Luxury pens are never "worth it"

This rant brought to you by recently seeing a post encouraging beginner fountain pen enthusiasts to start off with $100 pens (WTF!?) and too many articles justifying expensive pens.

As a fountain pen enthusiast who uses fountain pens on an industrial level (drafted three >100K-word stories by hand with pens so far), and as a person who personally believes that fountain pens are a tool first and foremost, and should be judged most heavily on how well it writes rather than its "artistry" (whatever that means), I'm agog at the thought of anyone thinking recommending $100 pens to new users is a good idea. I'm also getting tired of the fountain pen hobbyist trying to justify their exorbitant spending by insisting the pen has "value" beyond the $30 mark to convince others into joining them in their excess.

Look, if you want to spend money because buying stuff makes you feel good, then spend the money. Don't try to trick yourself into thinking you're somehow getting a good bargain.

Anyway, since I'm feeling pretty bitchy right now, I'm going to tear into the argument for starting someone on $100 fountain pens and point out why that's both irresponsible and AMORAL.

[...] a Parker 51 or Pilot Custom Heritage 92, and to a lesser extent a LAMY 2000 or Pilot Custom Heritage 91, delivers such an outstanding experience that a new fountain pen user will have much less reason to "dream bigger" [...]

As an experienced user of fountain pens, I can say with 100% confidence that the more expensive pens like the Parker 51, Custom Heritage 91/92, or Lamy 2k do not deliver a writing experience that's 10-times as good as the Pilot Kakuno. Do they write slightly better? Yes.

Does it scale linearly with the cost? NO.

What's more, I also know that I don't appreciate the gold nib. In other words, I actively dislike how gold nibs write. The soft "bounce" that's so sought after by fountain pen hobbyists is annoying as fuck to deal with when I'm drafting 50k words for NaNo. I'd much rather have an industrial steel nib that keeps the line variation to a minimum when I'm trying to write fast, not pretty. I actively hate piston fillers because the added weight of the ink along the barrel throws the balance off for me because my hands are puny and sensitive to those micro shifts. The pen feels "off" and I have to keep readjusting my grip with most piston fillers on the market. The only piston fillers that haven't given me problems are pocket-sized piston fillers, probably because the ink capacity is a) lower and b) closer to the nib, so it doesn't throw the pen balance off.

With experience, I also know that I hate posting (putting the cap on the butt-end when writing) and thus it's important that a pen can be used without posting. If the pen must post, as happens with pocket pens, then the cap must not add weight to the end of the pen and for me, anything over 2g I can feel and throws the balance off.

As such, for me, even after having tried $100+ fountain pens, my perfect pen continues to be the Kakuno. For me, the air-tightness is less of an issue due to the fact that I write daily. Parker 51's hooded nib offers me nothing because I don't leave my pens unused for extended periods of time. And I hate aerometic fillers because it makes changing inks a PITA. I know this about myself and so I will never be tempted to buy a pen that cannot be easily and quickly dismantled for fast cleaning, which means most higher end pens, and especially piston filler pens, are simply not going to fulfill my needs and thus I will not be happy using them.

Which means if I had followed this person's advice to get a Parker 51, Pilot CH91/92, or Lamy 2k, I would've been extremely unsatisfied and would need to keep buying more pens until I found what I needed in the Kakuno. In the process, I would have been misled to spend hundreds of dollars when I could've found my perfect pen with $12.

(Do I still love my $100+ Franklin-Christoph? Yes. But that pen was ordered after I got to know my preferences and how I like my pens to write so when I plopped down the money, I already knew it was going to be perfect for my quirks.)

[...] a user of the entry level pens, though those pens also give a great experience, they let a newbie dream of greener pastures. The siren call of a better pen leads to the downwards spiral of fountain pen acquisition disorder [...]

FACTUALLY WRONG. As I mentioned earlier, after trying all kinds of pens, it turns out that my favorite pen is the Kakuno. (I can't bring myself to take the Franklin-Christoph out of the house for fear of losing it, so I don't write with it as much as the Kakuno.) The entry level Kakuno writes exactly as I want and is cheap enough that I don't have anxiety carrying it with me. It is the GOAT as far as I am concerned.

And that's the rub. Because the fountain pen is an extremely personal experience. Each person's preference is unique. Sure, plenty of these $100 will satisfy maybe 80% of what a person wants out of a pen, but that's not what you're coming into fountain pens for. You're in this circle because you're looking for the perfect pen for you, not the pretty good pen for everyone. Because, let's be real, a high end liquid ink rollerball already fulfills that niche.

Furthermore, I never felt the "siren call" of a better experience. I'm perfectly happy looking at other people's $300-$1000 pens without getting it for myself, because I know that the features of those pens don't fit what I want. And I know that because I've tried those features on cheaper pens and wrote them off as "not for me".

Someone who is new to fountain pens wouldn't know their own quirks. Do they want Japanese nibs or German nibs? Do they want heavy or light pens? Do they actually like the piston filler or will it annoy them? Would they rather have a converter they can pull off and throw in a cup to soak when changing ink colors? How far up do they grip their pen? Will cap threads bother their fingers when they write? Are they someone who likes checking on ink levels periodically? Do they even like bouncy nibs or would they prefer a steadier stiff nib?

None of these questions can be answered by anyone other than the person themselves. So the idea that any pen can offer "superior" writing experience carte blanche is a lie. A Lamy 2K will not satisfy someone who needs a Japanese XF nib width (Lamy 2K's XF is twice as thick). A Parker 51 will not satisfy someone who wants to be able to see their ink levels or want to have a lot of line variation. Pilot CH92 won't satisfy someone who wants quick ink changes and easy cleaning. Pilot CH91 does nothing for the person who hates Pilot's CON-70 converter (which is not an insubstantial amount of people).

I'm not saying you need to try out 50 different pens before you figure out what kind of pen you like, usually 2-3 is enough if those pens covers a wide swath of variables. And when you write with the pens long enough, you'll know which features are non-negotiable and which ones you prefer but don't actually need. And only then can you figure out which pen is perfect for you.

To start someone off on a $100+ Lamy 2K when that person prefers a thinner line is not just irresponsible, it's AMORAL. You're effectively scamming the person into buying a pen they don't want by selling it as a pen that is "perfect" when there is no such thing. And someone who has no experience with fountain pens would not know what they want until they've tried out more options and got to know their own writing habits. And to package this argument as being more fiscally responsible is just an extra stinky pile of shit on top of this dung heap of an argument.

Then, to use the "worth it" argument... The only person who can determine whether the item is "worth" it is the person who is paying for it. Until the person writes with the pen, they cannot know if it was "worth" it. Random people on the internet swearing up and down the "feel" is great or the construction is superb is not a measure of worth and cannot measure worth. You can do math and show that quantitatively you're spending less dollars, but that's all you can show. "Worth" is literally something that is subjective and cannot be quantified. So the fountain pen community need to stop trying to up sell an expensive plastic rod with a nib attached and just let the newbie decide for themselves.

Give information, give market value, all of that is very useful. But to write entire arguments in an attempt to convince readers into spending hundreds of dollars on non-essential items just comes off as a sleezy and pushy salesperson. Staaaaaahp. ヾ(≧へ≦)〃