The Pen Addict 50/transcript

The Pen Addict Podcast Transcript
Episode:	50
Title:	Investigative Pen Journalism
Release Date:	April 16th, 2013
Hosts:	Brad Dowdy Myke Hurley
Guests:	No guests this episode
Additional Information
Official page:	Episode 50
Audio File:	Audio Episode 50
Podcast page:	The Pen Addict 50
Length:	6767 min <br />1.117 h <br /> minutes
Previous Transcript	Next Transcript

Podcast Intro

Myke Hurley: Hello and welcome to The Pen Addict podcast, a weekly show where we discuss pens, paper, and the analogue tools that you love so dearly. My name is Myke Hurley, and introducing...

Myke Hurley: Here's Bradness, Lord Dowdy of Penmanshire.

Brad Dowdy: I had to cover my mouth so you could get through that once that music started. We're going to have to keep that as the intro to the show. Oh dear. That was awesome.

Myke Hurley: So I was challenged to that, you see.

Brad Dowdy: I know, I saw that.

Myke Hurley: Our friend Anna of Well Appointed Desk, she challenged me to call you his Bradness, or just Bradness.

Brad Dowdy: That's right, yeah. One of her readers sent in an email that she had posted on her site and referred to me as his Bradness. And I sent her a tweet saying that was pretty funny, and then she mentioned it to you saying, you need to work that in. So I can't believe you just did that. You were giggling before we started, so I knew it would be good.

Myke Hurley: I had the thought while you ran off to ask the children to be quiet.

Brad Dowdy: Oh wow, so you just came up with that, like, right now?

Myke Hurley: Yep, just as you went away. I knew that was going to be the name, and I thought, oh, I could put some sort of fanfare in there.

Brad Dowdy: His Bradness of Penmanshire.

Myke Hurley: Anyway, so we have a big show.

Brad Dowdy: That was a fitting intro for episode 50.

Myke Hurley: Oh, of course, yes. The big 5-0.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that's pretty cool. I don't have anything special planned, although it should be a pretty good episode today. But hey, episode 50, that's a good landmark. I'm glad we're there, and there'll be lots more 50s going forward, I'm pretty sure.

Myke Hurley: I'm positive. So I've got a little bit of follow-up that I want to rattle through really quickly, because I think that I have a lot that I want to talk to you about, about the show. And I was eagerly awaiting the second part of your experience at the pen show. So I was very excited about it, so I want to talk to you about it and the experiences that you had. So where should we start for the follow-up this week?

Brad Dowdy: You wanted to mention something about Field Notes.

Field Notes

Myke Hurley: Yeah, so my Field Notes books arrived.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, the America is Beautiful, because it was kind of delayed, right?

Myke Hurley: Yep, I got them.

Myke Hurley: I've got more than any human could ever need.

Myke Hurley: I did mention that they double-sent the archive box, right? Yes. I mentioned that on the show. So they've also double-sent my books. Now, I haven't got around to it yet, but I need to ping them an email and ask them what they want me to do.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, you're obviously liking the system twice or something.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, it's very strange, but now I have lots of them. But I'm very, very happy that I have lots of them, because I think these are my favorites.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, wow. And I'll tell you why. Yeah, after you got them in and taken them out and used them, you'd think, number one.

Myke Hurley: They are stunning to look at. They're very pretty to look at. But my favorite thing is the lined paper.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I just love the lined paper. It makes me very happy. It makes them like a traditional notebook for me, you know?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I was reading one thing online, and you'll have to follow up on this maybe next week, because I haven't opened mine yet. I don't open the new ones until I have an active one that I'm using. Until I fill that up, I won't open and try out a new one. But I was reading that the paper quality seemed to be very nice in this notebook. Oh, they really are. So I'd like to hear your feedback on that. It was almost like a different weight paper, different density.

Myke Hurley: I've got it here. I've got them right in front of me. And I would definitely agree with that. The density of this paper is thicker, and it's not glossy, but it's got a nice feel to it.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. That might sway my opinion. Not that I dislike these, but if it's like higher quality paper, that's kind of a nice thing. And I'll look forward to opening up mine and giving it a shot as well.

Myke Hurley: They print paper information, don't they? So the specifications say that it is finch paper fine, soft white.

Brad Dowdy: Okay, so I'll have to do some reading and see if that's a change.

Myke Hurley: Well, I can look in another book.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, if you have one handy.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I've got one. That's me opening the box. I don't know what to look in.

Myke Hurley: I don't know what paper to compare it to.

Brad Dowdy: Just one of the recent editions if you have one. Or Daygame or something like that. Because Daygame, they did dots, so I don't know if they changed the vendor then or not.

Myke Hurley: It's definitely a lot thicker. It's 50.

Myke Hurley: So the Grammage is obviously, I would assume it's Grammage. So say it was Grammage, it's 50 Gramm in Daygame, and it's 70 Gramm in America is Beautiful. That's nice.

Brad Dowdy: That's a big deal, especially for us thousand and ten users.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, comparing these two together, there is a significant difference in the paper thickness. And I really hope they stick to this sort of paper thickness.

Brad Dowdy: Okay. I might have to break into mine and test that out, because that will definitely sway my opinion greatly, I believe.

Myke Hurley: You definitely should. It's a very, very nice book. That might be subconsciously why I like this paper so much. I hadn't noticed, like I hadn't noticed, sorry, why I like the book so much. I hadn't noticed the paper thickness, really. I just knew that it was an instant favorite.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I just happened to be reading that somewhere, and someone mentioned that, and I said, oh, that's interesting. So, cool. I like that.

Myke Hurley: Some investigative pen journalism right there.

Notebooks

Brad Dowdy: That's right. That's right. Yeah, and I did more investigating last night, since we're talking about paper and notebooks. I happened to be poking around the internets and clicked on donepaper.com, and what do I see but a whole new site live at donepaper.com, and I about had a conniption. So, that was pretty cool, pretty interesting.

Myke Hurley: So, I think last week we were talking about it, right? About Chad? Was it? Or maybe a couple of weeks ago?

Brad Dowdy: It might have been two weeks ago. Two weeks ago. And, you know, we were talking about how, you know, Chad was taking a break, and he had a flyer up to do some closeout stuff. So, I hadn't talked to him in a couple of weeks. And then I just clicked over last night and saw all the new products up and the new websites up and the whole new design. Everything's live. I haven't talked to Chad about it. I mean, I guess everything's good to go, but we'll see. We'll see. One of our, I forget who it was on app.net said, I keep checking every few hours to make sure it's still there.

Myke Hurley: So, do you want a funny little story? Yeah. So, I was alerted. I think we were both alerted to this this morning, right?

Brad Dowdy: Well, I...

Myke Hurley: Oh, sorry. Yes, you had last night, and then you alerted me. Like at 3 or 4 a.m. Yeah. You alerted me to it. So, I went straight to the site. I was like, yes, that's what I want. The four-barrel holster. Yep. What I've been waiting for. So, I bought it. And then a couple of hours later, I get an email from Chad. He was like, we're not shipping outside the U.S. I didn't put that in the site. I will, you know, he said he will help me out, so we're going to sort it out to get shipped. But he's now noted on the site that it's only going to be shipping in the U.S. So, I helped him, I guess.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Well, that's a positive on a lot of fronts because that means everything seems to be good to go. So, if you – that was a new product you ordered. That wasn't – I have the old model holster. This is a new design. So, gosh, I think all systems are go.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: And I did when he was doing the closeout stuff. I ordered a bunch. I had a triple-digit order.

Brad Dowdy: You know, when he was doing the closeout, I emailed him and I ordered some of the new products. Like, I got the – what's the new small journal called Garage Series?

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I think that's it. Yeah. Or I would say Garage Series.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. They're super cool looking. I really like those. Yeah. Yeah, Garage Series. Yeah, Utility Notebooks. They're really neat. I think they – I'm very happy with those.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, they're very nice, actually. I think he might have had a note at the bottom of the cart page that I didn't see, but it shouldn't have been possible. It might have been like a PayPal issue or something. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But I'm very happy because I'm going to get what I dearly, dearly want, which is one of those holsters because they look beautiful with the blue stitching.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, they're so awesome. They're really cool. One of my favorite products.

Myke Hurley: And I'll be very happy to receive that.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. And someone else mentioned when I said that Doan was back up, one of the people had already gotten in some of the new loose leaf paper. That's a new product for Chad as well, the loose leaf paper. And they're a student, and they said it was awesome. So I haven't tried the loose leaf paper yet, but I'm pretty sure it's a new paper vendor. So they were commenting on the feel and consistency of the paper, and they liked it very much.

Garage Notebooks

Brad Dowdy: Cool. Yep. So I'm happy to see that. So, yeah, I had already got – I got the Garage series. I got some stickers, and I loaded up on the Idea Journals, which is the greatest product ever made, I believe.

Myke Hurley: Are you panicked buying them? I did. I bought four of them.

Brad Dowdy: That's when I thought it was going away. So now I've got like six of them, and that's the big, honking, heavyweight notebook.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I have one of these. I have one of these.

Myke Hurley: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: That literally may be the best notebook ever created.

Myke Hurley: Wow. That is quite a claim. I'm not disagreeing, but a claim like that from you is a very, very good thing to hear.

Brad Dowdy: One of those things – when I find products that I like, I find myself, as I go back to them from time to time, if I set it down for a while and pick it back up to use it again, and I find myself looking at it from a construction perspective and a feel perspective, before I even start using it, like I'm staring at it going, wow, like over and over again, even though I've already used it for years, that tells me that I'm very impressed with the product. Does that make sense?

Myke Hurley: Yeah. I mean I like the Idea Journal. I can't really use it though because I'm left-handed, and it's just spiral bound is a difficulty. I mean yes, I could turn it upside down, but I'm just obsessive-compulsive enough that I wouldn't want to do that and be writing in the book upside down. Right.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, that would bother me.

Myke Hurley: Did you get the large one or the small one?

Brad Dowdy: Large. I don't like the small as much. Not even close. I use the large.

Myke Hurley: I have the small one. Mm-hmm. But yeah, the loose-leaf paper is very interesting, and he sells like binders now. Yep. I think they're just plain binders, but it's just kind of cool that – yeah.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. One-stop shopping.

Myke Hurley: Well, good.

Brad Dowdy: That's a good deal.

Myke Hurley: I'm really pleased that he's back in business because it's really good stuff. Really good stuff. Cool.

Brad Dowdy: Very cool.

Myke Hurley: Do we have any other follow-up today?

Brad Dowdy: I don't think I do because I had a big weekend this past weekend, so all my focus was in one place, and that was at the Atlanta Penn Show, so I don't think I have any more follow-up besides that.

Myke Hurley: Right, so let's take a quick moment. We will thank our sponsor, and then we will dive right into the meat of the show. Does that sound good?

Brad Dowdy: Sounds great.

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Brad Dowdy: Awesome. Perfecto. As always.

Brad Dowdy: So I had a big weekend this past weekend. Big Saturday, I should say.

Myke Hurley: You very much did, didn't you?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I had the Atlanta Penn Show was nearby in town. It took me about an hour and a half to get there, so that's definitely a reasonable drive and something I was greatly, greatly looking forward to as we talked about last episode. And last episode, just to recap a little bit, we went through kind of what my checklist was for the Penn Show, you know, what products I was looking for. You know, just kind of a pretty good list of things. So when I got there, I knew I'd be overwhelmed. There's lots going on, lots of vendors, lots of tables, things like that. So I wanted to kind of have a plan. And, you know, I had some of the products that I'd been testing out from Thomas, like the Sailor Pro Gear, Sailor Sapporo, Parker 51, Esther Brook. You know, some of those things were on my list. I also had on my list to get some Nibmock modifications done. And, you know, I guess I had a Pelican on the list. And, you know, just a few things just to kind of give me a basis to work around as I walked around the show. Like, okay, what am I looking for? What am I focusing on? So I think it went pretty well, I'd say. You know, I came home with four pens. And I'm sure we'll talk about them individually. But you want me to just kind of give a recap, just an overview of what the show is like for people that haven't been to a pen show? Kind of like when you walk in, like what do you see? What's going on there?

Myke Hurley: Please. I'd love that.

Atlanta Pen Show

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So, I mean, it's just basically, you know, most of these pen shows are at hotels, like in conference room ballrooms. And the Atlanta pen show is set up to where it's in two separate rooms. It's like two large size meeting rooms where there's maybe, I don't know, 15, 15, 20 vendors in one room. And then, you know, another 15 or 20 or even more in a larger room. So they're kind of two sections, but they're right next to each other. So, you know, on Saturday, the show opened at 10. And I knew I had to get there early to get in the queue for Myke Masayama to get my nibs ground. So I showed up there about 945. And I knew where I'd seen him last year at the show. So I knew right where he was sitting. He sits right in the first. I mean, right when you walk in the first door, the immediate first left is where Myke was sitting last year. And I walked in and boom, he was right there in the same spot. So I made sure, you know, I got there about 945, went on in. They let me in a little bit early. And, you know, he was already hard at work. I've never seen the guy not working. It's hilarious. He is the hardest working man in showbiz, I think. But at 945, I put my name down on the list, and I was already eighth on the list. And I was like, man, this is going to – I knew that was going to take a while. So that was fine. I had plenty of shopping to do.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I wasn't that concerned. I figured it would be like around lunchtime or so, you know, noon, 1 o'clock, whatever, when my name would be called. And they just take your phone number, and they'll call you when they're ready. His wife is there helping him. So, you know, they just call when it's time for you to show up. And then I, like, walk in, talk to Myke, put my name on the list. I turn around, and I start walking. And here comes Lisa Anderson from Anderson Pens. And she's like, Brad, you know, good to see you. And she just plants the biggest hug on me. She was so nice. It was great to see her, and it was great to get that greeting right when I walked in. So that got me started off on the right foot. And, you know, it was shortly thereafter I was at their table and sending you pictures of the – that green cracked ice, Esther Brook, that you were commenting on their website.

Myke Hurley: Yes.

Brad Dowdy: They listened to our podcast on their drive down from Wisconsin. They drive to all these pen shows, so they were laughing. So they wanted to show me – she said, I want to show you those pens that Myke was making fun of.

Myke Hurley: That's amazing. Yep. Well, hello, Andersons.

Brad Dowdy: Huh?

Myke Hurley: I was just saying hello.

Brad Dowdy: Oh, yes. Well, hello, Andersons. Yeah. So she said, well, we've got those pens, so you need to come buy them for Myke. So I said – I thought that was funny. And I went over to the table, and I met Brian, and I said, let me see those pens. And that's when I took a picture and sent it out to you on Twitter. I said, hey, Myke, I picked these up for you, you know, at $1,500 for the set.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, they were.

Brad Dowdy: I don't think so.

Myke Hurley: They looked incredible, though.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, there was actually a pair that was like that, that I liked better. There was a yellow one that was – it was only $800 or $900, so it was way more affordable. Oh, yeah. Much better. It looked pretty cool. But anyway, Brian's known pretty much as one of the leading Estabrook experts, and that was absolutely one of the things on my shopping list that I knew I would be successful in is buying an Estabrook from Brian. So, you know, Brian and Lisa, I can't express to you how nice and helpful they are. And it's not just with me. I mean, they were exceedingly helpful with me, but as I stood there and looked at their table, they were just – I mean, they were just totally engaged with every customer. And I was very impressed with, you know, how they ran their table at the show. And they were just – I mean, these are people that you can tell love what they do, and it really comes through. So it was a pleasure meeting them. But, you know, I got to talking with Brian. I said, you know, I said one of the things I want to do is I want to buy an Estabrook. And so he explained to me all the different varieties, you know, why the designs are a certain way, you know, about all the different nibs and why they're different and things like that. And I looked through – I don't know. I don't know how many he had there. I'd say at least 50. I don't know. Maybe more. I didn't count, but it was a bunch, 50 to 100, I'd say. And, you know, I just went through all of them, looked at some of the designs I liked, asked him about, you know, how they functioned, you know, this design compared to another design. And, you know, he helped me out with that. And I settled on a – it's called a J model, an Estabrook J. It's kind of this – my picture makes it look purple, but it's really this really rich blue kind of marbly color. It's a real lightweight, plastic-feeling type pen. And it's got a lever filler on the side, which I'd never used prior. Thomas actually loaned me one, actually the same color, the one that I bought that I haven't reviewed yet on the Pen Addict. So I was familiar with this color and I was familiar with the lever fill. And, yeah, so I picked this one up. And one of the things with Estabrook that we talked about is the – and we talked about this with Patrick and we talked about this separately – is that the quantity of nibs is huge. So Brian has like a – almost like a hardware box full of nibs. So we talked about the nibs and that I wanted something extra fine. So I just got one of the basic extra fine Estabrook nibs, which is called the 9550. So that's my new Estabrook. And, you know, everything I'm talking about today, you know, we'll have in the show notes. And you can click on the Pen Addict. I've got the recaps and all the pictures and things like that. But we'll have it all linked for you, everything I talk about.

Brad Dowdy: It's a really cool pen. It writes wonderfully. It fills easily with the lever system. You can't really see what's going on on the inside. I can't tell like how much ink I've put in. But, you know, we talked about – I talked about with Brian on how to fill it. But it was really good. It was hard to only buy one Estabrook, to be honest, because there's a huge variety of designs, of colors. Just the model I have, there's a silver one that looks great. There's an orange one that looks great. There's a red one that looks great. It was hard to narrow it down. But I was very happy in the end. And, you know, I picked out a blue one. And that kind of ended up being the theme of the day. Almost everything I picked up was kind of blue. Blue or black was the way it went for the most part. But, yeah, they were great. And I bought some ink from them that I haven't tested out yet as well. They might have had the biggest setup there of anybody. I think they had four tables. They had two full tables of pens. They had a whole full table of ink where they didn't just have the ink on the table. They actually had a shelf, like a wire shelf on top of the table with all the ink stocked in it. And then they had another full table of paper. So I think they had four tables. And they were just packed to the hilt. And, you know, I got to them pretty early. So it wasn't too busy yet. But when I, you know, I made several laps around the show during the day. And when I came back to them later, I mean, you couldn't get in front of any of their tables. So I hope it was a pretty good show for them. I talked to Lisa a little bit about it. You know, how did the show compare, you know, to all the other ones they've been to this year. And they said it's been very successful so far. So I hope that's the case.

Myke Hurley: Excellent.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So there we are.

Myke Hurley: You had a great find there, though. I love the sort of the swirling sort of pattern. Yep. Like the pearl, the sort of the pearlescent pattern that is in there. Because obviously you can see why it's called the pearl. It's very beautiful indeed.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. And this one's just the vacuumatics, the pearl.

Myke Hurley: Oh, yeah. Sorry. Sorry. I was looking at the Edison. But this also has a similar. Oh, yeah.

Brad Dowdy: I'm sorry. The pearl. Yeah. I got an Edison pearl and a vacuumatic silver pearl. So lots of pearl going on. But, yeah, the Estabrook, it's a cool color. I'll get some better pictures. I was kind of in a time crunch from when I got home Saturday afternoon to getting everything. This wasn't a post I could leave sitting for a while. I needed to go ahead and knock it out. So my pictures are kind of so-so that I didn't exactly do the pen's great justice. But I think you can get the gist of them for the most part. So after, you know, I got on Myke Masayama's list and I met the Anderson. So I was off to a pretty good start. So at that point, I just wanted to go take in the rest of the show. You know, I walked through every table, looked at every pen that they had, kind of matched it up with my list, you know, see what things I was interested. You know, at a show like this, this is generally isn't somewhere where you want to walk in and just start laying down your money right when you walk in at the first thing you see. Right. You kind of need to take it all in, see what everyone's got. Everyone's got different things. And just kind of, you know, work through your list. I worked through my list, you know, seeing what people had related to my list, went through the whole show and just kind of got the lay of the land, if you will. You know, where I need to, which tables I needed to come back to, which people I needed to talk to more if they were tied up the first time when I went by. And, you know, just kind of get a feel for what all is available. And then one of the things I noticed immediately when, after going through the whole show, there was almost no sailor or platinum or any Japanese pens available at all.

Brad Dowdy: And we kind of, we talked about that. That was my expectation going into it. And unfortunately that was proven right. I think I mentioned that I could count all the sailor pens on one hand that I saw at the show, which kind of stunk, but also kind of expected it to. So, you know, it gave me more, more, more, more budget for other things. So as I'm walking through, I'll walk through the first room where the Andersons were and Myke was first. Walked through there, talked to a few different vendors, looked at a few different Parker 51s, things like that. And then walked through the second room. And as I'm wrapping up the second room, you know, a few of the vendors have the Edison production line pens. So Brian Edison, we've talked, Brian Gray, I do that, God, I do that so much. Brian Gray from Edison pens has a main production line of pens that he sells through vendors like, you know, Goulet pens, Anderson pens, you know, where there's, you know, like a stock line, if you will. Okay. So a few of the vendors of the show carried the stock line Edison pens, which I was familiar with. And none of them really struck my fancy. And then I walked by this one guy and I see he's got a few of the stock Edison pens out there. And then smack in the middle of it is this one random Edison pearl, which I had reviewed an Edison pearl from Thomas. It's kind of like a blue, blue flake acrylic model. So I was familiar with the pen. I knew what it looked like and I knew it wasn't a production line pen. So I was like, huh, that's kind of interesting. Why does he have this pearl? Or, you know, it was just kind of mixed in with the regular production line pens, which would be like if you went to Lamy and, you know, as a vendor and you're a retailer and you just say, okay, send me 10 safaris, send me, you know, five AL stars and things like that. That's what the production line is like for medicine. Well, the signature line is all pretty much special ordered, if you will. You have to get with Brian. You pick out your model. You pick out the material. You pick out the nib size and so on. So I saw this pen sitting there and I asked the gentleman the price and I was surprised actually at how low it was. I thought it was low. And I am now the proud owner of a Edison Pearl in blue black swirl ebonite, which is a really exceptionally cool pen. I've gotten a lot of feedback on this pen so far about how it looks. In my pictures, it looks really, really, really black. And it actually is very dark, but it's got this great swirl pattern into it.

Myke Hurley: I guess you need to be in the right light to see that.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. Yeah, that's going to be hard. I'm going to have to do some more pictures of it. But I did put in the show notes a real picture from Brian that kind of shows the ink color better. I mean, excuse me, the ebonite color better, the barrel color.

Myke Hurley: You can see it in parts. It's still not extremely clear, though. But you can see it in parts, what kind of probably looks like a reflection. Right.

Brad Dowdy: It's a dark, dark pen. And even I'm holding it in my hand right now. And you really have to turn it in the right light to see the it looks like a dark, dark gray pen. And then it's got black swirls and blue swirls through it. It's beautiful. It's really nice to hold. I don't know. I've been fascinated with this pen since I bought it. I love the shape and the design of it. That just kind of, I guess it's like a cigar shape, if you will. And it's got a little tapered in at the cap and tapered in at the base. I've been, I was a little bit nervous to buy it. Just, I've used Thomas's before and I liked it. I wasn't crazy about the nib, but I bought that early enough to where, hey, I can add that to the Myke Masayama list and get it ground down, which we will talk about that later. But I was, actually, I bought this pen and I went back into the other room where the Andersons are and Brian had a stopping point. And he says, oh, did you find anything good yet? And I said, yeah, check out this Edison Pearl I just bought. And he was like, huh, who had that? And, you know, that's a signature line. I wonder where he got that from. He must have traded it for it. So I got a lot of comments on this pen.

Myke Hurley: And he was like, damn it.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I think so. I mean, I didn't mention a lot of the prices I paid. I mean, I'm not hiding from anything. If anyone wants to know what I paid, I tell them. But I paid $130 for this pen.

Brad Dowdy: And I'm pretty sure if you went and ordered it, like if I went to Edison Pen and ordered this pen right now, I think it'd be about $250 or $300.

Myke Hurley: I'm very surprised by that price.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So I think it'd be about $250 maybe if you built this pen on Brian's site. So I'm wondering if the guy, you know, maybe traded for it and just thought it was a regular. Like the production line Edison pens, they're like around $150. You know, $150, $180. So I asked the guy, I said, how much is this pearl? And he said, hang on, let me look. He says, it's $170. You know, today I'll do it for $130. And I was like, wow. And I just kind of stood there. I was like, that was the wrong answer because that's a good price and I'm going to have to buy it. So I was not expecting to buy it. I didn't think, I didn't, until he said the price, I thought I wasn't going to be able to afford it. And then he said $130 and I said, okay. And I mean, I didn't leave the table without it, put it that way.

Myke Hurley: So I'm on the Edison page and I'm looking at their pearl page. So pricing, which is a converter of a steel nib, it's $250. What do you have, steel or gold?

Brad Dowdy: Steel.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, so it's $250. And then with an 18-carat gold nib, it's $350. With a bulb filling mechanism, you add $100 on. If you want an ink drop, you have $100 on.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's just a standard converter model. Yeah. So it's $250. Plus the ebonite material is an add-on. The acrylic is the $250 model. You have to add $20 more for ebonite. So like $270.

Incredible Deal

Myke Hurley: So you've got an incredible deal.

Brad Dowdy: I think so. And it's not a brand new pen. It's barely used. Like if I showed it to you right now and I didn't tell you, you would think that I had just ordered it from Brian and just got it in the mail. That's how good a shape it's in.

Myke Hurley: How did this person come across this?

Brad Dowdy: That's what Brian Anderson said. He said he must have traded for it or something.

Myke Hurley: Because there's no reason you would buy something like that and then not keep it.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Right. Right. So he said he must have traded it for it or something or bought it off someone else and was reselling it. So that was actually – the Edison Pearl was actually probably my biggest find, if you will.

Myke Hurley: Yeah. Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: The best – it was certainly – that wasn't even on the radar to purchase because you wouldn't expect people to have them unless Brian Gray was there himself. And he, of course, brings pearls and all the signature line pens with him. So every time I've posted this picture or talked about this pearl, people are asked, oh, well, you met Brian at the show. Because they just assume – they know that you just can't get that pen without – unless you get it straight from Brian. And I'm like, no, he wasn't there. I bought it off a vendor. And they're like, huh, okay. So yeah, it was a –

Myke Hurley: I don't believe you, Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: It was a lot of conversation around this pen. So I think that was kind of my biggest find. And I'll tell you what, I used it all night last night at work, and I'm really, really happy with it.

Myke Hurley: So we're going to get some – We'll talk about that more, yeah. Yeah, we're going to get some reviews, I assume.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep, and I will actually talk about it more when I talk about Mr. Masuyama because I got him to work on this nib too. So I'm a couple hours into the show at this point, and I've purchased two pens. And that's the thing about a fountain pen show. It's not like you're going to go and you're going to come away, oh, I bought 20 new pens unless you're just independently wealthy or whatever. I mean it's not a cheap venture showing up at one of these shows. So four pens in total was actually quite a big haul, I think, for a pen show. So – but yeah, I was pretty happy with the Edison. So after that, I kind of went on my Parker 51 mission because I thought for sure I'd be able to find a good one. And I found a lot of them. I just didn't find one that I loved. There was never – I never ran across a 51 that I looked at or talked to someone about that I said I had to have it. Either they were the wrong color or they didn't look clean enough. They were too beat up. These are old pens. These are 80-year-old pens in most cases. They're a little bit too beat up or rough looking. The nibs didn't look good. The people selling them hadn't kept them clean, things like that. Thomas spoiled me with the 51 that I had that he let me borrow. It was in pristine condition. So that was my expectation. I thought I would find a few in the quality of the one that I had borrowed, and I didn't.

Brad Dowdy: But while I was looking at the 51s, a lot of other people had a pen called the Parker Vacumatic. And that was actually on my radar. It wasn't necessarily on my list, but I was aware of it, and I thought they looked pretty cool, and I thought I might – I'd just keep an eye on them.

Myke Hurley: Oh, Brad. Most of the – huh? I said, oh, Brad.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, I thought when I bought this pen and took pictures of it, I said to myself that Myke is going to like this pen.

Myke Hurley: I am just so in love.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's a really interesting pen.

Myke Hurley: I've never seen something that looked like this. Yep.

Brad Dowdy: So what happened was everyone that had Parker 51s, there were Vacumatics all over the show, just like Parker 51s. That's what you expected. There's so many vintage vendors that these pens are everywhere. But almost everyone I've seen is – and that I've seen for years, when I have been looking at pens but not interested in the Vacumatic, is a green stripe or a blue stripe model. It seems – they're called emerald pearl for the green and azure blue for the blue. It's the same style, but either with the green rings or the blue rings. And I'm sitting there with this guy, and he's got a line of blue and green ones. And then here's this kind of silvery gray one sitting there. And the thing about the Vacumatic is most all these blue and green ones, they all have gold hardware. So they're immediately off my checklist. And then here's this kind of gray striped one, and it's got silver hardware. It's got a silver clip. It's got a silver cap. I mean it's got a silver band. It's got a silver jewel on the top. I was like, wow, this is really neat looking. And then I pick it up, and all I can see is like silver and black. I pick it up and put it in the light that the vendor has on his table because he's doing repairs actually. So he's got some nice lighting there. I pick it up, and then it's got this amber glow that's coming in between the silver.

Myke Hurley: You're killing me. You are killing me right now.

Brad Dowdy: I pick it up and put it under this light, and I see that, and I was like, holy cow. This is amazing looking. I've never seen a pen this beautiful.

Brad Dowdy: You know, one day when we meet, you will have to see this pen in person because –

Myke Hurley: I want to buy one. They're on eBay, and I'm struggling.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. The pictures actually came out decent. I didn't think it was going to be able to show the amber at all, but I got a few decent pictures of it where you could see it shining through. It's a fascinating, fascinating pen. And so I didn't know a lot about it, right? So it's sitting there with all his other vacuumatics, and I was hesitant, and I set it back down, and I went to walk around some more. And just – so once I saw that, I knew I wasn't getting a Parker 51. I said, well, maybe this vacuumatic can replace that budget slot that I had planned for the 51. So I started looking around the show, started looking at all the vacuumatics. Now, I was focused on that. You know, Brian Anderson had some, but it was the green and the blue with gold trim. Everyone had green and blue with gold trim, green and blue with gold trim, everywhere, everywhere. And I kept coming back to this pen. I think I picked this pen up three or four times before I even talked to the guy about tell me more about it or what's the price. It didn't have a price on it.

Brad Dowdy: But I could not get this pen out of my head. It was so interesting looking. And the thing is, this is, you know, it's probably a pen from the 1940s. It's in awesome condition. That's the other thing that when I picked it up, like the nib's in great condition, the section's in great condition, the barrel's in great condition. You know, all the hardware lines up. It's clean.

Brad Dowdy: It looks – it doesn't look brand new, but it looks barely used. And every time I pick it up and you could see that orange-amber glow through those stripes, I was just like, this is coming home with me. I can't stop – I could not stop thinking about this pen. The whole entire show. So I bought it, and now it's mine. So I love it. It's a very, very cool pen. Are you going to review it? Absolutely. Because this is one of those education products, posts. I mean, you know, there's – when I got it home, I actually did a bunch of reading on it trying to figure out – you know, I gathered some while I was at the show. You know, I made a point, like, you know, it's hard to buy something you're not familiar with. So I tried to do some quick reading up at the show on my phone and talking with the vendors about the pens. And when I got it home, I did some real reading on it. And actually, this model, despite the fact that I saw very few of them at the show, is actually a somewhat common model. And I did like you. I went and looked on eBay, and there's actually quite a few of them out there.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, the Silver Pearl. There is a few here.

Parker Vacumatic

Brad Dowdy: The Silver Pearl. Silver Pearl. Yep. So it's the Vacumatic Silver Pearl. I did determine that it's a third-generation Silver Pearl. There's some sites you can kind of check. I don't know exactly what year it was made, but it's definitely a third-generation, which is like 1942-ish, something like that. So, yes, I will do a full review on this pen as I do my research. I need to do some more research and put the history together to do a good post. But it's a fascinating, fascinating and completely beautiful pen. So I'm really, really happy with this pen.

Myke Hurley: I'm going to put a bid in on one.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. I mean, they're not ridiculously expensive, you know. I think I paid $125 for mine.

Brad Dowdy: They're on eBay for – there was one that went for like $115 yesterday. There's some that are going for like $60 or $70. You know, I don't know all the differences between them.

Myke Hurley: I mean, this one that I'm looking at is $58 at the moment with seven bids. So it's probably going to go up quite a lot. And it's restored.

Brad Dowdy: Right. Yeah, that was the thing. The guy that I bought this from actually does all the restoration work. So I knew – I didn't want to buy it from anyone just right off their table, not knowing if it would work or not. This guy actually restores these pens, and he was actually restoring some of them sitting there at the table. So I felt comfortable buying it from him that I'm going to get this pen, and it's going to be in good working order. So that's a key with buying an 80-year-old pen or more in this case. So that was an off-the-list purchase that ended up being just something that I could not pass up. Kind of same with the Pearl. I mean, it was just kind of like the design spoke to me. The feel spoke to me. And the beauty of it is just it was hard to pass up. So, yeah. So by that time, I'm three pens into it, and the budget's hurting pretty bad. And I haven't even sat with Myke Masayama yet to get my nibs worked on. So I finally went over there. It was about 2 o'clock, and my time was ready to sit with Myke. And I sat and talked with him, and I said, you know, my friend Thomas gets all his pens from him. He's like, oh, you're that blogger guy.

Myke Hurley: Oh, see? I knew people would know who you were.

Brad Dowdy: And we just started laughing. He just started laughing. He's like, yeah, Thomas gets a lot of his pens done. So we had a – you know, I sat with Masayama for probably close to 45 minutes, if not an hour, and talked with him and his wife while he worked on my pens. We talked about – so let's talk about the pens that I got done by him. So I had two that I planned on getting done. One was the Lamy 2000.

Brad Dowdy: Two was the old-school pilot vanishing point, the faceted model. Those were the ones I brought with me specifically for him to work. And then I ended up – when I got the pearl, I knew that Thomas had had his pearl done by Masayama. So I asked – he couldn't – Masayama couldn't do like eight pens. He just – he'd be there all day. So I asked him if he could do a third, and he was nice enough to do a third one for me. So he did the pearl. So let's take these one by one. So my Lamy 2000, ever since I bought it, I felt the nib has been a little bit off. Like I'd have some skipping, and I just – it wasn't a consistent writer. So I'd always wanted to get the nib looked at, and we – you and I have talked about this on several shows before. So that's the first pen I hand him. He pulls out his loop and looks at the nib. And he goes – like within five seconds, he's like, oh, yeah, I see a problem here.

Brad Dowdy: Wow. So one of the tines, like on one side of the line, you know, the slit in between the nib, one side of it was longer than the other side.

Myke Hurley: Okay.

Brad Dowdy: So that would cause inconsistency in one direction of my writing, which is exactly the problem I was having. Like say if the right tine was longer, okay, and I'm writing to the left, I have a good line. But if I write back to the right, that longer tine is getting in the way.

Myke Hurley: Wow.

Brad Dowdy: So I'm having some skipping that direction. So we talked about that, and then we talked about the fact that I wanted to take this EF nib and make it even finer. So he smoothed it out, made it even, and then sharpened it to probably like an extra, extra fine.

Brad Dowdy: And it immediately turned it into a pen, into one of my favorite pens. Because I'm going to have to, I've never reviewed this pen because I've always had, I always wanted to get the nib looked at first, right? Because I didn't think I was doing it justice because I love the pen. This is a really hard pen to put down for me. It's very well made. I like using it. I use it at work a lot.

Brad Dowdy: And now that I've got this nib adjusted, I'm going to review it, and it's going to, it's going to rank very highly. Let's just say that. And the nib, I don't think you have a Lamy EF nib, but you know, they're fine, but they're not like micro fine. And now it's like a, it's like a Japanese fine nib now on my Lamy 2000, and I love it. This is going to be one of my favorite pens.

Brad Dowdy: So the second one I got done was the vanishing point. And you, you have a vanishing point and you know that the nib unit comes out of there, right? The little, you, you unscrew the pen and the little nib unit comes out. So I just gave him the nib unit. I had the pen with me, but I just gave him the nib unit. And I told him this is a medium nib. It's a 14 karat gold medium nib. And I told him I wanted it like a flat stub italic, something like that, you know? So we talked about, you know, what I really wanted. And he just went over a few things and he said, this is what I can do. And he put, he basically put a stub nib on my medium, medium nib vanishing point. And when he finished it, well, or he got, what he does is he, he grinds and grinds and grinds for maybe like, I don't know, 10 minutes. He works on the pen. Then he, he tests it out himself, dips it in ink, tests it out, smooths it out some more, tests it out some more, smooths it out and kind of gets it down. Then he hands the pen to you. All right. And then you, you, so like when he handed me the 2000 back immediately, it was perfect. You know, he wrote with it. I could tell he was happy with it. He handed it to me. I wrote with it. I was happy with it. We're done. All right. So now he's on the vanishing point and he's just got the nib section and he's working on it and he finishes working on it and he starts dipping it and then smooth it in on the little sandpaper. And he's going back and forth and I can see in his face, he's not real thrilled with it. And he hands it to me. He goes, try this. And I put it to the paper and I goes, it's kind of scratchy. He goes, yeah, I thought so too. He said, give it back to me. So I give it back to him.

Myke Hurley: Did you feel bad saying that?

Brad Dowdy: No, no, not at all. No, because I saw the look in his face. You know how you can kind of tell he kind of, kind of, you know, his eyes kind of looked at it funny. Like he wasn't too comfortable with this. He just wanted to see what I thought.

Myke Hurley: Yeah.

Brad Dowdy: And then, and then I said it and he said, yeah, I thought the same thing too. He said, give it back to me. So I gave it back to him and he's like, he was kind of dumbfounded for a second. He's like, oh, do you have the, do you have the barrel? I said, yeah, it's right here. He said, give me the barrel. So he puts it in the barrel and he goes, oh, okay. So he said, here's the deal. When we're, you and I were just using the metal nib section, we're not, the feedback, just the metal feel, the vibration isn't getting passed through the barrel of the pen.

Myke Hurley: That's ridiculous. This guy's a wizard. What the hell?

Brad Dowdy: Okay. So I said, oh God, that makes complete sense. It actually makes complete logical sense, but I would have never thought about it. He's like, yeah, this nib is scratchy. Well, it wasn't scratchy. It was that we were not getting any buffer when we were writing. So it was more a vibration. It wasn't the nib was scratchy. It's that we were holding metal on metal and we were getting a vibration. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: You could feel the fibers of the paper. That's the difference.

Brad Dowdy: Right. So he just puts the nib unit in the pen, didn't make any more adjustments to the nib and it's smooth as silk. Yeah.

Myke Hurley: Because obviously he knew what he was doing. That's probably why he was confused. He's like, I've done this right. What's wrong with this?

Brad Dowdy: That's exactly right. You could tell he was like, oh yeah. So yeah, as soon as we put it back in the pen barrel, it was a completely different pen. So that, I mean, yeah, the things you learn just from sitting with this guy for a few minutes is like, is, you know, so far in the Lamy 2000, I learned about the nib being too long on one side. And the vanishing point, I learned that if you're going to test out the nib unit, you better have it in the pen or it's going to feel completely differently. So it was pretty crazy. So those two pens I'm thrilled with. I would definitely do, I've never done a review of the faceted vanishing point either. And now that it's got this really cool nib on it, I write really awesome, awesome with it. So the third pen I got was the pearl that we talked about earlier. It had a standard steel fine nib on it, just from the Edison nib. And I knew Thomas had some Edison nibs ground into, he calls it a 0.2 millimeter Japanese extra fine. So I told Masuyama that I wanted the Thomas Hall special. And he just laughed and he thought that was funny. He's like, oh, Thomas likes it very, very fine. He said, you like that too? I said, yeah. I said, I've borrowed a bunch of his pens and that's exactly what I like. So he took this, he took the pearl. This was the easiest one yet. So he just took that one, ground it down to a 0.2 millimeter Japanese extra fine. And I'm thrilled with it. I use it all night at work last night and it works like a charm. So that one was real straightforward grind. That one didn't take him very long to do it all. And it came out perfectly. So I was very happy. And just so people kind of get an idea of cost of something like that, he charged me $30 per pen, which I thought was completely fair. So it was $90 to get all those pens done, $30 per. So just so you have a baseline.

Myke Hurley: That's incredible.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. So that was fun. So now I'm going to, I mean, I've got a couple more. I already want to send him, you know, I can, you can mail it to him. He'll do them, send them back and send you an invoice and you pay him. So a real nice guy and a very enjoyable and very, very good experience that I learned a lot from that experience. So, so by that time I'm pretty worn out. It's about three o'clock or even, it might even be later. It was probably around three. So I get done with him. I haven't eaten lunch yet. I'm tired. I've got a headache. I go get a Coke. And I was like, all right, I've been around this show three or four times now. And I saw a pen earlier that I've already found three or four times. Let me go back and look at it one more time and see if I want to buy it. And that pen is the Pelican M405. Now I just reviewed that, what, a week, maybe two weeks ago on the blog. It was one that I had borrowed from Thomas and it was the same model, the M405. And I'd never used a Pelican before. And when I reviewed it, it kind of knocked my socks off. I was very impressed with the pen. So I knew I'd be able to find some Pelicans there. But I, there was actually, I, I didn't, there were a few vintage Pelicans because they've been around forever. Um, people had a lot of vintage Pelicans, but, um, Richard Bender from, uh, Richard's Pens. Yeah. I think they're out of New York. Um, they were there and they're, they're a very large retailer. They have lots of brands and they actually carry the full, they're a Pelican vendor. They had the full Pelican line from like the lowest end model up to, you know, the thousand dollar Pelicans there on display. Um, so I was like, oh, this is going to be a problem. Cause I knew I was going to come up with one because they had them all there. I could test them all out and all the nibs, everything. And the one I'd used from Thomas was an M405. And the way Pelicans are, when you talk about their numbering system, the lower the number, the smaller, the size, the overall size of the pen is. So like there's an M205 or M M200 series is a little bit smaller than the M400. And the M400 is a little bit smaller than the M600. And I'm talking about, you know, overall size of the pen and then size of the nib. And it goes up to an M1000. And the M1000s are huge. It's just, I can never use a pen that large and that heavy. And the M800s are large and heavy too. So I like the 400. It's a small, on the smaller side, but it's just like the perfect weight, the perfect balance, the perfect feel. And they had the black with the rhodium trim, which is the one, exact one I tested out and reviewed. And then they had, they actually had all the colors. But the only two that came in the rhodium trim are the black, solid black, and then this blue striated model. It's like vertical stripes on the pen. And I was dead set on buying the black one just because it's like every other black pen I own, right? It's black with a silver trim. And it's got this very cool, like little green ink window that's, you can't, you can only see if you hold it at the right angle. So that was a huge selling point for me. But I kept coming back to this blue pen and it looks so pretty. And I said, you know what? Just grow a pair and buy something different for a change. And so I did. I bought the blue one and I could not be more happy with that choice of barrel. It is beautiful, beautiful looking pen.

Brad Dowdy: Again, this is one where the pictures don't really do it justice. And the nib is like a two-tone silver and gold. It's 14 karat gold nib. I got an extra fine. This one's going to Masayama pretty quickly. Because the extra fine here is really, really wide.

Brad Dowdy: Which is fine. I mean, I like it. It might be the smoothest writing nib I own.

Brad Dowdy: You know, Richard Bender is famous for his, for adjusting the nibs. When you buy the pen from him, his wife was manning the table and a couple other people were manning their tables. You purchase a pen from him and then it goes straight to him sitting over and working and smoothing out the nibs. And he basically does a once-over on the pen for you right there. Smooths the nib, grinds it, makes sure it's absolutely perfect. So it's like this silky smooth. Might be the smoothest nib I own. But I think I'm going to have to get it adjusted to get it finer. It certainly doesn't need to be any smoother because it's an amazing writer.

Myke Hurley: I love the cap.

Pen Cap

Brad Dowdy: Yeah. It's really well done. I like, like if the cap was the same color as the barrel, I would have never bought it. Right? Like if it was a fully blue striped pen. Too much. Yeah. That would be too much. But the cap is solid black. The piston filler at the end is black. It, it's, it's really, it, I said about it in my original review. Everything about this pen is just right.

Brad Dowdy: It's a, it's one of those pens that's just flawless in build and construction and feel. I mean, it's, it's spot on everything. So, and it was also the most expensive pen I bought. It was, it was new. It's got a 14 karat gold nib. So that's expensive.

Brad Dowdy: But I knew going into it, I kind of sort of budgeted for one if I could find one. So it was the last thing I bought. I had enough money left for it. And I think I would have regretted not coming home with one of them.

Brad Dowdy: So I'm thrilled that I did. And I love writing with this pen. And I think I'm just going to get it a little bit finer just to kind of fit my writing style a little bit better.

Myke Hurley: So you're going to send that one off to my C&M?

Brad Dowdy: Yes. Yeah. I'm going to use it a little bit more. You know, I've loaded up with ink. I've enjoyed writing with it. I'm going to write with it for a little bit. Just make sure what I really want to do. Because it's really fun to write with it. It's so smooth. But I think it's just a little bit too wide. So I will send that one off more likely than not to get fine-tuned a little bit. But, you know, those are the four pens I bought. I am extraordinarily pleased with all of them. So I think the show was a huge success for me personally in the pens. I also picked up like four, maybe four or five bottles of ink. I'll be doing some ink reviews. Ink's a great thing to pick up at a pen show because you don't get killed on shipping charges because that's a heavy thing to ship. So I got some really good deals on ink from the Andersons and from a couple other vendors there. I bought, yeah, I think four bottles of ink. Just some smaller bottles of things I wanted to try, mostly blues. I bought Mont Blanc, Midnight Blue, Platinum Blue Black.

Brad Dowdy: There's a company called Scribble Workshop that is basically just a guy making his own inks, kind of like how Noodler started. And I'm going to try that. So a few different things. You'll be seeing some more reviews of just some side items I picked up. But it was a long day. I got out of there about 4 o'clock. I got there about 9.45. I got out of there about 4 o'clock.

Brad Dowdy: But it was well worth it. I was worn out by the time I was done. I'll tell you that. It was a long drive home because I was like, whew, all right, I'm tired. But it was hard. I couldn't wait to get home because then I could finally start, you know, using these pens, get them inked up, get them cleaned up. But I found when I got home that night, I didn't want anything to do with pens. I needed a break for a little while.

Brad Dowdy: So, you know, I chilled out for a while, let the pens sit. And then later on that night, about 1 o'clock in the morning, you saw a tweet from me about 1 o'clock in the morning. I said, okay. The things I start at 1 a.m., that's when I finally got all the pens out and got them all cleaned up and got them all inked and ready to use. So, it was a fun show, highly successful. And, you know, I'd like to say I wish I could do it every month, but I couldn't afford that. So, I'm already ready for next year, though.

Myke Hurley: I really want to go to a pen show.

Brad Dowdy: I'm pretty sure there's a London pen show, isn't there?

Myke Hurley: There is, but it isn't until October.

Brad Dowdy: Ah, gotcha. But I will wait. You'll have to make that happen, though. You'll have to go.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I've just put it in my calendar.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah.

Myke Hurley: I will definitely go to the one in October this year. If anybody knows of any that are not necessarily in London but local-ish to London before then, let me know on Twitter or email or something. I'd love to go because I'm so jealous of you.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it's a really great experience, and it's a really great learning experience. You know, I'm still a novice in the world of fountain pens, and the things you can pick up just from going and talking to someone like Brian and Lisa Anderson or Myke Masuyama or any other vendors that I talk to. You know, just the things you pick up and just kind of add on to your knowledge base are invaluable at a show like this, and it's well worth it even if you don't purchase anything. You can go and look at everything and learn about the history to some of these pens, why they were made this way, how you can make them better. And everyone is very, very helpful and willing to answer a bunch of questions from novices like myself. So it's just a way to build on that knowledge, and it was very, very fun. I had a wonderful time. I'm ecstatic with all of my purchases. You know, four pens, you wouldn't think is a lot, but, you know, I can only use one pen at a time, so I'm like anxious. You know, I'm switching them up. I've been using one per day is kind of how I'm going through them. I used the Lamy 2000 two days ago. I used all day. I used the Edison Pearl yesterday, so now I'll pick one of the other ones to use all day today. So just kind of give them a good rotation and see how I'm liking them.

Myke Hurley: Awesome.

Brad Dowdy: Yep.

Brad Dowdy: Yep, so you definitely need to get to a pen show one day.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, I mean, because I've put a bid on this, you know, I've put a bid on one of these vacuumatics. But I'm not going to know what it's like until it arrives. Right. And that's the problem. Like, I'm not going to know if the color is exactly the same. I'm not going to know if I'd like the nib. I might hate the nib and then just keep it. I mean, but so that's, you know, so I'll be taking a risk on this just because I think it would be something beautiful to add to the collection. Right. Right. But really, I would like to go and, one, try these things out, but also find something myself, you know? Find a pen or something really beautiful or something really quirky on my own, like about, you know, you finding it and then me copying it. You know? Just so I go and I make my own discoveries because that's what you did. Exactly. You didn't really consider or know too much about the vacuumatic, you said, right?

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, not at all. And you've come across this thing. I mean, I heard about them and I'd seen them, but yeah, no, it wasn't on the radar.

Myke Hurley: And you said that it's probably the most beautiful pen you've ever seen, right?

Vacuumatic Pens

Brad Dowdy: It's, yeah, I think so. I mean, it's fascinating. You, like, can't stop looking at it. It's a fascinating pen. Yeah. It's amazing.

Myke Hurley: So to come across something like that, I mean, that's amazing.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. Yep. That's a good point. Yep. And, you know, it's hard to do that on eBay or through a retailer, you know, online, right? Until you can go lay your hands on it, see what it looks like in the light. And, you know, I'm a bad photographer and there's people that take a lot better pictures than I do. And they still sometimes can't do the pen justice because it's a hard thing to photograph, you know, to get all the colors right, to, you know, express that, how a pen really looks to someone else, you know, on a computer screen. So, yeah, doing it in person at a pen show is a huge benefit.

Myke Hurley: Awesome. Is there anything else you want to add today?

Brad Dowdy: I don't think so. I think I've got so many pens now that I don't know which ones to use. So I guess it's a good problem to have. I definitely have an addiction.

Myke Hurley: That is a very good problem to have.

Myke Hurley: Okay. So you can catch up with me and Brad on social networks. I am iMike, I-M-Y-K-E, on Twitter and app.net. Brad is dowdy, D-O-W-D-Y-I-S-M, on Twitter. Oh, I must mention as well, I was giving Dan Benjamin Penn advice today.

Brad Dowdy: Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Rabbit hole alert.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, somebody tweeted him and was like, now that, because Dan's been sick, he wasn't recording anything last week. Uh-oh. Somebody found the show, our show, and is now a confessed addict. Let me find them. It's Andrew, oh, sorry, Andrew, Saussure. Okay. He tweeted, this is what happens when Dan Benjamin is out for a week. New listener, new habit. And he's got a couple of autographic liners. Oh, cool. So he started off right. Well done, Andrew. Welcome. Yes, well done. And so then Dan was like, you know, what is this? And then was reminded that we do the pen show. And then he was talking about it. I was listening to him on the frequency and he was saying, you know, Myke apparently knows a lot about pens. And Hattie was like, yes, the pen addict. And he was like, mm-hmm, pen addict. And then, so then we were talking, I was like, look, I was like, this, I said, this show is a runaway success, Mr. Benjamin. And he was like, okay, give me some, give me some, some things to buy. So let me tell you all the things that I told him that he should be getting. Okay. Retro 51. Mm-hmm. Lamy Safari. Mm-hmm. TWSB. Mm-hmm. Autographic Liner. Mm-hmm. Hitek C. Mm-hmm. Zebra Sarasa. Mm-hmm. Kurutoga. Oh, perfect. And the Prera and the Koeko. They were, because basically I was just sending him through and he was telling me what he did and what he didn't like. So I think we might follow it up later on this week. But he, yeah, he said he was saying what he liked and what he didn't. And he just finished it with, I guess we need to talk a little bit.

Myke Hurley: He really liked the retro, which I knew that he would, because everybody would. And he picked out the Space Invader one and thought it was brilliant.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, yeah, that's cool.

Myke Hurley: And he was like, he sent me a picture of a converter. And he was like, what the F is this?

Myke Hurley: And I was like, that's if you want to use bottled ink. So he wants some new pens. So the pen addict is even helping the big boss man.

Brad Dowdy: Good, good. Well, if he really gets into it, we'll have the big boss man on the show one day.

Myke Hurley: That would be a good idea, actually. Once I get him, once I sort him out with what he needs to buy.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, once we really set the hook, we'll reel him in and get him on the show.

Myke Hurley: Yeah, you can tell us what he thinks.

Brad Dowdy: Yep. That's hilarious.

Myke Hurley: So you can read Brad's site, penaddict.com. I urge everybody to go and read the two-part post. I mean, you've heard a lot of it here, but I really, really enjoyed it. And also you get to see some beautiful images as well.

Brad Dowdy: Yeah, it was fun to do. I'm not a part one, part two kind of guy, and it's really not that long. But I did it more because I wanted to give the pens justice. I didn't want to do one huge image post where these pens kind of get lost in the shuffle. So I kind of broke it down into two smaller posts. And they're both up on the site right now and got a lot of good feedback from them. And yeah, it was fun to write up. And it was certainly more fun to make the purchases in the first place. Awesome.

Myke Hurley: Brilliant. So thank you very much, Mr. Dowdy.

Brad Dowdy: All right. You will refer to me as his Bradness from now on.

Myke Hurley: His Bradness. His Radness, the Bradness. Yes. And we'll be back next week.

Brad Dowdy: Yes, we will.

Myke Hurley: All right. Thanks very much for listening.

Brad Dowdy: All right. Talk to you later.

Myke Hurley: Bye-bye.

Brad Dowdy: Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.