Fountains, fountains everywhere, and not a drop of ink

I have two major shop­ping weak­ness­es. Well, three if you count elec­tron­ic junk, but I don’t feel a lot of con­nec­tion to elec­tron­ic junk. Some­times use­ful toys, but for the most part still toys. No, my virtue and vice gets rolled into two cat­e­gories: books and pens.

I’ve always bought books faster than I can read them. These days I’m not read­ing near­ly as much as I used to; it’s the end of March and I’ve fin­ished only sev­en books this year. The list of books I’ve start­ed but not fin­ished is embar­rass­ing. Nine I’m in the mid­dle of, three more I’ve start­ed but not got­ten very far in. And I have a list of books I hope to get into longer than I care to admit.

Pens are of course vital to me. I can’t draw with­out them, and the more I use them the more I know about them. The more I know about them, the bet­ter I am at han­dling them.

Late­ly I’ve been brows­ing online for two of my favorite all-pur­pose pens. Nei­ther is easy to find.

  My Rotring 700 has seen bet­ter days, but it looks as though I may nev­er see anoth­er one. I’ve scoured eBay and not seen even one. Googling ‘Rotring 700’ yields a bunch of links to eBay, plus two of my posts and a cou­ple that oth­ers have writ­ten. There just aren’t any for sale.

The 700 was the last pen Rotring pro­duced before the com­pa­ny was acquired by San­ford in the Autumn of 1998. Today Rotring con­tin­ues to make some good pens, but the qual­i­ty took an ini­tial plunge soon after the sale and there was a def­i­nite shift in the mar­ket­ing focus. The Rotring 700 did­n’t sur­vive the aqui­si­tion. Which is too bad, as it was head and shoul­ders bet­ter than its more pop­u­lar sis­ter, the 600. Today my 700 has some dings and dents, but it’s still a great writer and sketcher.

I have final­ly for­giv­en Rotring and recent­ly pur­chased a Rotring Ini­tial foun­tain pen. It’s a very dif­fer­ent pen and I think it may be a bet­ter writer than the 700, but not as good a sketch­er. I like a bit of heft to my pens, but for writ­ing I look for a lit­tle more diam­e­ter than I do for draw­ing. Don’t ask me why.

The Ini­tial lists at a bit more than the 700’s retail price: $95.00 ver­sus the 700’s $80.00 price tag in 1998. So they’re pret­ty much at equiv­a­lent price points. But get this: the Ini­tial is offered as a dual fountain/data tip pen. Some­one at Rotring is on my wave­length. I’m one of the few peo­ple in the world that fits the inter­sec­tion of foun­tain pen and PDA sty­lus. Each is its own niche mar­ket to begin with; the com­bi­na­tion of two quite dif­fer­ent nich­es: the mod­ern geek who uses a pen-based com­put­er enough to want an after­mar­ket sty­lus and the lud­dite retro-tech lover who just won’t switch to one of those new­fan­gled «ball-point» pens. If I were a mar­ket­ing per­son, I sure would­n’t bet on being able to tap in to that intersection.

There is quite an advan­tage to find­ing a prod­uct that has­n’t found its mar­ket, which is that ven­dors drop prices as they get more des­per­ate to unload their mer­chan­dise. The sil­ver Ini­tial lists at $95.00 with or with­out the data tip. Most places sell the Ini­tial foun­tain pen at around $75.00 and I’ve seen it as low as $55.00. Those same places often sell the Ini­tial with data tip for $10.00-$20.00 less. You know that some­one in the mar­ket­ing depart­ment got fired when the item with the extra fea­ture and the high­er pro­duc­tion cost is sell­ing for much less.

Sty­lus Cen­tral sold me mine for $20.00 and they engraved my ini­tials into the cap at no extra charge. They real­ly must have been des­per­ate to get rid of those, eh? Sor­ry, I just checked and they aren’t sell­ing the Ini­tial any longer. They fre­quent­ly have clear­ance deals on some­what off-the-beat­en-path items. If you’re obses­sive about PDA stylii, it’s a good place to check in on from time to time.

For years I’ve kept an eye out for the Park­er Vec­tor foun­tain pen. When I was eigh­teen I made the leap of spend­ing eight whole dol­lars on a pen—something I’d nev­er done before! I’d spent per­haps as much as four dol­lars on the Sha­ef­fer foun­tain pen I used occa­sion­al­ly in high school, and I’d thought that was an extrav­a­gance con­sid­er­ing that roller­balls were run­ning around a buck. There it was, beck­on­ing to me from the glass case at the Art Insti­tute’s school book­store. Maybe the mon­ey was burn­ing a hole in my pock­et, maybe I had some inner sense that it would be the pen for me, maybe a bit of both, but I bought it, I think with a red plas­tic bar­rel, and brought it home.

What a dif­fer­ence! This was a pen that flowed smooth­ly but still con­veyed the feel and the tex­ture of the paper. It did­n’t skip and did­n’t leak, and that’s a whole lot more than can be said for the Sha­ef­fer that sad­ly seems to be most peo­ple’s intro­duc­tion to foun­tain pens these days. In short, I loved it. I gave it to a friend who was sim­i­lar­ly impressed with it the first time he tried it and replaced it with a black-bar­reled mod­el. Then one day as I was brows­ing through an air­port gift shop, I saw some­thing sur­pris­ing: a stain­less steel Park­er Vector!

 Once again I spent twice as much mon­ey as I’d ever spent on a sin­gle pen, and I’m so glad I did. It was every­thing that the plas­tic-bar­reled Vec­tors were, but looked like some­thing you would keep, not like some plas­tic throw­away item. And it felt great in my hand. Just enough heav­ier than its plas­tic sib­ling. I car­ried that one with me every­where I went. It seemed like I had it for a long time, but it could­n’t have been more than three or four years all told. It mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared ear­ly in 1993, and I’ve nev­er seen anoth­er like it in a store.

I’ve kept my eyes out, looked in pen stores and even asked shop­keep­ers with rep­u­ta­tions for being able to find rare pens to look for me. I’ve peri­od­i­cal­ly checked eBay and actu­al­ly a few times found them, usu­al­ly being sold from Great Britain or Aus­tralia. Most often I’d see the Vec­tor with a stain­less steel bar­rel with a medi­um point, which is a deal-break­er for me, even for the pen I held so much affec­tion for. I want a fine point and from most mak­ers I’d real­ly rather have an extra-fine.

On one of my recent eBay scour­ings, I did see it. Not an extra-fine, but a fine point. I’ve been curi­ous to see how I’d like work­ing with a Vec­tor again. I’ve had a num­ber of high­er-end pens since then and I already had the Ini­tial I men­tioned above. But it was­n’t too expen­sive, even with ship­ping from Australia.

Hav­ing used oth­er pens with real heft to them, com­ing back to the Park­er was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing. Even in stain­less steel it’s quite a bit lighter than the oth­er pens I use. I just put it on a food scale and it comes in at 17 grams filled. The Rotring 700 is 28 grams and the Ini­tial 47. For com­par­i­son I weighed a Pilot Var­si­ty dis­pos­able foun­tain pen (which is a sur­pris­ing­ly good pen! if you’re look­ing for a starter foun­tain pen get a Var­si­ty instead of to those damnable Sha­ef­fers. The only prob­lem is you don’t get the fun and expe­ri­ence of refill­ing) and it was 9 grams.

The feel of the nib on paper did­n’t dis­ap­point at all. The Park­er is still a great sketch­er and writer, it lays down a clean line with just a bit of flex but enough stiff­ness that you have to real­ly want to vary your line in order to do so. It’s a low-main­te­nance, smooth-writ­ing pen and I’d rec­om­mend it. If you can find one, that is. It may not sat­is­fy the snob­bi­est of the pen-col­lec­tor set, but it’s a real work­horse. It’s durable and good-look­ing and it lays down a con­sis­tent line. It does­n’t require that it live in a spe­cial case. You real­ly could keep it in your pock­et and use it all day at work.

Do I car­ry it around and use it every day? No. I most often reach for the Rotring Ini­tial, which I keep filled with green ink. I have been car­ry­ing the Vec­tor in my bag, so noth­ing is stop­ping me. Since I keep it filled with black ink, I do grab it for things that green ink won’t do for. I don’t sketch in green (per­haps though I should try) and when I draw in the stu­dio I’ll gen­er­al­ly use either a crowquill or a rapi­do­graph. Some­times a brush, but now that’s a sub­ject for an upcom­ing post.

[EDIT—I believe the Vec­tor line was replaced by the Park­er I.M. (which is sold as the Pro­file in Great Britain), but to my eye the Park­er Jot­ter foun­tain in stain­less steel is a bet­ter match. Per­haps I’ll try to get my hands on these and report back.]