It’s a question I’ve been thinking about for a while, but a combination of things finally prompted me to write this post:

A question posed a few days ago on Reddit r/fountainpens about whether limited edition fountain pens appreciate in value, and looking for recommendations on which pens can be viewed as an “investment”;
The announcement of Lamy’s “Anniversary Edition” Lamy 2000 in Brown Makrolon, made available for pre-order at Canadian retailer Wonder Pens yesterday at a price point nearly 3x the standard version; and
The realization that I am experiencing extreme buyers fatigue, to the point where I can count the number of pens I’ve acquired this year on one hand.

It used to be that companies released “limited” or “special” editions once or twice a year, with “limited” denoting a small, fixed number of pens that are put on sale and then discontinued. “Special edition,” on the other hand, typically refers to a special release made in non-finite quantities for a fixed period of time or until sales drop off. These days, there’s not much that’s either “limited” or “special” about it. Seemingly every major pen company has embraced what amounts to a limited and special edition business model, releasing as many as a dozen of these pens every year supported by aggressive cycles of social media marketing. The point of this post isn’t to blame them for doing so: As long as people are buying the pens, it makes sense for them to do it, since presumably reissuing existing pens in different finishes and materials generates a higher margin that having to invest in entirely new product designs. My question is whether it’s sustainable, and drawing on my own personal experience, how long before the larger customer base starts to lose interest?

I’m not against limited and special releases, but can we do it with a bit more intentionality? To me, there’s a distinct difference between a well thought-out Anniversary release like the Kanilea Honokalani Mali Lei (top left) or a good homage pen such as the Virginia Woolf Writer’s Edition (bottom left), and most of what we are seeing today. While I could get behind the “Bauhaus Blue” Lamy 2000 as a one-off, I have issues with making this an annual thing, in which instead of expanding the standard range to include additional colors, Lamy will be releasing “limited edition” Lamy 2000s annually or near-annually, in effect selling a $200 fountain pen for $700 plus.

Personally, I’m Over It.

You may have noticed that I’m doing fewer reviews of special and limited edition stationery items on the blog. The main reason for this is that I can’t keep up, and I don’t have the personal bandwidth to follow all the different releases that are announced every week. Another reason, however, is a growing lack of excitement on my part. It used to be that the announcement of a new Montblanc Ink or Sailor Pro Gear was considered an event. Now, for example, five months into 2021, we’ve already seen at least three Sailor releases (that I know of) in the North American market alone, and the announcement of so many new inks that I can only throw up my hands. Years ago, you could be a collector of “limited editions” from a specific brand. Nowadays, most companies have released so many that unless you’re extremely well-heeled, that may be impossible.

Don’t worry - I’m not going anywhere and I’m not giving up the blog, but I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that the past year gave rise to an existential crisis of sorts. When I first got into pens, and fountain pens in particular, the search for a superior writing experience is what drove my experimentation and exploration. Somewhere along the way, I found myself caught up in this FOMO-driven “catch-’em-all” mentality, and perhaps even contributing to it by spotlighting every special and limited edition release on The Gentleman Stationer. Maybe it was the experience of being forced to spend my days working from home amid piles of hoarded stationery that will never get used, but about halfway through 2020, I realized that both I and T.G.S. needed a hard reset.

Going forward, I won’t be reviewing “all the things” but rather only those things that legitimately interest me or that I feel might be of significant interest to members of the community. That’s also why you are seeing a new revenue model featuring less retailer and affiliate advertising in favor of direct reader support via Patreon and my own Curated Shop. Yes, there may be some overlap between what I write about and what I sell myself, but it will be intentional. If I choose to carry something, it’s because I think it’s a quality product that is (1) a worth purchasing for actual, practical use, and/or (2) something interesting that the hype train has left at the station and that I think warrants further attention. So far, I’ve found this new approach far more fulfilling, and I’ve had more fun with T.G.S. in 2021 than I’ve had in years, mainly because I finally feel that I’m charting my own direction as opposed to constantly having to worry about responding to the FOMO and other market pressures.

Limited Edition Pens Have Always Been a Bad Investment. Now They’re Even Worse.

Look, I’m not going to quit buying (or even selling) special and limited editions altogether. Some of them are legitimately interesting, well-thought-out, and fun - especially collaborations with artists, brands from other industries, and community members. There will always be a place for that sort of product. But when the industry itself seems to be headed in the direction of one giant special edition subscription model, something feels off, and certainly a departure from what drew me to this community in the first place. I want to try something different, and if people follow me, great. If not, at least I’ll be having fun again!

And to get back to what originally prompted this post: If I could convey one piece of “wisdom” from my decade-plus in the pen community, please do not buy any fountain pen (or other stationery item, or consumer items in general, for that matter) as an investment. Yes, at one point you could flip that Montblanc Writer’s edition (Hemingway or Agatha Christie perhaps?) for a nice return, but these days there are so many of these pens, and the starting retail price for limited and special editions is so high, that there’s little room for any appreciation in value. Moreover, I’ve begun to see retailers having difficulty moving stock. You can often find these pens on deep discount months, or even years, after they were officially discontinued. Honestly, you’re probably better off buying Dogecoin (and no, that’s not an endorsement).

Editor’s Note: For those who are interested, here is some background on the English-language idiom “Jumping the Shark”.

I've resisted doing a weekly links post, simply because it's been hard to find the time to squeeze it in, but so many people have been kind enough to link to me over the past few weeks that I felt it was time to pay it forward. This may or may not become a regular feature, but when something interests me I will make every effort to pass it along here.

Pete Denison has an excellent piece on the "Analog vs. Digital "debate" that has been raging on the internet over the past week. (See more below)
Patrick Rhone reviews the Pilot Metropolitan over at The Cramped (which contains plenty of great writing on a daily basis).
Pencil Revolution Turns 10 Years Old.
Pens, Paper Pencils Reviews two of my favorite things, The Knock Co Sassafras and Sailor Jentle Grenade Ink.
And finally, what weekly review would be complete without Nick Bilton's magisterial piece on the demise of writing implements in favor of "the finger."

I have to hand it to Mr. Bilton, this latter piece was "thought provoking," and most of us who pay attention to pen-related news read this article at some point during the past week. I won't add to the myriad takedowns of some of Mr. Bilton's ridiculous statements in the article, which has been done far more eloquently (here) and hilariously (here) than I could hope to offer. I also won't attack him personally. For all I know, he very well could be a world-class asshat, or he could be a perfectly pleasant human being working for a distressed publication and struggling to come up with a good idea in time for his deadline.

I will say, however, that the underlying premise of the article--that pens and pencils and paper and other writing instruments are somehow being put out to pasture in favor people writing with their fingers on smartphones and tablets--is flat-out wrong. Handwriting isn't going anywhere anytime soon, nor should it, and it's not just going to survive in the realm of people keeping their personal journals, writing greeting cards, or running marginally relevant websites devoted to their esoteric hobbies.

The organization that I work for is probably a pretty good representation of corporate America in general. Of the 250 people who work in my local office, I know of one--read that, one--who takes notes on an ipad using a stylus. (And it's not really a stylus, it's a ballpoint pen with a stylus tip.) He does it because he claims to be incapable of organizing anything, and this is the one thing he's found that works for him. I know of absolutely nobody who uses their finger to write and take notes. Those people who take all their notes on a laptop are also in the minority, and junior people joining us are actually counseled not to do so. Why? The reasons are too numerous to list here, but I can give you a few:

It makes people uncomfortable, and even ticks people off. I've been in meetings where someone has been asked to turn their laptop off because the person speaking or presenting either (a) didn't like the feeling that every word he was saying was being recorded or taken down verbatim, or (b) more commonly, didn't feel like the person clacking away at their keyboard was paying attention to them. IMHO, it's much more polite (and, dare I say it, human), to make eye contact with someone while they are speaking and take discrete notes on the important stuff as necessary or appropriate.
Again, taking notes by hand makes you focus on the important stuff. I can't tell you how many memos summarizing a meeting or interview I've received where four of the five pages consist of mindless recitation of useless information that should never have been recorded in the first place, and the time spent typing it up would have been better spent considering what was actually being said and organizing the writer's thoughts into a more expressive format.
IT'S NOT PERMANENT. (or at least, you have the choice to make it non-permanent). One of the joyous things about writing by hand is that you can shred/crumple up/scratch out your ill-formed first drafts and preliminary thoughts/conclusions, not to mention that angry rant about your boss or co-worker, and not have it come back to haunt you 5 years later when someone finds it in an old e-mail or in your dropbox. (I have seen this happen more times than I can count, mainly in litigation discovery). I think we're only beginning to see the implications of digitally archiving our entire personal/professional/social/intellectual life for eternity on social media or "in the cloud."

For the record, I'm no Luddite longing for the pre-internet days. I'm 34, own multiple computers, too much software, and love to blog. I do, however, spend a lot of time--way too much time--dealing with the fallout caused by people retaining sensitive digital information in an insecure manner, when they probably didn't need to retain that information at all. I'll stop for now, and go enjoy my Sunday, but we need to take a step back from the mindset that "just because we can make it digital, we should," and carefully consider the advantages and disadvantages of doing so.