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Fountain Pen Recommendation

LilBastage

LilBastage

Meat is murder! Tasty, tasty murder.
Joined
Oct 25, 2005
Messages
5,461
My wife's birthday is coming up in a couple of months and I want to get her a decent fountain pen. She's recently taken to actually handwriting letters to family and friends and I thought it would be a nice gift to go along with that sort of thing. I'll be getting her something else as well, so I don't want to break the bank with this part of the gift.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a decent fountain pen in the $50-$100 range?
 
I bought my wife a Waterman fountain pen many years ago. She loved it and used it as her everyday pen.

One day, she dropped it and bent the crap out of the nub and broke a chip off the barrel. Then it sat around in a drawer for a year or two, getting more beat up.

A couple of years ago, I contacted Waterman and returned it to them for repair. They sent it back looking brand new! I don't know if they replaced or repaired it. All I paid was shipping.
 
Holy S**t!! I actually to be a FOG around here once. I’ve used fountain pens for years, and love them. There is just an indescribable comfort to them. But anyway, my favorite and the ones I use daily are a Waterman fountain pen and a Waterman rollerball. They are in the price range you’re looking at and perform exceptionally well. If I remember correctly my fountain was $80 and the rollerball was $60. They have several nice lines, the Charleston specifically. Only word of advice, make sure you get a gold nib. I don’t have any quantitative data to support that but the gold nibs seem to write better.

Oh by the way, don’t bother with the whole ink well and filler. You can get pen refills at office depot for like $10 for a pack of I think 8 or 10 refill cartridges. Unless she’s wanting the romanticism of refilling the pen it just a giant pain in the arse.

Your (or her) mileage may vary but that’s my story and I’m stickin to it.

Blessings,
Jim
 
Another Board I'm on has quite a few fountain pen collectors and a little research shows the Waterman and Pelikan suggestions stand up well in your price range, as well as MI's suggestion for the refills.

I'd love to get a nice fountain pen for my wife as well (she has lovely penmanship) but since she works at a bank and by her count, 95% of the forms (mortgages, investments, loans, etc) are carbon copy triplicate, these are useless.
 
I have several fountain pens and have to agree with everything said about Pelikan and Waterman. Waterman specifically. Pelikan's lower number souveran (M200 and M400) line is great for the price. I too agree that For the price hands down you cannot beat a Waterman.

Jim
 
Alan, pity you want to stay below $100. The Mont Blank fountain pen is the cre’me de la cre’me. She will "love you more today than yesterday"...LOL

Brian
 
Infinity said:
Big Stick said:
Infinity said:
Alan, pity you want to stay below $100. The Mont Blank fountain pen is the cre'me de la cre'me. She will "love you more today than yesterday"...LOL

Brian
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Here Here!!!!
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Hear Hear Linky :D

Brian
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Of course, if the speaker is actually asking a question, such as "and just where do you think we should open the new strip club?" it's not hard to imagine that at least one yahoo in attendance might yell, "here, here!" But this would be the exception that proves the rule. linky

:sign:
 
Infinity said:
Alan, pity you want to stay below $100. The Mont Blank fountain pen is the cre’me de la cre’me. She will "love you more today than yesterday"...LOL

Brian
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We try not to go overboard on birthday gifts for one another. I've already booked a weekend getaway that took most of my budget for this year. Christmas is the big holiday for us, so if she really likes the pen I end up getting her I may think about getting her a much nicer one then. Besides, I'm working my way out of the doghouse. She already loves me more today than she did yesterday (and A LOT more than she did last Friday :laugh: ).


Thanks for all the advice and links. I've got some research to do! :)
 
Alan one other point I forgot about, if she does a lot of writing I would go for a wider pen. They are much easier to hold for extended periods. Just my 2¢ worth.

Blessings,
(¿The Other Brother?) Jim
trying it out for size apparently my parents weren’t the only ones that liked that name. lol
 
I love the Mont Blancs. Never had a fountain MB but had the rollerball and the regular ink pens and they are great pens. Kind of expensive but nice pens. They are like anything else, you can spend as high as you want.

Best of luck with whatever you decide.
 
grateful1 said:
FPN

AWG
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FPN is a great resource, I used to be a regular poster there. For $99 you can get this pen:
m400white.jpg

from this website. I have bought more than one pen from Pam, and she's great to deal with.

I also own that particular pen, and it's a beaut. Plus, if there's anything wrong with it, Chartpak (Pelikan's U.S. customer service) is wonderful about fixing it. Just send in the pen with a note saying what the problem is and they'll fix it, no charge, no questions asked. I had them replace a dry fine nib on that very pen for a wet medium; about 10 days round trip.

On using ink cartridges versus filling from the bottle: first, if you go the Pelikan route, you can't use cartridges as these pens have an internal piston filler. Piston fill is widely accepted in the fountain pen community as being the superior mechanism, and Pelikan's is one of the best. Second, bottled ink has much more variety and quality available than cartridges. Third, the act of filling from the bottle, by drawing ink up through the nib, helps keep it flowing smoothly.
 
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