I have 20 pens in my collection at the moment, after stripping out my for-sale and my toys.
I thought it would be a quick little diversion to see what if anything they had in common.
I counted up how they fared on ten different attributes, from trim colour to nib width to price paid, and which the most popular answer was:
- Material: plastic accounted for 13
- Colour: 6 are black
- Country of origin: 8 from Germany
- Nib width: 11 write a medium-ish line
- Nib softness: 16 are firm
- Clip: 17 have them
- Trim colour: 11 are silver or grey
- Filling mechanism: 11 are piston
- Nib material: 15 are gold
- Cap mechanism: 15 are screw
- Value: 7 are over £750
Only one pen landed in the most popular group against all 10 questions, making it Mr (or Miss) modal average.
The Montblanc Agatha Christie.
Surprised? I was. But it is a great pen.
If you asked the same ten questions of your pen horde, what would the most popular type be? Does any one (or more) pen fit every most popular category?
Let me pop this data in the spreadsheet, run the pivot tables again, and I’ll get back to you.
I can’t tell if you’re joking 😂
I’m not! It’s not a big collection (10 pens) but will be interesting to run this all the same.
Material: plastic 4/9
Colour: black 6/9
Country of origin: Germany 5/9
Nib width: medium 5/9
Nib softness: all firm
Clip: 7/9
Trim colour: silver 9/9
Filling mechanism: cartridge/converter 7/9
Nib material: steel 7/9
Cap mechanism: screw 5/9
Value: average £60
Lamy Aion is the closest
Material: 9 are plastic
Colour: 6 are black
Country of origin: 13 are German
Nib width: 12 are medium-ish
Nib: 12 are barely flexible
Clip: All 14 have one
Trim colour: 11 are gold
Filling mechanism: 9 are piston
Nib material: 13 are steel
Cap mechanism: 9 are screwed on
Value: I barely paid more than 50 Euros for a single pen
Age: Every pen but two are older than I am…
Apparently my average pen can be either a Reform Iridium Point or a Pelikan 481.
Nice exercise! My scores for 15 pens:
Material: 12 are non-metal
Colour: 3 are black, 3 are green and 3 are red
Origin: 6 are Japanese
Nib with: 10 are M(-ish)
Nib material: 12 are gold
Clip: 13 have one
Cap: 14 screw on
Trim: 8 are silver
Filling: 9 use a converter
Value: 8 are above EUR 500
The greatest common denominator is my Sailor King of Pen Ebonite RT. A great pen with a superb nib.
Sorry to reload this fascinating post. The exercise is very interesting. these are my results for my 50 pen horde:
Material: plastic accounted for 26
Colour: 10 are black
Country of origin: 15 from Italy
Nib width: 17 write a fine line
Nib softness: 46 are firm
Clip: 49 have them
Trim colour: 28 are silver or chrome
Filling mechanism: 34 are c/c
Nib material: 35 are gold
Cap mechanism: 37 are screw
Value: average cost of purchase was 180 €
No one filled all these features. The closest one was my Omas MIlord cruise red, which fitted 9/10 criteria. So this is my representative pen.
Thank you for your very valuable and informative blog.