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Acquiring more pens is – in my opinion – is a critical part of a fountain pen enthusiast’s journey in pendom. You should try different companies, different pen sizes, different nib sizes, etc. Through trying a bunch of pens you will find what you value in a pen that will influence your future purchases, and help you enjoy the wonderful world of pens that much more.

In this post, I’ll be covering my preferences in pens, how I go about choosing my next pen purchase, and how you can develop your own preferences.

How do I choose a next pen?

At this point in my pen journey, I think that I have found a pretty good idea of my preferences. I tend to like thicker – but not too broad – nibs (medium nibs, generally). Stubs are very nice, but certainly not necessary. Most nibs work for me in terms of smoothness, but the roughest I like to go is Sailor’s medium nib (which I found to be between a western fine and EF). I am not really one to appreciate custom ground nibs very much. Some look really cool and are fun to play with (like the Trilogy Nib), but I don’t think it’s worth it for me to shell out the money to buy one. As for the body, I like a medium sized pen body, like the Pelikan M600, and a wide variety of materials from a simple black resin and gold trim, to the more adventurous materials like swirly acrylics. One interesting thing I’ve found about myself that may not be the case with other people is that I value to physical appearance of the pen quite a lot, especially how the nib looks. If there’s a pen that is praised heavily for its writing experience, but I just don’t like the look of (for example, the Faber Castell Loom), I will almost definitely not buy it.

I developed these preferences mainly from buying pens over time. I would pick one up, play with it for a while, decide on what I thought of it, then most likely sell it to buy another. I’ve gone through a healthy amount of pens – a rough estimate I think is 75 – and I’ve decided what I liked and disliked about each one to try and profile the kind of pen that would be perfect for me. And these preferences weren’t unchanging by any means. At first, I leaned pretty heavily to finer nibs. My first pen was a Pilot Metropolitan in fine, in fact. But over time I began to dabble a bit in broader sizes until I reached my limit, that being a Sheaffer Targa Broad, which ended up being just too broad. That Targa now belongs to someone who will angrily hiss at any nib below a medium.

So basically, when choosing a next pen, I will take at look at it and decide if I like the design. If so, I’ll look at hands on reviews, overviews, YouTube videos, etc. until I decide whether I think I’ll like the nib or not. If it has passed both tests, I will add it to my mental wishlist of pens I want eventually.

Although, that’s not to say there are no exceptions. Take, for example, my Parker 45 collection. The pen body is a bit smaller than I like, and the unreliability of buying on eBay combined with their rarity on /r/pen_swap usually is a turn off for me, but I love soany different things about them (their history, collectability, design…) that it is all worth it.

How do you develop your preferences?

I think that the best way is to just try a bunch of different pens. Try a different size pen, try a new nib size, try that nib size from a different brand, etc. Keep using a ton of pens until you have boiled down your preferences into a nice checklist.

If you can, head to a pen show. Tons of people there like to share their pens, or maybe let you try some that they are selling. Shows are a fantastic place to get your hands on a whole bunch of pens very easily. Or, go buy some pens just to try and then sell later. Vintage pens are a great option for this, because they won’t lose any value after you bought it and used it. You also may discover a new love for vintage pens like I did 🙂

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