[Leica] And so it begins... now pens!

[Frank.Dernie at btinternet.com (Frank Dernie)]

I rather like pens. In 1964 I inherited a Mont Blanc propelling pencil  
on my grandfather's death. Nobody had heard of the brand in the UK and  
I could not get lead for it. When on a trip to Germany in 1978  
glancing down an alleyway I saw a shop with a Mont Blanc sign, so I  
went down to see if I could get some leads for my pencil.  
Unfortunately MB no longer made anything like that pencil. All their  
products were slim modern designs, except one, a cigar shaped old  
fashioned looking pen, for the princely sum of ?58.00, which had an  
interesting filler. It was the 149. I bought one and used it for many  
years. It was some time later that they started selling all sorts of  
other items based on that style.
It always had the extremely annoying habit of changing flow rate as  
the reservoir ran down (perhaps I write too fast..).
My favourite fountain pens to use are Omas and Pelikan, with my Omas  
celluloid being my preferred to "handle".
I used to only use fountain pens. Now I run almost completely paper  
free I only use a keyboard:-(
Frank

On 3 Jan, 2009, at 03:09, Jayanand Govindaraj wrote:

> Gene,
> You are extremely lucky, see the pen lists and boards for any amount  
> of
> horror stories. Compare the price of a 149 with its cheap plastic  
> ('precious
> resin' in their marketing terminology), to a Platinum Celluloid Koi  
> with a
> music nib, or a Sailor Ribbed Naginata Togi, or a Pelikan Souveran  
> M800 (my
> three pens on rotation at the current time) and it is no contest,  
> the 149 is
> more than double the price for half the quality. Try them out when  
> you buy a
> pen next time. In a recent survey of pen lovers/collectors at  
> Fountain Pen
> Network, only 5% said that they would use a Montblanc as their  
> primary pen,
> compared to 20% each for Pelikan, Sailor and Pilot/Namiki. Other  
> famous
> names fare as badly as Montblanc, namely Parker & Sheaffer, also  
> reflecting
> the fall in quality.
> Cheers
> Jayanand