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A grand new methodology: scoring my pen collection

Before I begin, let me say this first: I believe any attempt at objectively scoring reviews of aesthetic objects like fountain pens is doomed to failure. After all, everyone’s opinions are different (see my post about pen compatibility for why).

But I think there is value, and interest, in comparing a bunch of reviews against the same yardstick — and of converting long-winded qualitative opinions into the cold hard light of numbers. It exposes your assumptions.

So on a quiet early jetlagged morning in Washington I sat down with a sheet of A3 Tomoe River. I listed out all my current pens (hurrah for keeping a spreadsheet in Dropbox…). I wrote out a list of factors along the top. And I started scoring each pen, from memory, on a scale of 0–3 (I was somewhat inspired by the scoring principles on www.everydaycommentary.com). It took me a while, but I got there in the end.

Six factors

The first factor is RARITY. This is essentially a measure of future regret. I asked myself: if I sold this pen today, would I be able to buy it back? My one-off Oldwin and edition-of-27 Montegrappa score 3; this pushes their overall score up, and reflects that I partly keep pens for the excitement and exclusivity. My new Karas Ink and Starliner score zero — if I lost them tomorrow I could rebuy them immediately without too much of a financial premium.

The second is PRACTICALITY. This encompasses a range of boring but important factors: how easily does it uncap? How much ink does it hold? Is it easy to clean? Does it feel robust? Does the clip work? Is it too heavy to put in a pocket? Does the nib dry out? The Conid Kingsize scores a full 3, naturally. The Montblanc Geometry scores a zero because it’s an ultra-heavy mystery-filler that you can’t disassemble. The Desiderata Soubriquet scores a zero too, due to its fragile materials, weak clip, stiff threads and complex filling mechanism. This is a pen for the heart, not the head.

And hence to SENTIMENTAL VALUE: a truly subjective viewpoint based on my perception of the pen’s artistry, my personal history with the pen, the allure of the brand, the ethos of the maker, and other intangibles. The Montblanc 1912 scores a 3 here — it may not be practical, but the engineering, call to history, and its role in my jump into Montblancs all factor in. The Pineider La Grande Bellezza scores a zero — while I appreciate it, I have no personal attachment to it. And that’s despite the Italian personality and fancy packaging.

WRITING EXPERIENCE comes next. Is the nib something special? Is the grind and ink flow just right? Does it have a bit of bounce and personality? How’s the feedback? Again the 1912 scores a perfect 3, as does the stellar EF on the Montblanc Rouge et Noir, the juicy OMAS-style Scribo, and the delicate Montegrappa. Most pens, if I’ve kept them at all, score a 2 here, but I have a few 1s where the nib is lacking personality or has unresolved issues.

Next up: COMFORT. Here I’m thinking about sharp threads, small sections, big steps, unbalanced weight, slippery finishes. Big pens like the 149, Kingsize, Oldwin and Montegrappa score well (hey, I’m entitled to my biases); others like the M805, Karas Ink and Montblanc Shaw lose points for irritating my fingers.

And last but not least, VISUAL APPEAL. This is incredibly subjective, I know, but does it look great? I’m thinking here of size, shape, proportions, colour, finishing, materials, brand language. The wood and platinum on the Graf Classic? An instant 3. The unique lava of the Homo Sapiens? 3. The delicate lacquer of the faceted Nakaya Decapod? 3. Nagging flaws do count here — the uneven lacquer on my Oldwin knocks it down to a 2. And there are a few 1s, which doesn’t mean the pen is outright ugly — only that it doesn’t make you say ‘wow’. For example, the small, grey Aurora Optima. The budget Karas Starliner in raw aluminium. The Visconti Dr Gachet with its muddy colours and fingerprint-magnet shiny section.

Winners

27 pens sit on my ranked list. Scores of 1s and 2s are typical. On my rating scheme, 1 is fine or unremarkable, 2 is strong, and 3 is simply perfect or sublime. So I would expect a decent, well-liked pen to score around 9 of 18. And indeed the average score I’ve awarded is 10.3, without any fiddling. A lot of pens that I consider solid, daily users score 11. I’m happy with the balance of my method. This is not like video game reviews where a mediocre game scores 85% and only a complete dog gets 50%. Half marks is just fine.

On these scales my top-scoring pens earned 15 of 18 points. The bottom got 4 of 18.

Let me tell you about the top 5.

Tied for top are the Montblanc 1912 and Visconti London Fog, with 15 points. They’re very different pens, but both are lasting favourites, and hard to get hold of. The 1912 only drops points for practicality (slow uncapping, mystery filler, no disassembly) and a little for comfort. The London Fog is fussy to clean and not quite perfect for writing performance or comfort, but honestly that’s nit-picking.

In third is the Montegrappa Extra ‘The Sea’, with a score of 14. This actually really surprised me. I scored it zero for practicality. It’s a mystery filler, with sterling silver to polish, a tight clip, and a tendency to dry out a little — but this is a pen that sits amazingly in the hand and writes a lovely soft line. It also scores 3 for scarcity.

In fourth, the Conid Kingsize. Truth be told, this is a near-perfect pen for functionality. I docked it a point for writing experience, but it scores just 1 for rarity (if you’re happy to wait 12 weeks you can get one), and 1 for sentimental value.

Rounding out the top 5 is the Desiderata Soubriquet. As discussed above, it scores zero for practicality, but it’s big on personality.

A fairer ranking?

All this I think is fair and balanced for my purposes, but I did decide that two of the ratings should be excluded from the overall public rankings. The sentimental value score, since it isn’t transferable to you, dear reader, and the rarity score, since, well, either you can get hold of the pen or you can’t, and it’s hardly the pen’s fault either way…

And that gives you a list like this. All scores out of 12

  1. Conid Kingsize — 11
  2. Montblanc 149 platinum — 10
  3. Montblanc 1912 — 9
  4. Visconti London Fog — 9
  5. Montegrappa Extra — 9
  6. Pelikan M805 Ocean Swirl — 9
  7. Sheaffer Legacy gold — 9
  8. Sheaffer Legacy palladium — 9
  9. Lamy 2000 — 9
  10. Scribo — 8
  11. Visconti Homo Sapiens Steel Age — 8
  12. Desiderata Soubriquet — 8
  13. Montblanc Petit Prince — 8
  14. Nakaya Decapod — 8
  15. Graf von Faber-Castell Classic — 8
  16. Montblanc 146 BMW — 8
  17. Oldwin Art Deco — 7
  18. Leonardo Momento Zero — 7
  19. Pineider La Grande Bellezza — 7
  20. Karas Ink — 7
  21. Montblanc Geometry — 6
  22. Kaweco Art Sport Alabaster — 6
  23. Montblanc Shaw — 6
  24. Montblanc Rouge et Noir — 6
  25. Visconti Van Gogh — 5
  26. Karas Starliner XL — 5
  27. Aurora Optima flex — 4

Some oddities in there. My pen of the year, the Leonardo, down at number 18? The amazing EF Rouge et Noir down at 23? My beloved Soubriquet down at number 12? Thing is, this is a list of fabulous pens. I would happily recommend to you, depending on budget and need, pretty much every pen there, and certainly the top 15 or so are straight-up fabulous pens, no compromises. So it’s maybe not such a bad thing to be down at number 12 in an all-star list.

What do you think?

I may try to use this methodology in my reviews going forward. On the other hand, I feel the rating worked so well because I was re-reviewing familiar pens, all at the same time, and from memory (I only had six pens with me). I had literal and figurative distance from which to observe. Would it work so well with new pens?

What do you think? Are scores helpful to you when you’re reading reviews? Do you think I’ve included or excluded any important factors?

12 Comments

  1. rupertarzeian

    Thank you for this excellent piece. Very methodical and thought-provoking. It has made me want to attempt the same exercise with my hoard. Obviously it is bound to be subjective, to some extent but still useful in terms of comparison. One other factor is cost, or value for money, where an expensive pen might lose points for being expensive!

    • Anthony

      Yes, I did start to look at a weighting modifier by cost but it started to get too complex :-D.

  2. Jamie

    The words thought-provoking were on my mind as I re-read parts of this piece too. I am in the midst of a pen crisis; knowing I have too many pens and not really understanding why I can’t select more than a couple to let go. From my perspective, this system actually makes more sense for the pens I already have to identify pens to sell, than as a scoring system to support reviews for prospective purchase. I am often dismissive of scoring in many reviews as the reasoning is rarely explained and I definitely let my heart rule pen buying decisions. That said, your clear description of the system would make it better than an arbitrary */5. It would make an interesting addition to the review, a bit like the box at the end of hi-fi reviews where all the measured values are listed and performance is plotted.

    I think I’ll have a go this weekend. Slightly scared now.

  3. James

    Superb post, as always. Question for you, though.

    Pens 3 to 9 all scored 9 points. What put the Montblanc 1912 into 3rd and the Lamy 2000 into 9th? It’s not alphabetical order, obviously so I assume you must have ordered based on preference? Or did pens with same “adjusted” score stay in the same comparative order as when you included rarity and sentimental scoring?

    (Or maybe just random?)

    Cheers

    James.

    • Anthony

      Erm, no, it’s because the handwritten list was alphabetical and when trying to put them into scored order I was scanning up and down the list looking for the next pen to type up. So consider it random 😀

  4. James

    Haha!

    As good a way as any.

  5. Shubhranshu Das

    Hi, very interesting and a great starting point for scoring pens in my horde / board .. I can’t call it a collection … But it struck me that I could also use this system to evaluate a pen I may be on the verge of buying or considering … But I think one more parameter would be needed which would rate the need/ greed/ logic for purchase .. still need to think this through a bit more I guess ..

  6. Mark

    Very interesting.
    The engineer in me wants to see the breakdown of the scoring.
    For example, did the Montblanc Shaw get perfect scores for Rarity and Sentimental value or was the distribution more even?
    One suggestion, having built scoring systems like this in he past, you may want to go zero to 2 instead of 1 to 3 just so that the real low performers look low. I can’t figure out how the Aurora got a 4 when there are 6 factors with a minimum of 1 (unless I misread that).

    • Anthony

      Hey Mark,

      The score do indeed run 0–3 on each of the factors, for a theoretical minimum of zero and maximum of either 12 or 18 depending on whether you’re using the four or six factors.

      It just happens that because I quite like most of the pens I still own, I didn’t score anything a zero for writing experience, comfort, or visual appeal. A few pens scored zero for practicality: the Montblanc Geometry and Rouge et Noir, Montegrappa Extra, and Desiderata Soubriquet, for example. Mostly down to things like weight, fragility, lack of ink windows, or difficulty cleaning.

      As to the low score for the Aurora Optima: It got zero for rarity (I see them all over the place), zero for sentimental value, and one each for practicality, writing experience, comfort and visual appeal. It’s a pen I quite like, it’s not bad — I’m scoring ‘1’ for OK, ‘2’ for really good and ‘3’ for near-perfect. I knocked points off for practicality because the piston mechanism is tough to flush and the plastic is prone to cracking. I knocked points off for writing experience because I find the nib a bit dry and temperamental. For comfort, because the pen’s a bit small and narrow for me. And for visual appeal because it’s quite a boring grey, and isn’t at the highest standards of finishing (although the nib is very pretty). By either set of factors, it scores 4/12 or 4/18.

      Four seems low, I admit, but when I look at the factors I can’t see where I’m being particularly unfair, based on my yardsticks. And I certainly didn’t want to come up with some kind of scoring system where all of my pens were clustered at 10/12.

      The Shaw is an interesting comparison against the Aurora, actually:

      The Shaw scored three for rarity — this is a pen you have to hunt for to find the right example. I’ve wanted it for ages and look fondly at it, so it’s a 2 for sentimental value. I gave it 2 for writing experience, because it has the solid medium 146 nib, which I enjoy greatly — certainly more than the Aurora’s nib. 2 for visual appeal — the bands of green and silver are beautiful, and it’s definitely better looking than the grey Optima, but the proportions aren’t perfect. 1 for practicality, due to weight and inability to disassemble. 1 for comfort, due to weight, stepped barrel and sharpish threads. Both equal to the Aurora there.

      That would have put it on 11 out of 18 with all six factors, and 6 out of 12 with the reduced set of factors.

      I’d happily post the full scoring breakdown, but I didn’t want to make an already long post even longer! 🙂

  7. Katherine Smith

    This is great fun! thank you! I really like your criteria. If I were to rank my own pens, I would probably weight the factors that mean more to me. For example I would make comfort and aesthetics a 4 while rarity would be a 2. Writing experience would be a 3, and rarity a 2 (except most of my favorite pens are also the rarest because limited editions tend to be prettier I think). So if you were to weight your criteria which ones would count most? Just curious! And would that change your rankings?

    • Anthony

      I kinda liked the simplicity of everything being 0-3! I would have put writing experience ahead, on first thought, but actually I think comfort, practicality, writing experience and aesthetics are all equally important for me. I’ll still sell a pen that writes brilliantly if it isn’t very comfortable to me. And I’ll still be irritated by a pen that’s difficult to clean, even if it looks beautiful.

  8. devonico

    Wonderful idea, I think I will have a go with my present collection and see what comes out of it. Many thanks for the excellent blog.

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