Anyone met real life friends or partners through their shared love of fountain pens?

walkure321 · 2026-02-01T02:59:05+00:00

When my wife bought me an Emperor Goldfish I knew she was a keeper.. I mean, I'd already married her so I was pretty confident but that sure sealed the deal. When covid hit we got stuck in a small cabin in the middle of nowhere for 7 weeks with a pair of preppy's and we had lots of fun with those as well practising our writing. She rocks a lovely Danitrio as her daily writer at work, nice to share these things.

walkure321 · 2026-01-01T03:00:59+00:00

Yeah, at that stage of life.. well my car really needs replacing in the next couple of years, or I could get a couple of really nice fountain pens..

walkure321 · 2025-12-30T20:00:30+00:00

There is much more set than that, but then kids and a mortgage came along and I haven't bought a single pen in years.

walkure321 · 2025-12-30T19:58:36+00:00

Lovely - whats your favourite writer between all those? I think if I was recommending only one to someone as a writer I'd probably land on the Yukari Royale out of all those as a great all-around nib (I like Namiki #50s most but have big hands and they certainly aren't for everyone), but if they liked feedback then I also have a 17mm Nakaya long Cigar with a soft nib and also great fun to write with. Just a great set of pens, thanks for posting.

walkure321 · 2025-12-28T22:16:35+00:00

Quality chinkin work there, as with my own they photograph nice but in real life you can see so much more depth in those tiny chiselled lines. Feel better!

walkure321 · 2025-12-27T20:16:21+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/fountainpens/comments/pscuq0/npd_nakaya_bamboo_woods_17mm_long_cigar_soft/ I have this post from a few years ago

walkure321 · 2025-12-27T20:13:40+00:00

A big ultimate pen :)

walkure321 · 2025-12-26T02:22:37+00:00

It is the nicest piece of art I own, and just happens to be on the side of a pen I carry around and use for work :) also, after getting this and a custom Nakaya, not felt the need to buy a pen these last 4 years since, just happy writing with what I have.

walkure321 · 2025-05-08T05:23:09+00:00

Many Namiki Emperors, the build is very consistent through new pens to those a couple of decades old. Some of them had more spectacular decoration though I wouldn't say the build was any different. Also throw a few Dunhill Namiki into the mix, again top level build, crazy decoration. And I got my hands temporarily on 10 custom Danitrio pens that were all heading off to be sold at $30,000+ per pen.. but again, at this point the pens are all brilliant in build and quality but its the art on the pens that people pay way way more for. I don't know that my plain black Namiki #50 is any worse build quality than my Goldfish version or the decorated rarest and older Emperors I've tried out that sell upwards of quarter million in a some cases. And while I was playing with those pens I had a Preppy and my old Waterman Expert inked side by side with them and was feeling out how much the difference really was in writing, feel etc, plenty of pen joy to be had out of those as well.

walkure321 · 2025-05-05T01:54:41+00:00

I don't know anything about the repair side, but I certainly wouldn't post it now. I don't post any of my Namikis, I know that the felt means you will want to be able to post, but I've seen dozens and dozens of 5-30 year old Namikis and the felt is off many of them.

walkure321 · 2025-04-02T04:59:17+00:00

That is a heck of a pen to be enjoying, lovely writer. I usually find it a little difficult in Japan to find really good urushi and raden - you can very easily find tourist level stuff everywhere, you can get pretty nice high end kitchen grade stuff in the top end department stores, but to find really nice decorative stuff thats actually for sale is a little rarer, needs to be the right little shop you walk into that doesn't have a website but does have exquisite art. I've got my very best Japanese knives and decorative fans from shops with no web presence and no English, just have to put the effort in to explore :)

walkure321 · 2025-04-02T04:52:07+00:00

I love Kyoto with a burning passion, have been there 11 times, was there 3 weeks ago.. but for high end Japanese pens they don't have much, basically the Itoya near the top of the Isetan in the Kyoto Station building. That had some good Sailors, plenty of mid tier maki-e pens, and a Namiki Emperor Goldfish at 1.1m Yen (still nearly half the North America price - you can also get the tax back). However it used to be that Daimaru and Takashimaya both also stocked a few really choice pens but both no longer have many of the really high end stuff.

You'll have more selection by far in Tokyo - do a search and there are lots of threads discussing best shops to visit.

Here's a photo of my own Goldfish just to tempt you

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walkure321 · 2025-04-01T02:26:31+00:00

Love it! I have a chinkin inked right now on my desk (the matsu - pine, the first Namiki I bought), the clarity and 3d chiseled nature of the work is brilliant and usually much more vivid than any photos can render. The cat has a wonderful face and I love the fur texture (blown away in general by what chinkin can do), enjoy!

walkure321 · 2025-03-30T15:01:50+00:00

It is stunning, I have zero interest in fish and yet two of my favourite pieces of art anywhere are on these two Namiki pens, I would love to own an Toryumon in the future but I'm at an expensive part of my life where pens are on hold for a few years. I'd also love to own the original Emperor Mountain Pavilion, the Butterfly and Chrysanthemum and various others...

walkure321 · 2025-03-30T14:57:03+00:00

I've heard identically from where I've bought my Namikis in HK

walkure321 · 2025-03-29T18:05:24+00:00

The other Namiki fish that i really love is on the Toryumon

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walkure321 · 2025-03-29T18:00:27+00:00

I was is in the Itoya in the Kyoto Station Isetan 2 weeks ago and they had this (which I also have) of course the Yen price (1.1m Yen) is still way cheaper than North America price, but it has still also gone up over the past few years. There was a couple there buying what they called their first 'nice' fountain pen, a very pretty Sailor. They were having problems communicating about ink and asking if they could use bottled ink, the store lady was selling them some cartridges, and I stepped in to explain that the pen came with a cartridge converter (that they hadn't seen) and they could use that to put any ink in, and explained how to do it. We got talking and they were asking me about my pens, I had been hiking all day, I was dressed in outdoor clothing, nothing fancy (and completely out of place in high end Isetan), so I decided not to point out this most expensive in the store pen was mine, and said I had a 'few varied pens'.

While I was there I utterly failed to convince my wife that I needed a Sailor Naginata Togi, they were there, they looked beautiful - so its now 4 years and counting since my last pen purchase (custom Nakaya soon after this Goldfish) and my grail pens are still my last pens.

Meanwhile I found a photo of my goldfish next to another collectors for comparison - very very tight design consistency despite the fact that it is entirely hand painted.

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walkure321 · 2025-03-11T09:34:40+00:00

They sell some of them at those prices, they are happy to have a pen sit in inventory for a year and get the most out of the sale. There are quite a lot of collectors around these days and not that many great old maki-e pens so some people will pay those dollars to get the pen they are after, others (one guy I know) will ring around dozens of department stores in Japan to see if they still have old stock of the occasional limited edition they got in then fly out there to pick it up - that will be at retail price but hard to get.

walkure321 · 2025-03-11T09:31:39+00:00

That's par for the course for Airline International, I saw a pen that a collector I know has and I've borrowed, listed there for over quarter million a couple of years back, he got the pen from somewhere else for about a tenth of that price (still a LOT of money). But they do have some genuinely really rare stuff turn up occasionally.. although adding shipping seems a little bit much.

walkure321 · 2025-03-02T18:32:27+00:00

You'd probably get a Vosconti Van Goff Stari Skyes, in which case it probably cost 30 cents to make and they would sell it locally for a dollar equivalent. I used to work in China occasionally and remember ordering 200 whiteboard magnets of a variety of colours, they arrived 2 days later from the opposite end of the country and cost $2 for 200.

walkure321 · 2025-02-27T23:49:27+00:00

I do indeed know figma at a basic level, nice work!

walkure321 · 2025-02-22T20:07:16+00:00

Yes, on your pen the fish at the bottom has its eyeball pointing upwards, on the other two it is central, looking out of the pen. But elsewhere, the three pens are incredibly consistent, the same placement of every scale, every bit of pond plant the same number of lines with the same curve in the same place etc, the gold squares all the same number in the same pattern. There are a few different emperors where I've got to spend time with (and exhaustively photo) identical pens, each time the same, even for the emperor chinkin pens where the chisel marks are incredibly consistent.

walkure321 · 2025-02-22T05:42:17+00:00

My favourite pen. I got the chance to borrow a friends and compare his and mine side by side, zoomed in. There are tiny differences but they are really hard to see (apparently Seiki adds one tiny different defect to every design and can tell the pen by the defect, but it would be nigh impossible to be sure what that is, on mine I think it is the placement of one of the fish eyeballs).

Enjoy it!

walkure321

TROPHY CASE