osodecanela | Pen Geekery....

EBay has my number.

By something on eBay, earn some eBay bucks. Once a quarter, you either use 'em, or lose 'em. Monday morning I got a little reminder, an automated call on my cell phone no less, that I had eBay bucks expiring on Tuesday. That's usually a reminder for me to buy some ink.

I've posted previously that I collect antique fountain pens. Actually, fountain pens are pretty much all I write with. I pretty much go through a bottle of ink every 2 to 3 months. (Yeah, I write a lot.) I have an assortment of colors that my disposal, but what I mostly go through is black, blue-black & blue. Mostly what I use are Waterman & Parker inks. As a general rule of thumb, those two brands work quite nicely. They flow well, never seemed to gum up the nib, and are nicely colorfast. The going price per bottle is generally 10 bucks, plus either shipping or sales tax or both. Staples sometimes has the Parker brand (Quink) in black only if I want to pick it up locally, or I can go into one of the local high-end stationery stores and drop anywhere from $15 on up for a bottle of ink. Me, I would rather buy it online.

An eBay vendor up in Oregon, had Waterman's Florida Blue on marked down for $8.50 a bottle, Waterman's black for $9.50, & washable blue Quink for $9.95. Shipping was free for purchases 50 bucks and up. My office manager who is as much of a fountain pen lover as I am (we both learned how to write with fountain pens as kids, me in this country & she has a generation later in Eastern Europe), and she generally wants a bottle or two whenever I buy ink.

Above is a sample of the Florida blue. The pen is a 1940 Parker Vacumatic in silver pearl with a fine point nib. The ink is a bit darker than I'd expected, but I didn't rinse out the pen, prior to filling it and I believe I last had black in this particular Parker.

Incidentally, this particular pen generally draws children's eyes. Whenever I use it, invariably some kid
will comment on it during the course of the day. Last year a seven-year-old was hanging on my every move while I examined his 12 month old kid sister. As I was writing up her physical exam, I suddenly hear him comment, "cool pen." I responded by handing him the pen to look at.

"Wow, I've never seen a pen like this before."
"That's because it's an antique," I responded.
"What's an antique?"
Switching into Spanish, I looked at him and said, "Como antigua."
"Oh! It's old!" That he now understood the word antique, clearly pleased him. Furrowing his brow, he looked up and asked, "how old is it?"
"That particular pen was made in 1940." I sat there and watched the wheels turning as this seven-year-old did the calculations in his head.
"That's 70 years old!" I smiled and nodded. He continued,"wow! And it still has ink?"

I had to stifle my laughter. The idea of a pen isn't something disposable, but refillable was something entirely new to him. No real surprise, given that he's grown up in the era of the disposable Bic pen. . His mother, who's an exclusive Spanish speaker, looked on, puzzled by my apparent mirth. When I explained all this to her in Spanish, both of us were biting our lips not to laugh.