This is less of a check out my collection and more of a is there anything you would like to know more about, a state of the collection of pens I have accumulated over the more than three decades I have been using fountain pens. I don't have anything particularly special, so most of them are known, but there are a few interesting, less known ones.
I started using them not out of my own volition, but because it was mandatory in first grade. Then, when it wasn't anymore, I still stuck with them, because other pens didn't feel quite as nice, not as smooth, required much more pressure to write, and certainly didn't have the array of colors available to fountain pens. So while I didn't originally choose to use fountain pens, I absolutely chose to stick with them. I do occasionally use ballpoints (BIC cristal and M10) and various gel pens, when I have to, but this is very much occasional.
This is not all the pens I have ever had, I have broken, lost, sold and given away quite a few tens of them, this is only what I have today, minus a Wing Sung 601A which is in my lab right now, but I am not going to go get it because of the heat.. and it is not worth talking about too (not a particularly good pen).
I'll present the pens as:
[Brand] [Model name] [Nib size/style/cut] - [name of the colorway],
as expressed by the manufacturer or in the sales pages, in English (usually machine translated for Chinese brands), as available.
Top row, left to right:
- Pimio / Picasso 933 Avignon M - unknown
- Pimio / Picasso 902 Gentleman series M - Agathe red
- Pimio / Picasso 902 Gentleman series M - Black gold cap
- Pimio / Picasso 906 Athens Dynasty M - Blakc and gold
- Pimio / Picasso 916 Malaga EF - Red
- Pimio / Picasso 916 Malaga F - Muri gray
- Pimio / Picasso 916 Malaga SEF - Dawn red
- HongDian C1 Explorer F - Red
- HongDian 517D EF - Matte black and silver
- Jinhao 35 EF - Black
- Jinhao 911 EF - Black and gold
- Jinhao 20 EF - "C" (no further naming found for this color)
- Pilot kaküno EF - Gray
- Pilot Custom 74 F (14k) - unkown
Bottom row:
- Jinhao 100 Naginata & F nibs - Snowflake
- Jinhao 100 M - Black
- Jinhao 100 EF - Tofu
- Jinhao 95 F - Black and gold
- Jinhao 95 M - Red
- Jinhao 85 EF/0,38mm (hooded nib) - DYI colorway (barrel painted with the same paint as my motorcycle)
- Jinhao 85 F (open nib) - Black
- Jinhao 85 EF (hooded) - Blue
- Jinhao 85 EF (hooded) - Blue (same colorway, different batches, lighter is older by several years, difference not due to shifting color)
- Jinhao 75 F/0,5mm - Black red
- Jinhao 88 F - Red
- Jinhao 88 EF - Blue
- Hero 849 EF - Green (it's actually teal and rose gold)
- Pilot explorer M - Red
Top row:
- Platinum #3776 Music nib (14k) - Black (the feed has turned into dust, and no replacement parts are available as Platinum refuses to sell parts for repairs, and I am not paying for the shipping to Japan for a pen that costed my 11800¥)
- Parker Sonnet F (18k) and Cursive (18k) - Chiseled silver (or sterling silver I don't remember)
- Parker ~~IM~~ Premier F (18k) - Black and gold trim
- Parker Duofold International F (18k) - Green tortoise shell and Rhodium (IIRC) trim
- Pilot 78G+ M - Green
- Pilot 78G+ F - Black
- Pilot kaküno F - Soft blue
- Hero 1079 Ultrafine/0,38mm - Black
- Hero 1079 Ultrafine/0,38mm - Yellow
- Hero P108 0,38mm (hooded) - Matte black
- Hero 616 F - Burgundy
- Hero 616 F - Yellow (yeah, I know)
Bottom row
- Unknown pen with generic nib and feed - (actual) Sandal wood
- Unknown pen with generic nib and feed - (actual) Rosewood
- Kaco Mellow EF - Red
- Kaco Retro EF/0,38mm (hooded) - Black
- No idea what this one is, same generic nib and feed as the wood pens
- "Vintage Hero pen" no further details (hooded nib)
- "Vintage Hero pen" no further details (hooded nib)
- Stonego unknown model with "KURM" branding on nib
- Stonego unkown model with "HUASHILAI" branded nib
- Unknown brand and model with generic "Iridium point" nib
- Lambitou 2053 Artistic pen - unknown
- Hero 616 F/0,5mm - Red
Left to right:
- Waterman Allure F - Chrome
- Waterman Kultur F - unknown
- Waterman Philéas M - Black and gold trim (smoothest steel nib I have ever used)
- Waterman Hémisphère M - unknown
- Waterman Charleston M (18k) and OF (18k) - Ivory
Left to right:
- Waterman Exception "slim" M - Black and gold trim
- Waterman Expert II F - Black and gold trim
- Waterman Apostrophe M - Black and gold trim
- Waterman Apostrophe M - Black and gold trim
- Waterman Apostrophe M - Black and gold trim
Feel free to ask whatever questions come to mind. Do note that I don't necessarily know everything about some of them, I can't even remember how I got some of them.
Edit: Misidentified the Parker Premier for an IM (don't know why I mistake these two all the time)
Usually, between 6 and 8, but when that question arose last year, I had 14. I try not to go too crazy to avoid spending too much time on cleaning. Right now, I have 9:
But I also have two drawers full of ink bottles and a big storage container that barely closes, with more inks and various converters and needle tipped bottles I use to refill cartridges and converters; last time I counted, probably in 2021 or thereabout, I had above different 30 inks in stock, and that was before I tried Chinese inks, and I bought quite a few of them. The Jinhao ones are pretty good across the board, except their brown that is kind of pink in the pens I tried it with, and Ostrich has crazy good stuff too, their sheen series in particular is amazing, because they're not just cheap, but they're usable, except the Glen of the sea, but this one is insane.
If you want to talk inks, I'll be right there with you, even if I write mostly with black inks.
Also, even if it seems like a bit of a large collection, it's not an expensive one, most of the good pens in my collection are single digit prices (at least in euros), while the most disappointing to me have been the expensive ones (mostly the Parker, Platinum and Pilot, as if the letter P was a bad omen).
Regarding your comment about number of inks compared to number of pens, please don't take this as enticement to go buy more pens, but I think you could be depriving yourself of one aspect a diverse collection of pen can bestow upon you: how different one ink can look in different pens and how unpredictable that can be.
For instance, the Ostrich sheen Sea of Okinawa, it's a bright blue with red sheen, nothing crazy, and it's an actually good daily ink in my opinion, but I digress: in my Exception (rather broad for size medium nib and a very wet one), one could expect it to show more sheen and show darker than with something like the Custom 74 in F I have it in right now, but no, the result is the opposite of what I would have thought. It shows darker in the Pilot than the Waterman, and and the sheen is rather flat and uniform. It also shows very little shading. And that's why I diluted it, to force it to show brighter in the thinner Pilot. The Waterman even shows some haloing, that has never shown in any other pen I have tried the ink in, most likely because it's the broadest non stub nib I have.
So you'd think a broader nib should make it look brighter and sheen more, even if it's a wetter one, at least I did, but I was wrong: I tried it in the Picasso (or Pimio, whichever name you prefer) 902 with the M nib, which happens to be close to the Waterman M. The shade of blue is rather close, a bit darker despite not being as wet, but the sheen isn't, it's flatter and shows less variation than.
And one that has been "crazier" is the Jinhao blue-black/black-blue/dark blue/deep blue (depending on whether you check the bottle, the box, official literature, in English or Chinese). This is an ink that I think was meant to mimic the Parker Quink blue black, but the color looks vastly different in different pens. In a Jinhao 35 EF for instance, it looks identical to the Quink. But in a Hero 1079 superfine, it looks like a warmer blue, not quite teal, more gray, almost like it gained an aged yellowish hue. In a Pimio 902 M, it looks like a darker, deeper blue, none of that grayish blue you'd expect from a blue-black. And that happens across the board on all paper types I have used them on.
So, what I'm trying to say is, I guess I care about inks too?