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Author Archives: Dragon Co. (Austin Smith)
Collecting Obscure Fountain Pens
When I’m collecting fountain pens, there is a certain type of fountain pen that I think is interesting. And that is the obscure pen. While it’s nice to find a well-known good pen (I’ve found several Parkers and Crosses) and some rare pens (see those Parkers), there are several pens that I’ve found through my collecting that I can’t find any information on beyond that the pen exists.
This used to be the case with many Chinese pens, like Hero and Jinhao brand, but recently those pens and facts about them have become more well known. But there are still a great many pens with an unknown history behind them. Some are even obscurely being produced today. Like the Camel (camali)1968 pen which was “discovered” by my brother in our Aunt’s possession. A lot of internet hunting later I found the pen on eBay from a seller that apparently had loads of them, so I bought 10 for what would be the price of a decent western pen. Later, I even found a green one floating around from the same seller. But now there are none there.
Beyond the examples my brother and I have, I haven’t seen or really heard of this pen (there is a thread on the fountain pen network that was posted around the same time as I was looking for the pens that doesn’t contain any more information, just that they are indeed pens for sale). The pen has no backstory, and unknown manufacturer, and is only available some of the time, and for that reason it fascinates me. I love it.
Another pen like this that I just found recently is a Marksman pen (there is a modern brand called Marksman, they are not the same) The pen simply says Marksman and Korea (which I assume is the country it was made in). The nib says nothing, but it does have an archer stamped into it. It appears to be a fine, and maybe even an extra-fine, but again, I have nothing to go on. There is a thread on this type of pen (apparently there were a few more models) but again, it just shows that the pens exist, and no one at the moment seems to know where they came from (other than Korea) and what happened to them. From the thread I learned one thing: that I am lucky my pen still has a center ring that can easily come off when taking the pen apart to refill it, as the other pen I saw that was similar to mine didn’t have this part.
Both of these pens have no manufacturer that I know of (well, I can’t figure out if the names are the manufacturer or the model), no history that can be easily found, are found intermittently, and are both surprisingly good writers.
To some people this lack of detail may be infuriating, and others just might not care, but for me it makes me want to dive deeper into pens, to find out more about what these pens are and where they came from. These little mysteries don’t so much bug me as they make me want to move forward, because if someone does know everything about these pens that there is to know, they aren’t telling anyone right now, and finding the answers will still be just as rewarding.
“Matching” Colors
Comparison – Pilot Varsity Old vs New
If you’re looking for a fountain pen but don’t want to purchase something expensive or something you have to fiddle with, then a disposable fountain pen might be the way for you to go. And If you’ve tried before with the most common disposable fountain pen, the Pilot Varsity, and are looking to get another one, you may have seen the slight changes they’ve made to the design. Are these changes that big a deal? Well, let’s find out.
The Pilot Varsity has a simple cylindrical barrel and cap, with nice, simply rounded finials. Printed on the barrel is “Pilot Varsity” and a design, but no further information. Both pens have this printed on them. While the old design is straight lines on a tasteful silver with a tiny ink window, the newer version features a multi-tone diamond pattern with a worked in, barley visible, ink window. The cap has a cheap plastic clip with a ball on the end that does tolerably, but is far from the best. Just don’t turn yourself upside down with this pen in your pocket. Taking off the cap reveals the clear section and the plastic feed. One can see if there is ink in the feed, but not in the barrel except through quasi-ink-windows printed in the design. The feed is simple, and has a wick, which allows for better ink flow, but would not be ideal for cleaning (which you wouldn’t be doing anyway if you were just going to throw it away.)
The nib at the end of the pen is again simple. It is stamped “Pilot <M>” (medium) and has no further ornamentation, not even a breather hole. It is stainless steel, and offers no flexibility in the tines. Now, one might think that since they’re both stamped medium, that both pens would have roughly the same line width; and this would strangely be wrong. At least on the example I have, the older Varsity has a line more akin to a fat medium, or a particularly skinny broad, while the newer example is more of a fat fine, or a sorta skinny medium. If this is indeed a purposeful change that was made, I’m guessing it was for the American market to prevent bleed-through on the extra-crappy paper here, which it does do. This size difference definitely doesn’t affect the nib performance, though. Both nibs are buttery smooth, have no startup issues, and write under no pressure. The ink is the standard Pilot black, and there is nothing different between the two pens that I can discern (and neither are at all waterproof).
So, which one should you get? Well, it really doesn’t matter. If you really want a fat medium nib disposable (well, kinda, you can look up how to refill it online) you can hunt down some of the old ones, which I personally like better due to purely aesthetic reasons. The new one is a bit more loud and silly, and a bit finer in line, but you’d be really hard-pressed to tell that unless you were looking like I was.
Board Game Creation Blogging Part 4 – Failing and Analyzing
After working on my game for about 10 months, I did start a Kickstarter, and it didn’t work. I can admit that. I had read all of the blog posts I could find (which I have found wasn’t nearly all of them that exist) and prepared as much as I, and only I, could. It just being me, I made quite a few mistakes. This started with me letting my large, wonderful game get in the way of the sound business decision of starting with a smaller game that was more cost effective. I let how much I liked my current game affect my judgement too much, and decided to go with that one instead. All the while my better judgment was in the back of my head, and I said “I’ll get to those little games later.”
Not to say that the failure was all my fault due to ignorance. I did quite a lot of research, and was very prepared for a Kickstarter… two years ago. (Speculation:) You see, board games are one of the areas where Kickstarter shines (and movies, but Indiegogo is better for that). And because board games can do so well on Kickstarter, many board game companies have adopted a Kickstarter-based model, even when an audience for the project is assured. With so many big name (that should be in quotes because board game companies aren’t big) companies on Kickstarter at the moment, the days of an “Original Kickstarter”-style campaign are very much over. The bar has been raised very high, and none of the blogs that I read (again, not necessarily the correct blogs) gave the amount of importance that some factors in doing a Kickstarter require.
Again, part of this is my fault. I started without the money, or a way to make the money, necessary to start the project (and yes, you do need money for prototypes, previews, and advertising). Also, starting with a smaller game would have been good. Getting to know the community and what people expect is a must. And by a must I mean everything is a must. Anything you think you can get away without doing, you can’t. And since no big companies who could get away with things will be reading this, just read that line again please. If you don’t do everything right that is expected of a Kickstarter project, especially for board games, you’ll get burned, because people who support projects on Kickstarter have gotten burned, and they now don’t trust you. I suspect that Kickstarter will soon become the realm of purely established companies (at least in the board game realm). As demand for better games grows higher and profit margins stay the same (in games they are very low, with very high risk) companies will want to see what works and what doesn’t. Better to pay for the artwork and prototypes to find out people don’t like it,than print 2,000 copies and hope like in the old days.
So, as a small company, you must appear at least close to the big companies in quality and preparation. All of the previews, high-quality digital artwork (which I think looks awful, personally, but apparently no one else in the entire world does), play-throughs, and advertising must be done by you in a manner that at least looks like the larger companies. The only difference between you and them must be the quantities produced. Because while companies can make Kickstarter more of a fancy pre-order system (not totally accurate, but bear with me) a small group can only make as much product as they get money.
So yes, I failed. I didn’t listen to the reason in my head, or observe the situation around me. But I think I’d rather have this failure and learning experience under my belt, than a project the just barely fails, or barely makes it, or fails at half the goal (half of my goal was what I envisioned my original goal being). Then I think I wouldn’t have learned as much.
I will return to the field sometime, with a smaller game, in a more prepared state, but that will be some time in the future, I’ll blog about it then. One of the reasons I rushed into this was because I wanted my game done before several things I knew would be coming up. Now I have time to work on them, and they are still going to stress me out. But I hope to see you in the next installments.