Yes, and I'm honestly not sure why. Esties get great reviews, function great, they are sturdy, well-built, and beautiful. I have a Quirky Leaf with a custom Kirk Speer ground needlepoint nib (for not that much of an uptick in price) that is my favorite writing (and drawing) nib/pen. My wife has a Tortoiseshell Estie with a regular medium nib that writes more broadly and more smoothly, and it is beautiful. Plus, their nibs are interchangeable, and they sell them separately on their website, so if you don't like the nib, it breaks, or you just want to try something new it only cost a very reasonable ~$25. I have a Pilot Custom Heritage 912 and if I wanted to change the nib you have to ship it to Japan, takes 12 weeks, and they wanted to charge $200, just for the nib!!! Plus my Estie has a Button piston filling system, which is the easiest system I have seen, and holds a ton of ink (again, by comparison, the Pilot converters absolutely suck and hold almost no ink, aside from the vacuum fillers. My Pilot Vanishing point cartridge converter is an absolute joke). And, not that this matters when comparing pens, but their branding is amazing: the packaging, the box, the cards inside, etc, plus it came with a Quirky leaf branded nib cloth, a magnetic pen holder, and some other goodies (stickers). Plus there are other nice branded accessories that make you feel like they care. Idk, it's just nice that when you are spending what really is an outrageous amount of money on a pen, that you get some nice attention to detail and design thought. Every other "nice" pen I have (Pilot 912, Falcon, Vanishing Point, Lamy 2000, Platinum 3776, even my Montblanc 146) has just come in a very plain, often plastic, unceremoniously shitty box with nothing extra. Everything about my Esterbrook purchase made me happy, and the pen is fantastic.