I’m dead serious about my pens. Some want expensive tennis shoes, some will get by with cheap ones. Some want the nicest, fanciest, sportiest cars, some just want basic transportation. Some want a mansion, others just need a roof over their heads. It’s all in what you put emphasis on. For me it’s pens, something I use all day every day during work. My wife will use whatever plastic pen with a broken clip that she finds on the floor, but I want something a little nicer that feels good in the hand.
And while you think $100 is a lot, it’s really not in the machined pen community. Fellhoelter pens can go for hundreds or even a thousand. The best thing that happened to me was for my wife to go with me to a pen show (yes, they have pen shows). Fountain pen prices can be insane, and she saw some for $20,000 and $25,000. It made my $100-$200 machined pens not look so bad! She’s still not happy about me spending money on pens, but after the pen show she knows that it could be SO much worse!
There’s a good sized market for metal machined pens that take standard refills like Parker-style or Pilot G2. If you use one once, you’ll either get it or think it’s stupid. If you get it, the rabbit hole can be deeeeeeeep.
My mother passed away, and as an only child with very little other family, it fell on my wife and me to deal with her estate. After everything was settled, we took a getaway trip to unwind and decompress. While on the trip, we were offered a chance to go to a sales pitch meeting one morning. We would be given some really good gifts if we listen to their one hour presentation. We went in with the firm understanding that we were going to say “NO“ to everything, get our free gifts, and leave.
It was a pitch for a Hotel club. You were supposed to get great deals on any hotel anywhere in the world. Just call up, give them the company name and member number, and collect your discounts. They even offered us enough extra memberships that we could give one to each of our kids. It was quite pricey, but we actually had some money from my mother‘s estate, and what they offered was a great deal. We would have eventually over time gotten back in savings the money we spent.
When we got home and began researching it, it turns out that we had been lied to (shocker I know). They just said yes to any question I asked even if it was a bold faced lie. The discounts were only on exotic resorts in places like Key West, Cabo, etc., and for weeks long to months long stays. That’s definitely not us, which made this a complete waste of money. Luckily I kept the contract and followed the cancellation policy to a T. I stopped payment on the check I wrote them, and interestingly, they sent me a check in the mail for the same amount a couple weeks later. Had I not had any morals, I could’ve doubled my money by cashing it, but, while it would have served them right, I didn’t want to be a scammer like they were.
On the upside, we got the “gifts”, so there’s that.