29 Friday Jul 2022
Posted in Pens
Tags
Let’s be blunt. China has a bad reputation in the pen world for supplying little but cheap blatant clones. It is not the only country to do this, but it is the main offender. This is what spurred me to write my articles on UK sold fountain pens for under a fiver and the follow up post. Recently Ania over at Penchantink has reviewed three Chinese originals, each costing under a fiver. She has now leant me these pens, so here are my views.
Continue reading08 Friday Jul 2022
Posted in Pens
The era of the high end Sheaffer fountain pen being supported by the white dot mark of excellence are long gone. These days, having been sold then sold again, the brand now produces a range of solid low and mid level priced writing implements with even the most expensive barely exceeding $100. At the entry point you have two models. The cheap plastic Pop and for the same price the metal VFM. Thing is for just £18/$18 is this a bargain pen or something for the waste basket. Note this model was launched under BIC ownership, before the brand was sold (in 2014) to Cross.
Continue reading01 Friday Oct 2021
Posted in Pens
Back in April I did a piece on fountain pens for a fiver. The idea being to look at what you could find on the British high street at that time with a price point so low that for many people the fountain pen could be bought on a whim. Once that article went live I came up with a new plan for the collection.
Continue reading30 Friday Apr 2021
Posted in Pens
Tags
Cheap Fountain Pens, Cheap fountain pens uk, Cheap Pens, fountain pen, Helix Oxford, Helix Oxford Fountain Pen, Manuscript, Manuscript Classic Fountain Pen, Manuscript Fountain Pen, Monami, Monami Fountain Pen, Monami Olika, Monami Olika Fountain Pen, Paper Mate Ninja, Paper Mate Ninja Fountain Pen, pilot, Pilot V4, Pilot VPen, Pilot VPen V4, platinum, Platinum Preppy, Sainsbury Fountain Pen, Schnedier Xpect Vivaz, Schneider Fountain Pen, Schneider XPect Vivaz Fountain Pen, WH Smith, WH Smith Fountain Pen
Let’s be honest. Many of us when we started down the slippery slopes of the fountain pen world discovered a plethora of cheap Chinese pen on eBay and tried a few out. These mainly worked, but over time we realised they are just cheap copies of other makes and while some people do continue to use/buy them, others like myself stop. Thing is for disposable starter pens to give to friends and colleagues light they are hard to beat, so the question I set myself was could I buy pens just as good on the UK high street for £5 or less. The only stipulations being that the nibs had to have tipping (not just a butterfly fold) and the pens had to be refillable. As I know some of you may raise the question over the Pilot VPen V4, which in theory you can refill, I have included one of those as well as a bench mark, though you will have to pull the nib and feed once empty for it to really count.
Continue reading
dapprman 