I'm going to take it now. And like you just can't use it anymore unless you come to the studio. It feels a bit mean. So like I'm not going to do that.

But then that means I'm not filling my fountain pens enough. And so now I have like unused pens, which I'm upset about. I do feel you on that. Having kind of two very disparate locations.

Yeah. You just need to take a box of ink one day. Yeah. And a few cleaning supplies to the office. And then probably what I should do is I should buy the sailor inks that I like the most and then just have those bottles here. Yeah, because honestly, those aren't big bottles to begin with.

You know, they're like 20 or 25 milliliters. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they go quick. So like you're going to need to buy them anyway. And, you know, just continue to use them.

And those are good quality inks that are going to last you a long time. And, you know, you can just re-ink, re-ink, re-ink and have a good experience with those. Yeah, not a bad idea. Ship them to the office.

Ship them to the office. Well, I can just bring them. You know, I don't need to ship them, but that would be a bit of a nightmare. You can just bring them.

I'm also outmitting to our home reminders list now. Bring inks to studio. Also buy new sailor inks for... There we go. That is added to the task list.

All right. Well, I know somewhere else you can buy pens and inks and other products you love. This episode is brought to you by Enigma Stationery, who offer unique items made from in-house designs, along with top brands and hard-to-find imports. We have some very exciting news.

Enigma are now accepting pre-orders for the Enigma Ink Vent 2023. I'm not sure if it's... I assume it's 2023, right? Maybe 2023, yeah. I get so strange about this, because most of the things I do around this year, we call it 2024, even... Never mind. This is their...

This is Enigma's Advent Style set that includes a custom nib-shaped stand, which I know all the rage. We were talking about this a few weeks ago. Oh, sick. Okay, sorry. I'm distracting you now. I'm distracting you now.

It's a special gift for listeners of this show. Maybe it's for everyone, but I'm going to say for listeners of this show. For a spoiler-free experience, there are scratch-off sheets provided that allow each ink's identity to remain a mystery until it's revealed. That is next-level stuff.

Printed labels for each sample are also included in a no-spoilers sealed envelope, so you can take them out and put them on later on. This is a great way to indulge your pen hobby over the festive season. Pre-orders end on October 28th. The sets will ship in November.

It's $125. Do not miss out on this. This is so good. I love the work that Enigma have gone to, to make sure that you won't see them. I think that that is so cool, to have the scratch-off sheets and stuff.

That's some next-level stuff, Brad. Yeah, and it comes with the ink stand. When I interrupted your read, it was when I finally saw the picture. Yeah. Of what was happening here.

And I just thought it was rad. And so, like you were alluding, you said this, and I was thinking the same thing. Like what Dan and his family does at Enigma is just awesome. They all just kind of, you can tell they're really into this because they want to take what has become a popular seasonal thing in these inkvent calendars and do it their own way.

Yep. And it's so special. And people who are really into this stuff couldn't help but just love what they do and all the little extras and all the little unique aspects of it. And I don't know. I just think it's pretty cool.

So, you got me excited now because I didn't see this before the read. So, I'm going to have to go scope this out. Because I've never participated in an inkvent. This would get me to participate.

They also have a no stand option. Like if you just want the bottles, you can do that. And it's a bit cheaper. But I just, also like looking at the page, it says each set will include samples from at least eight different brands, including Teranishi, Qatar, Troublemaker, Birmingham Penco, Sailor, Ferris Wheel Press, Kingdom Note, Kakamori, Panoia, and Colorverse.

So, it could include those brands. Yes. So, like there's other stores that do things like this. But like the main was Diamine and it's all Diamine inks. So, this is a good way to get some other inks in there.

I think this is a fun way to do a sample experience, you know. And I would say this interests me more than the Diamine one for that reason. It's like I don't really want all Diamine inks. Like it's not just about for this kind of thing for me.

I don't even really feel like it's so much about colors as it is about trying different brands. Because I kind of would want to see what the properties were of each brand's inks as well as their colors. So, this is a great way to do that. And even more good news.

I'll go on, Brad. Hang on. I'm going to still talk about this. So, the stand option, there's like eight different materials. And they have all of them pictured.

I'm going through the slides right now. So, they're all really cool looking. So, like I didn't notice that either. Okay. Anyway, continue. Lots of fun colors.

The champagne one looks pretty good to me if you ask me. I think that one looks really nice. But this isn't all that we've got going on. And you think, how can that be?

How can there be more? Well, there is more because Enigma's always got cool stuff going on. So, today I have 2024 planners and calendars available now. You can get Japanese imported items including a Chikawa comic diary or a Mufasan monthly planner.

Travelers 2024, Travelers Town items are available. The Replug Moon character, Midori Hibino and more. So, go now to pre-order your Enigma Ink Event set and browse the 2024 planners and calendars by going to enigmastationary.com slash penaddict. Use the promo code penaddict to check out for a free gift and discounted shipping on orders of over $40 or more.

That is enigmastationary.com slash penaddict and use the code penaddict. Our thanks to Enigma Stationary for the support of this show and RelayFM. I see now why you got mixed up on the dates. We have 2023 Ink Vents and 2024 planners all at one time.

That's too much for my little mind to compute, Brad. All right. There's too many. We need some five-year diaries in there to just like really expand the degeneracy. 20, 29. All right. Shout out of the week. Shout out of the week. This week, Myke. An OG blog.

Matias over at Blystiff always has fun articles that they link to. It's not necessarily like product reviews, but like it's usually like finding stationery out in the wild. They do a lot of how you see things in movies and these are the pens used in movies. And they have one of the coolest reviews or yeah, this was actually a review, but it was from a product.

It was a guest post product. So it was a Lamy 2000 set from a company called DMAG. So it was like a back in the day like corporate gift. But this is from like the 80s or 90s.

I can't remember. This was one of the coolest posts I've seen in a while. I just wanted to make sure everyone went and saw this post, read this post, because there were some just some cool things that Lamy had done for these gift sets. And I just thought it was really neat and unique.

And just go follow Blystiff if you don't already. So love that blog. All right. All right, Myke. I said last week I would give an update on the Panatic 100, which is now changing officially to the Panatic Top 100. How is that different?

Okay. Well, I will tell you. Thank you. So my initial goal was a restrictive one to where I wanted a restriction of 100 fountain pens over $100, essentially. Like that was kind of like the working idea because I have this Toyoka craft box that we covered. We covered a lot in my desk tour recap.

And so the real goal of having this project is to make sure I'm using all these pens that I have. If I'm not using them, I need to sell them. So this was my way to sort things out. So this was my way to sort things out, see what I like and sell the things or rehome or give away or whatever to the things that I don't, right?

It's really kind of like a declutter, de-stash type of situation. I think we should all do whether you have, you know, five pens or in some people's cases, 500 pens, not me. But I have a lot of pens, too many pens, right? And the issue I ran into with that idea and why I just kept putting it off and putting it off is because it had this weird subset of rules that was so restrictive and so questionable.

And it just made me not want to work on it, right? So if I'm taking 100 pens and they're over $100 pens, right? So like the premise was, well, I have a bunch of Kaweco Sports. Like I'm not going to count like 10 Kaweco Sports in this, you know, and they're also like $25 pens and a bunch of Lamy Safaris and a bunch of things like that that I like.

So like I was discounting that. So that was fine. But what I had more of a problem with was a lot of the acquisition of these pens that would meet the over 100 category, a lot of them were gifted to me. And a lot of them were or bought at like a very like large discount or something like that.

And I don't sell pens that were given to me, okay? So that's another little rule, right? Which is common sense. I get a lot of products.

Some of them I keep. A lot of them I give away. Most of the stuff that's given to me, I end up like reviewing and then passing on. I'll give those away myself, right?

But I do keep some. So there ended up being this whole like, well, does this, if I can't sell this pen, does this pen really belong in here? There was so many questions. It was dumb. Like, and I was just frustrating myself because I wanted to get this project done.

So given the fact that there were so many caveats and carve outs of this project, I just said, I just threw my hands up in the air and I said, forget it. I'm just going to make a top 100 of my 100 favorite pens and they're going to go in the box.

And then if a pen does not make that cut, then I think about selling it, right? And the only kind of carve out with that is I'm not going to rank them in like one through 100 order. Yeah. Like that's very pointless. Very pointless. Like I could make like a top 10.

Like that would be fine. Like I could give you like the top 10 out of my 100. But if I'm like trying to like differentiate between pen number 63 and pen number 92, like you can't do that. Like that needs like a wisdom of the crowds kind of thing to make a top.

See, this is interesting to me is I'm really, and I don't need you to explain this. It's not a problem. I really, I feel like I don't understand the difference too much, but that's kind of, I think the point is that you set this very specific thing that was too difficult when really you should have just done the second thing first.

Like these are just 100. Those are my favorites. That are my favorites. And they're all going to go in the box and then I'll get rid of the other stuff.

Right. And that's, I got what I was getting, I was forgetting the end goal of this is to sell pens or to declutter, de-stash, right? That's really the goal. Not to like prove a point of, hey, this is Brad's top 100 pens. It's no, it's like I need to think about what I have and, you know, kind of coordinate what I have in the best way possible.

And then if there's extra stuff, something needs to be done with the extra stuff. That's pretty much where we're at. It does still serve the function of your 100 pens though. Yep. Which is good to have and I think is exciting and interesting and I think people will be keen as I have been keen and have been bugging you about this project for ages.

I really want to know what's getting on this list. Yep. So I've started and I've been sharing this with members the past two weeks and I'm going to continue this. So I've done 20 pens a week for two weeks already now. And so that means I have three more weeks to go.

And when I'm done, when I finish the top 100, I will share the spreadsheet I'm building publicly. Like, you know, I want everyone to be able to participate in this in some way, but I'm kind of giving the members like the first look at how I'm processing what I'm doing.

Right. And then I'll share it all and then probably when we get when I get done, we'll kind of go through it because this also allows me to have like these sub $100 pens in there. And, you know, like I'm going to have a Kaweco Sport in there, you know, and I'm going to have a Lamy Safari in there because like they're super cool pens and pens that I love.

And that's what I have to think about what I'm keeping is like, do I love this pen? Yes. Okay. It goes in the box. It's that simple. And then if we get down to it and there's some pens that there's some hard decisions, well, that's kind of the point.

I want to make the hard decisions, sell some pens that maybe I'm not going to use over some of the pens that are currently contained in the 100 pen box, which is like so ridiculous to say. It's like, man, I got to cut myself down to 100 pens.

It's like I realized like this is the stupidest thing I'm ever saying out loud. But it does give me a way to figure out what I own, make sure I'm using the things or keeping the things for valid reasons and moving on from everything else. And that's really the big picture goal.

So the one, the biggest challenge I'm having right now in sorting this is that I'm overthinking the sorting. And I told myself this past week, like, you just got to do it. So like what happened with like the first 20 pens that I listed, right? I pulled essentially my favorites.

So before my storage in the Toyota craft was kind of by brand. So like, like all my pilots were together and all my sailors were together and on and on and on. So by brand. And I thought that would have been kind of a boring list to release at a time if I just listed out, you know, 15 pilots in a row.

So what I did is I looked at the totality of the box and then pulled my favorites and those went in the first 20. And then for the next 20, I did the same thing. Okay, what's left? Here's my favorites from what's left. Those go in the next 20.

So it's all kind of out of sorts now. You know what I'll do? I'll put up a picture on Instagram of like my first 20. I don't have it posted on Instagram right now, but I'll put that picture of that tray out there right now.

And just share with people like what I'm doing. So they're very unorganized other than me saying, boy, I really like this pin. It goes in this tray. And that's kind of it.

So it's been kind of a weight off to think about it this way. And I've already started it. I'm going to get through it in three more weeks. And then the challenge comes is like the selling the stuff that I want to move on from.

So like I've already pulled some pins off to the side that I know aren't going to be in the top 100 that were already in the box. And those are going to work on being sold and won't work on things like that. So it's fine. So if you've got the 100, you could choose to sort them back again, right?

In like a different way. So I think that's what I'm going to do. So once I have 100, I will then sort the spreadsheet by like brand or something like that. And then lay them out that way.

So once I get to this 100, then I will have a way. Then I am going to have to have some harder decisions. And we'll be able to talk about these in the years to come. That something's going to have to go in and something's going to have to go out.

Because that's just inevitable, right? Right. Because then that starts the one in one out policy. Yep. So that's where I'm trying to get to right now. That's great. We got to get the baseline done.

I've taken too long to do this. I've questioned every decision I've made. But I'm feeling better about this now. And I'm going to get it done.

Can I get from you the first five? I know we're going to talk about them all in detail later on. But just because you started doing it. And I feel like we should at least tell people a little bit about what's actually gone in there so far. Yep.

Just the first five that you picked. Because I also think that that's like a really interesting top. The first five you were just like, yeah, these are no brainers. I imagine was probably easy.

And that's also just, I think, quite enlightening. So what's funny is the first five is a real line of demarcation between like five and six. Like the first five is probably the S tier. Yeah. Right. Because the tier grading system is very much like on a bell curve, right?

There can't be that many S tier pins. I think it probably stops after five. I don't know if I could maybe make it almost a 10, but probably not out of 100. But it's going to be more like five.

So number one, Pilot Murex. Love that pen. Love that pen. Undeniable. Number two. The price is number one, though. And I know this isn't your ranked. I know this isn't ranked.

But it would be my number one. It's the price that you went to me to number one. Straight to number one. It's my number one favorite pen, regardless of this top 100 thing or not.

Okay. Like I've said it before. It's the pen. Like, you know, if I had to grab one pen and just go and couldn't have any of the other pens, I would pick that one. Yeah. I think probably, probably me too with the N90. Even though it's like way less expensive than a lot of the other pens in here, right?

It's just a pen that fits me better than just about anything. Number two, Pilot Custom 912 with the posting nib, the PO nib. So, you know, I love this pen. So, this pen is also, there's like a little asterisk to it because this pen has the Maquie artwork added to it.

So, this is like an extra special one, right? That makes a little sense to me now. Yeah. This isn't just a standard black 912 with the posting nib. That would probably be in my top 20, you know, as a stock version.

But this one has artwork added to it. So, it's very, very special. Number three, the Namiki Yukari Milky Way, which is the most expensive pen I own. It is the beautiful like kind of galaxy, like has like the little rod and planets and all the artwork on there.

It's just a beautiful, beautiful pen. I don't know. I just love, that's my favorite. One of my, that one and the next one are my favorite just pick up and write pens. And so, the next one is the Nakaya Portable Aotaminuri with the fine cursive italic nib.

So, that was my first Nakaya. It's the black one with the green undertones or kind of like, it's like a bluish green. The Aotaminuri, which was a limited color, I think, for nibs.com in the U.S. years and years and years ago. They don't make them anymore.

So, if I just wanted to, if I was going to write a novel, if I was a novelist, it would probably be that Milky Way and that Nakaya would be just the ones that I enjoy just pure writing experience with. And number five is Sailor King of Pins Sky Blue, which is kind of my favorite King of Pins.

It was my first King of Pins, still my favorite King of Pins. That's kind of been kind of cool now that I think about it. Like, my first Nakaya and my first King of Pins have been my favorite ones. And I've actually bought and sold other ones afterwards and those always stay.

So, that's like a good sign that these are like some of my favorites. So, King of Pins Sky Blue has a stock medium nib on it. And it's just, it's one of those, it's a very Brad pen in that it's stupidly expensive and it's like translucent blue. It looks like, this is one of those, it could be like a trivia question.

Is this pen $50 or $500? And you would probably have like a split decision on that, right? Yeah. So, this is the pen that I reviewed basically saying, do not buy this pen, right? Because it is so overpriced for what it is.

But I, at the same time, I love it, right? So, that's what's funny about the King of Pins. Specifically, the Sky Blue one, because it looks like, it could be like a toy. I was like, you paid what for this?

And this was in the, I like talking about this Sky Blue one because this was in the before times when they were only stupidly priced, not stupidly, stupidly priced, right? This was pre-price increase. So, it was only ridiculous at the time and now it's just like astronomically expensive.

So, that's the top five. And like, I could stop right there and I would be super happy. That's a pretty sweet collection. That's a good range of five pens.

Yep. So, the Murex is, I hesitate to call it vintage, but it's kind of vintage-y. It's a metal barrel. It's got a stock fine nib. It's a really unique design.

The 912 has the posting nib, which is a favorite writing nib of mine. Plus, it has artwork added to it, right? The Yukari Milky Way is one of the most beautiful pens I own. It's just a stunner and a wonderful writer.

The Nakaya is still my favorite Nakaya. It was my first Nakaya. What Nakaya was that? It's called the portable.

It's a very, it's just like a long, skinny, not skinny, but just a long torpedo shape. Like, no clip, no nothing to it. Very simple. And then the Sailor King of Pin. That's a lot of good variants in there, despite all being Japanese pens.

There's, that's a good range of pens to be, like, there's not a lot of crossover between that group of pens right there. So, I really like them. So, your pilot, the 912, is that, was the Nakaya on that, was that like buyable or was that just like a special?

It was so, the story goes that, gosh, I don't know how many years ago this was, but a friend of Myke Masayama's wanted to get into doing artwork for pens. And Myke got together a group of us, I don't know, there was maybe five to ten of us, and said, hey, if you have a pen, I have a friend that wants to, here's samples of his artwork, and is thinking about doing this as a thing, right?

Like making a business out of this. And here's your, like, we had like four or five options for artwork, and here's the price, and you're going to send it, well, I'll take the pens, I'll send them to them, you know, six months later, you're going to get a pen back with the artwork, and it, they, it just came back stunning.

And the joke was, gosh, what was it? So, the guy, the guy that did the artwork shipped them back, and I think it was an apricot, like, almost like an apricot pudding box package. So, we called them all our apricot pens, I believe that's what it was. And I talked about this at the time.

So, we all got like the same, it was like if you were buying like a box of Jell-O or pudding or something like that. So, we all got our pens back in these apricot pudding boxes, and it was just kind of funny. And then, the guy ended up not, deciding not to do it, right?

Like, in the end, it didn't become a thing. So, it was just like, it considered, it was like a group buy type of situation. So, that's how I got it. That's how I got it done.

So, it was pretty funny. And it was ridiculously cheap. It was like, I think I paid like $125 to get this done. And it was like, wow.

You know, because it was like his test run, who's basically doing it, you know, like at cost or below cost. Yeah. To see if it was like, going to be a thing. And like, I took a chance, and a few other people took a chance, and it came out just spectacular.

Just an awesome pen, and it's one of my favorites. Fun story. But just a very random thing. Yeah. Like, this pen would not have been number two if it didn't have that artwork. For sure. And there'll be a link in the show notes to your image, right?

We'll put your image. Yes. I will put that up there shortly. We'll do, so I have the tray of the first 20 pens. I have an image I'll pop up on Instagram for, by the time y'all listen to this, there will be a link for you to click in the show notes.

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When you sign up to get 10% off your first purchase and show your support for the show, a thanks to Squarespace for the continued support of this show and all of RelayFM. All right. You want to wrap up with some STPA? I would love to do that, actually.

I have a couple here for you. The first one comes from Thorfin, who asks, I am a high school student who is looking to expand their pen collection. I currently have a Pilot Metropolitan and a TWSBI Eco. I'm on a tight budget, so I'm looking for pens under $50.

I'm thinking about maybe a Cross Bailey or a Parker IM. Any other suggestions? Thorfin, do I have a list for you? I'm just kidding. I think if you have the Metro and the Eco, I'm skipping the Cross or the Parkers, and I'm going into one of the Platinums, either the Plaisir.

What's the other one? Not the Prefonte. The, oh, help me out here. I'll have to look it up. So, one of the Platinums is around that $50 price point.

They are awesome riders. They're going to be more nib style, more like the Pilot Metropolitan, a little bit finer lines than like your TWSBI Eco. I think that's a great start with the Metro and Eco. If not one of the Platinums, I honestly would look at a Kaweco Sport.

It's such a unique pen, and maybe that's not the style you're looking for, but those pens are just so functional in their portability, right? You have to commit to, you know, using cartridges mostly for them. But I just find them so fun and functional, and they end up being like a full-size pen.

So, I'm either looking at one of the Platinums. So, there's a group of Platinums that are in the $20 to $50 range. Any of those would be fine. And then I would look at a Kaweco Sport, and I would skip on the Cross or Parker for now. All right.

Geronimo asks, which, by the way, I really hope is your name, because that's a sick name. If you're named Geronimo, how great. How do you test a fountain pen? Recently, I went to a pen shop to test a pen, and while I brought my own paper, they dipped it in an ink and handed it over to me.

Inks behave differently, and I'm not sure how different dip versus filling would fare. Is it okay to bring my own ink sample? I'm guessing not. I don't want to buy an ink just to compare. Should I bring a known pen to test alongside, or is that frowned upon?

How do I know a pen is what I'll like beyond taking a gamble, or am I thinking this all wrong? No, this is a brilliant question. Because I'm going to relate a recent email conversation, not from Geronimo, but from a similar situation where someone was making a judgment based on an in-store test.

So to handle Geronimo's question directly, do not bring your own ink. Like, don't do that. They're not going to let you do that. But everything else should be fine.

You should bring a known pen to test alongside. A known pen with a known ink, and you know what, Geronimo? A known paper. Right? So bring your paper is the key. So there's no perfect answer to this.

Because you're not going to get a full trial run of any pen that you go to a store and test out. Right? No one's going to say, yes, fill this with whatever ink you want, and go take it to the cafe across the street for the next hour, and tell me what you think.

That's just not going to happen. Right? So you have to kind of go in knowing some information about the products you're looking at. Right? So let's say you're going to a store, and you've been looking at a Pilot Custom 74. Okay? So you've been, like, looking online.

You've been reading reviews. You kind of have an idea of what this type of pen is going to offer. Maybe you have a different Japanese pen with a similar size number. Maybe you don't. But you're going to have to go in.

You're going to have to look at the feel, the balance of the pen first. Does it fit your hand? Right? Like, I would do that before I'm testing the nib. Right? Does this pen fit my hand?

So the 74 I consider to be an ultralight pen. So would you go in and test that 74 and go, oh, wow, this is very light, and then just move on from that. Right? These are things you may not know from just shopping online. There's no way you could know.

Right. Like, there's no way. So this is the way. Yeah. Even if you knew the weight measurement, just how it feels in your hand. It doesn't make a difference.

It doesn't matter. Right? Yeah. So you go in there, and you're like, okay, this actually feels okay. It's like, I'm good with an ultralight pen. What about this nib visually? So like the 74 is a smaller nib, right?

It's their number 10 size nib, or is that even smaller? So compared to a lot of pilots nibs, this is on the smaller side of the ledger, just visually, visual size-wise. How is that, you know, for you? So how does this pen visually fit you?

How does it physically fit you? And then the nib is going to be the biggest challenge, and I think that's where Geronimo's stuck at. Right? How do I know I'm going to like this nib just from writing with a dipped pen? I think you can tell enough if you write enough with it.

Right? You're not going to tell. So with a dipped pen, you want to just kind of disregard, like, the first minute or so of writing with any dipped pen until you kind of get the flow kind of metered through from... You want to get, like, the bulk of the ink out, and then you'll have a better idea of the line width, the feel of the nib, and how it's going to work for your style of handwriting, you know, depending on the size.

Like, do you want a fine nib? Do you want a broad nib? What are you looking for from that? So I think that is going to be your best bet.

You want to have kind of those stages of thinking about it. It is a little bit different. I would be comfortable buying a pen on a dip test, but I also have a different baseline than Geronimo has in that I've tested, you know, hundreds, if not thousands, of pens.

So I have a baseline of expectations. But if you're a new customer, I could see how this could be challenging. Well, how do I know what I'm really getting? There is a slight leap of faith in that, and that's where the educating yourself beforehand, so you have at least kind of an idea and a concept of the expectations that you want to see if they meet to a degree.

I would certainly bring your own paper and bring one of your favorite pens to compare with if you want, like something similar. And that's kind of it. So it's not a perfect science to where you can absolutely, 100% without question, verify everything you want when you're making this purchase, right?

That's just not going to be a situation you're going to be able to get into. So do your homework, test the feel, test the style, test the fit, and then I think it's okay to dip the pen and ink it and just write with it for more than like 30 seconds.

You need to spend a little bit of time with it and then do some comparison. So that's how I think about these things, and it's not simple, especially when you're spending like a decent amount of money, $50 to $500. It doesn't matter, right? Like it could be expensive either way, and you want to make sure you're making the best decision.

At some point, you're going to have to make a leap of faith in that final purchase though. Yeah. I know for me when I've bought pens in person like this, I'm really just evaluating it on how does it feel in my hand and does the nib feel smooth?

I'm not evaluating the result. Like most of the time, I don't even ink a pen. Like to me, I don't really feel like it's helpful in understanding what I'm, how it's going to make me feel at the end. Like I actually agree with that.

Like because I just think it can add confusion. I feel like at this point, if a nib feels smooth, like to me, for my handwriting style, I'm going to get on with it and it will be fine. Similarly, like, and that kind of bridges across nib sizes, because realistically, the size of the nib is not that important to me.

Like I have pens from fine all the way up to like music, right? And I like to use all of them. All I'm looking for is an experience that feels comfortable in my hand. And like when I'm putting ink, when I'm putting the nib to the page and I run it across the page, that like, it's not scratchy.

Like that's what I'm looking for. Then those two things for me, like if I feel like I really like the look of this pen and I really like the way that it feels in my hand to hold, then I'm set. Like that's all I need to know. Right.

So this is a great question. And that's something that, gosh, like this is like what I do at pen shows. Like if I met Geronimo at a pen show and they're trying to decide things, we would have just like this like half an hour discussion over like how to figure these things out.

Like it's not easy. And I understand where Geronimo is coming from. So I hope I hope the answer helped a little bit. Yeah. Just there are so many variables and the ink is such a variable.

I actually just try and remove it from the discussion. If you would like to send in a question for a future episode or if you have follow up or questions on any of the things that we've spoken about today, you can always go to penaddictfeedback.com and you can fill in the form there.

Thank you to everybody that has done so. Thank you to our wonderful sponsors of this week's episode, Enigma Stationery and Squarespace. Brad, thank you for joining me as always. If you want to find Brad online, you can go to penaddict.com.

You can find him on Instagram as penaddict. Twitch.tv slash penaddict with Brad's dreams three times a week. You can also find Brad's work over at spokedesign.com. You can find me on many shows here on RelayFM.

Go to relay.fm and you can find this show and many others there for you. You can find my work over at cortexbrand.com as well. And I am iMyke, I-M-Y-K-E on social media. Brad is penaddict. Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.

We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Brad. Goodbye, Brad.