Los Angeles pen show recap

This was going to be a more extensive writeup, but I managed to delete most of what I had written while trying to add photos via my phone. The photos you can see on Instagram. These notes will be short and to the point.

The good news about the LA show is the venue. The old site in Manhattan Beach, for all its benefits and history, was no longer an option. The new location offers plenty of food and shopping options within easy walking distance. Most importantly, there was lots of space in the exhibition ballroom. The table layout allowed for much wider aisles, keeping public-day congestion under control.

The bad news about the LA show is theft. There were two five-figure losses involving entire trays being taken, along with many more single losses. One of the big losses was on Sunday, but the other was on Thursday. The show is clearly being targeted, and it is a virtual certainty that the thieves are working in teams. Modern Montblancs seem to be their target of choice. As far as I know, no pens were taken from closed cases, and the biggest thefts were from tables piled high with inventory and difficult to watch closely.

In any event, this has become a problem that cannot be ignored. It is by no means limited to this particular show or indeed even to shows in the USA, but the recent losses have been so severe that we may finally be at a turning point. Where we go from here will be up to exhibitors and show organizers. Video recording of the exhibition area would be a likely first step. One of my colleagues recently set up at a jewelry show, and the cost to dealers for video monitoring was just $25 per booth. There are plenty of companies that provide such services to trade shows. Show organizers should also contract for rental of locking display cases. I would suggest that cases be made mandatory for exhibitors displaying merchandise over a certain value, or at least heavy pressure be applied for their use. From my own experience, if some dealers have their pens in cases and other have them out in the open, sales will go overwhelmingly to the dealers not using cases. To keep everyone safe while keeping the sales playing field level, it will be vitally important that everyone -- or at least, nearly everyone -- uses display cases in a consistent manner.

Video recording may not be all that effective if the local police force does not pursue property crimes aggressively. Unfortunately, that seems to be the trend in many urban areas in the USA. Some dealers have been wondering about the practicability of using RFID tags as theft detectors. From what I can see this could be a possibility, but would require show attendees leaving the trading area to go through a single exit door equipped with a scanner. Some of the necessary equipment could surely be rented; much would have to be purchased by the individual dealers, though, at a cost of thousands of dollars for off the shelf systems. The other measure to be looked into would be hiring undercover detectives, as opposed to the uniformed security guards used to date. Clearly, the latter haven't had a sufficient deterrent effect. Perhaps we would have better luck with specialists who can spot thieves without the thieves spotting them.

The other bad news about this year's LA show was weekend trader attendance. Saturday was pretty much dead, in terms of both traffic and sales. It's hard to pin down the cause, but surely the show's problems over the past few years have taken their toll. Two years ago the hotel was an active construction site, subjecting guests to closed facilities, concrete dust, noise, and multiple health and safety code violations. The year after, the exhibition space was moved downstairs to a room that was badly laid out and dangerously overcrowded (and thief-ridden). No surprise that former regulars might have decided to stay home after such experiences, waiting to see if the new venue worked out.  The big question now is if they will come back next year -- and that I cannot pretend to foresee.

Finally, there is the question of admissions structure. Once upon a time it made sense to have only two admissions options: a weekend trader pass, or a cheap Sunday-only admission ticket for the general public. When virtually all the trader-to-trader action is done on Thursday and Friday, however, Saturday becomes a wasted day. Why not offer a third option for Saturday admission, priced somewhere between the $65 of the weekend pass and the $8 of the Sunday ticket? Charge $15 or $20, call it "preview day" or "early admission".

Pen show frictions, Part 4: users vs collectors

Previous posts in this series: Part 1: retailer shoppers vs traders; Part 2: the Generation Gap; Part 3: meet the older collectors.

The great majority of collectors, whether their focus is vintage or modern, use at least some of their pens. Many users also collect to some degree or another. Yet despite the considerable degree of overlap, there are fundamental differences, with each group most strongly interested in things that are of very limited to no interest to the other. This divergence of priorities inevitably leads to tensions, since fully accommodating both groups at the same time isn't always possible.

At pen shows, for example, most vintage sellers group their pens by brand and model, to cater to collectors, rather than by nib type, to cater to users. A request for a specific nib type may not be received with enthusiasm by a seller whose pens are not organized accordingly -- not out of any animus towards users at large, but rather out of irritation at being personally inconvenienced. It's a bit like going to a farm stand, and instead of asking for three apples or a pound of green beans, asking for five different items of produce between four and five inches long and red. The first few times, such a request would likely be met with amused surprise -- but it would not be long before both the surprise and the amusement would wear off.

At least at the farm stand doing the selection oneself is an easy out; at a pen show, it entails opening up and examining every single pen on a table -- inefficient, inconvenient, and disruptive. Add in the time and space required to dip-test any suitable candidates, and the seller's total combined hassle factor for serving the average user ends up dwarfing that for the average collector. Sellers set up to deal with collectors are even less favorably disposed when the average user doesn't spend as much as the average collector, and after going through all of the above, often doesn't buy anything at all.

Note that this situation arises entirely innocently, rooted as it is in a fundamental mismatch between what the buyer is seeking and what the seller is set up to provide (paralleling another mismatch outlined in our Part 1: retailer shoppers vs traders). And there has already been a degree of bridging of this divide, for as some users have shown their willingness to pay as much or more than collectors, collector-oriented sellers have become more user-accommodating. This trend has been visible online for some time now, but has been slower to be felt at shows -- not surprising, given the practical impossibility of making a table full of pens keyword-searchable. Nonetheless, it is now common for sellers to add color-coded nib grade labels or to put out a tray specifically devoted to pens with flexible and italic nibs, even if their main focus remains the collector market.

Unfortunately, not all of the hostility between users and collectors is so easily dealt with, or so benign in origin. For users, a pen is primarily a tool. For collectors, it is primarily an artifact. But while virtually all collectors also appreciate pens as tools, a not-insignificant number of users are indifferent or even hostile to considering pens as artifacts. This asymmetry is well illustrated by how online discussions of when and whether to use a mint and stickered vintage pen typically play out. Collectors will urge that it not be treated as a user, showing their consideration for the user point of view by pointing out the ready availability of non-stickered equivalents. Collecting-sympathetic (and pragmatic) users will concur, advising that the stickered pen be sold or traded for a lightly used example plus cash, leaving everyone better off. But then the collecting-hostile users will weigh in, declaring that pens were made to be used and that leaving one unused is fundamentally wrong. The moral absolutism underlying this point of view is what has made it so uniquely divisive, leading its exponents to look with contempt upon those who see things otherwise, and to taunt them with gloating accounts of destickering mint pens and putting them to use.

This goes way back. Years before the current crop of bloggers took up their pens, anti-collector sentiment was already bubbling away in online forums. And though it may not be so apparent now, at least some of the nastiness was fueled by a form of the ancient delusion that when prices are high, it is the storekeepers who are to blame. With blind disregard for the realities of supply and demand, dealers and collectors were scapegoated, blamed for running up pen prices on eBay and sucking up all the affordable pens from antique shows and shops. Collectors were accused of not really loving pens, of being soulless hoarders, violators of the moral imperative that every pen must be put to use and not enjoyed in any other manner. And if the accusations are no longer repeated quite so often and so openly, the underlying sentiments live on, as in the ongoing use of the expression, "the 'C' word", which jokingly-but-not-really makes "collector" out to be an epithet too vile to be uttered aloud.

eBay and the Great Disintermediation

I have long intended to write about eBay's transformative impact on pen collecting. Having recently touched upon the topic in my Pen Show Frictions posts (Part 2: the Generation Gap, Part 3: meet the older collectors), it is now time to treat it at greater length.

While there was some online trading before the advent of eBay, the volume was tiny and restricted to a small subset of already-active pen traders. It was an insignificant sideshow, as nearly all trading took place face-to-face: at shows, club meetings, flea markets, live auctions, and antiques fairs. In the USA, there was relatively little retailing of collectible vintage pens. There were not many buyers willing to pay much over pen show prices, and it was not easy to reach them -- even for sellers with bricks and mortar shopfronts.

The flow of vintage pens through the market prior to eBay was a long and inefficient one. An old pen would typically enter the market at a yard sale or flea market after being found in a desk drawer or long-shuttered shop. Bought by a picker, it would then be flipped quickly for a small profit to a local general antiques dealer, who might sell it on to another dealer who knew a little more about pens, or who had a pen buyer as a customer. In this extended food chain, a pen could easily go through several hands before finally being sold at full value to an end buyer. At any point, of course, the passage of a pen could be interrupted by being bought and kept by a buyer paying less than full value, who might well have been outbid had more committed buyers been in on the action. Nor did an end buyer have to buy from a specialist dealer, as there was nothing preventing anyone from hunting lower (and more cheaply) on the food chain -- the tradeoff being that as one went lower, so did the ratio of desirable items to chaff.

eBay's impact was not felt immediately. With only a relatively small number of participants at first, and lacking the search and bidding tools we now take for granted, eBay could turn up nice finds for buyers with knowledge and persistence. Overall volume was still too low, however, for eBay to be more than a minor supplement to pen buyers' traditional sources of supply. This began to change once new buyers -- many from overseas -- who had never been exposed to the existing collector market started to bid up ordinary pens to extraordinary prices. This bidding seemed to be based on a combination of excitement over never-before-seen (by the newcomers, that is) items and the auction version of the Greater Fool principle -- that is, the assumption that one can't go too far wrong if someone else is bidding just as much. By the end of 1998 several boxed Peter Pans had sold for $500-600 each; other pens that were common but of unusual form or design also fetched similar sums. It wasn't just pens: small ladies' watches that dealers hadn't been able to give away suddenly were being bought for hundreds of dollars, for example.

Prices like these quickly attracted a horde of new eBay sellers, and prices settled down as supply moved online to meet demand. Offline, meanwhile, things were changing quickly. The old antiques food chain was coming apart, as those at the bottom started selling directly to those at the top. So did everyone in the middle, even as they began to lose their sources lower down the chain. Thus began the Great Disintermediation, as the middlemen found themselves increasingly cut out of the flow of merchandise through the market. Most saw that things were changing, but couldn't grasp that the changes would be so dramatic and so fundamental. The following years saw the dwindling or disappearance of a host of long-established places and events whose main purpose had been to facilitate dealer-to-dealer transactions, including group shops, wholesale antiques shows, and live auctions. Collector-to-collector events were similarly affected: the New Jersey show was sold by its original organizers around this time for a price in the low five figures, only to be unsuccessfully put up for sale (on eBay!) only a few years later, and eventually liquidated for a nominal sum for the value of its mailing list.

As the middlemen were cut out, the market was flooded with material. It was as if a pipeline had suddenly been drastically shortened, pushing its excess contents out all at once. Since most of this content came from nonspecialist dealers who had always sold lower down the food chain, it ended up on eBay with low or no reserve. This didn't have much effect at the low end, for the cheaper vintage pens hadn't far to fall, were already in plentiful supply, and had no shortage of buyers, but the market for midrange and high-end pens was another story. It didn't help that many older collectors were slowing down at this point, just as the newer online collectors were still working their way up from lower-end models. It took years for the midrange to recover, while the high end still isn't where it was pre-eBay. The problem largely was (and remains) one of market confidence: at the high end, the number of buyers was never large, dealers included; when combined with the retirement of older collectors and a weak global economy, this sector of the market was easily flooded. All it took was a few examples of a rare pen to hit the market in quick succession (a statistical inevitability) for prices to tumble. Since these transactions were now taking place in full sight of the world, the effect on market perceptions was powerful and lasting, even in cases where no more examples appeared for years afterwards. Not infrequently the reason a selling price was low was because potential buyers failed to spot the item, or because dealers agreed to buy it in partnership rather than compete -- not to mention cases of bid failure, issues with condition or authenticity, etc -- but for those not in the know, it all looked the same.

This is still very much the case. Where trading is thin, the post-eBay market remains more vulnerable than the pre-eBay market to inconsistent sales results and a resulting loss of confidence. There is a pervasive assumption that online auctions are true indicators of value, though they are subject to many of the same inefficiencies as other sales. And where dealers once played a significant role in buffering the impact of short-term fluctuations in supply and demand, the experience of the last fifteen years has left dealers less willing to buy and hold as they once did. Where there is inconsistency, however, there is also opportunity -- but that is a topic for another post.

eBay's shortening of the collecting food chain has had other effects, too. Some items appeal to multiple groups: original counter-top pen displays, for example, are also sought after by advertising collectors; pen-related trade cards, by collectors of ephemera. Before eBay, such items would typically end up sorted and sent on one path or the other. Pen collectors would miss out on many crossover items unless they took the extra trouble to follow specialist auctions, dealers, and shows devoted to advertising, ephemera, etc. This situation was completely transformed by eBay's elimination of the middlemen who had done the sorting. Suddenly, crossover collectibles were easily accessible to every interested collector. The effect on prices varied; in some cases prices rose as the bidder pool expanded, while in others, bidders gained access to a greatly expanded pool of material, and prices dropped.

There is surely much more that could be said, but I'll conclude by observing that while there is much to be missed about the old days, the post-eBay world is in its own way a Golden Age for the collector. There was adventure and opportunity in those hours on the road, the pre-dawn hunts through open-air markets as they opened, and the certainty that treasure could be lying around any corner. Yet how much greater one's reach now, with nearly unfettered access to a worldwide stream of material! The selection and the opportunities have expanded for collectors every bit as much as has access to knowledge for users of the web.

Pen show frictions, Part 3: meet the older collectors

So far, most everything posted about pen show frictions has been from the newcomers' point of view (our previous installments excepted: Part 1: retailer shoppers vs traders; Part 2: the Generation Gap). But as they say, there are two sides -- at least! -- to every story.

It is frustrating when older collectors rave about a recent article in the Pennant, yet have never heard of the blog whose posts the article distills. It is equally frustrating when younger pen lovers, fully immersed in the digital world, seem unable to connect with other enthusiasts without online assistance. When pen bloggers have discussed older collectors, it often comes across like a group of Victorian scientists pontificating about some exotic tribe: expostulating about the Other, inferring beliefs and modes of thought, all without having ever actually entered their world. Quite aside from the tone, the observations -- not surprisingly -- tend to be wildly off the mark.

I can't emphasize enough that pen show veterans are just ordinary people. Interesting people, by and large -- and sometimes a bit quirky, as one might expect from the pen-obsessed. Demographically they skew strongly male, white, and professional, though they run the range geographically and in political orientation. Their personalities are diverse; socially, they are in no way a monolithic bloc. The imputation of devious ulterior motives to them, across the board, is frankly absurd. In fact, each field of collecting has its own character and culture, and those with wide experience of different collector groups have often remarked on the unusually welcoming and sociable nature of the pen collecting community. I certainly had no trouble finding a place there, back when I was a poor grad student in my late twenties. Over the years I have seen many others warmly received, too. So I find it more than a little puzzling that this, of all groups, should be viewed with such distrust and hostility.

Though it was downplayed in my previous posts, I wonder if some of this may indeed be due to changing generational attitudes: not in the pen community specifically, but in American society at large. This would be exacerbated by a reduction in mixing across age groups. If your interaction with elders has been limited to family members and teachers, you may find that experience insufficient preparation for dealing with older strangers as equals. Exploring the question of generational change is a topic for multiple books, not a simple post on how pen enthusiasts might get along better. It bears consideration, though, and particularly as regards differing attitudes towards resilience and individual self-sufficiency. What one generation sees as supportiveness, the other disdains as coddling. What one generation sees as indifference, the other sees as not treating young adults as children.

I'd like to close this installment with a look at the belief that older collectors paid nothing for their pens, and are therefore greedy profiteers trying to rip off newcomers. Yes, pens could be found in the wild very cheaply thirty or forty years ago. Tales of Dick Johnson filling 55-gallon drums with flea market finds are part of pen collecting lore; nearly every oldtimer can also contribute a fish tale or three. The thing is, very few of the people buying back then are still active. Those that are, have been trading pens continuously since. So while they may have got their start on the cheap, you can bet that the great majority of the pens on their tables were bought within the last five or ten years, and at market price. For those who started later, say twenty years ago, pens could still be found in the wild, but it took time and dedication, a lot of driving and getting up before dawn. At the big antiques markets and shows, most of the pens were scooped up shortly after the gates opened (or, often, before) by a relative handful of hardworking pickers. Most pen collectors of that era ended up buying from the pickers or from each other, at prices that by the 1990s were, on average, no different from those today. And while there is no shortage of pen show sellers with what I like to call "optimistic" asking prices, in many cases the sellers are simply trying to get back what they paid for items that have dropped in price over the years -- of which there are quite a few.

Continued in Part 4: users vs collectors

Pen show frictions, Part 2: the Generation Gap

While clashing expectations regarding the nature of pen show commerce (see Part 1: retailer shoppers vs traders) appears to be the largest single cause of recent show-related frictions, other factors are in play. That the lines of division have been perceived in terms of age is not an accident -- though as we shall see, this is more a matter of correlation than causation. At American pen shows, the swap-meet style traders are predominantly older, while the buyers unfamiliar and uncomfortable with swap-meet style trading are predominantly younger. In part this is the natural result of new enthusiasts finding themselves in a collector-to-collector trading environment for the first time, but it is also due to the manner in which pen shows and the community of pen enthusiasts have evolved, which opened up a generation gap that persists to this day.

When I began collecting pens in the second half of the 1980s, organized pen collecting was still a new field. Just ten years before there had been no magazines, no guidebooks, no clubs, no shows. Much still wasn't known; of what was known, much was unpublished. With a bit of legwork, one could buy pens cheap at flea markets and antique shops, shows, and auctions -- pens that were then brought in staggering quantities to pen shows where they were quickly traded, sold, and resold.

Pen shows back then were virtually all vintage. The reason was simple: that's pretty much all that was available in the way of interesting and affordable fountain pens. There was next to no retail or restoration infrastructure. To be a pen geek entailed scrounging, swapping, and learning to do one's own repairs. And though I refer here to collectors and collecting, that doesn't mean that no one used their pens -- quite the opposite. Then as now, most pen collectors were both collectors and users, the big difference being that vintage pens were so affordable and abundant that most active collectors pretty quickly ended up with far too many for them all to be used. At that point, one would either have to stop acquiring (no!) or embrace the realization that even pens that one doesn't use can be enjoyable to own for different reasons.

Through the 1990s, pen collecting steadily grew. There were more collectors, more resources, more information. The pen market was strong, and interesting new pens were introduced, carving out a growing presence at pen shows. There were online forums, but the main action in pens was still face-to-face. What changed everything in the space of only a few years was eBay. By the end of the 1990s the old days were largely gone (in the USA, that is -- the changes took longer elsewhere). The pens that once could be found at flea markets, general antiques shows, shops, and auction houses, were now sent to eBay instead. The central exchange for pens fresh to the market had been the pen show. Now it was online. At the same time, eBay opened up pen collecting to an unprecedented degree, drawing in pen lovers worldwide with no previous contact with pen shows or other pen enthusiasts. eBay was like a full-time pen show, and in combination with online collecting forums, offered formidable competition to the world of shows and club meetings.

The immediate effects of these developments were dramatic enough; their long-term effects were greater yet. While a few collectors and dealers managed to keep up, most did not. Show organizers hired publicists to get their events mentioned in local newspapers and broadcasts, but did next to nothing to promote themselves online. Many pen clubs and collecting organizations were equally remiss. As a result, the first-generation collectors of the pen show era and the second-generation collectors of the online era failed to connect. Even if show organizers and club leaders had seen what needed to be done, however, the task would not have been easy. By the time pen collecting began to move online, many first-generation collectors were getting older and less active, and while most were fine with buying and selling on eBay, very few ended up participating to any significant degree in online forums (far more time-consuming, it should be noted, than monthly or bimonthly club or show attendance). This was especially the case for the more advanced collectors, first-generation leaders but virtually invisible online. Second-generation pen enthusiasts thus ended up relying on their online communities, where leadership was more a function of participation than of experience or depth of knowledge. Relatively few found their way to pen shows (the hassles of flying post-9/11 played their part, too) and when they did, they tended to stick to themselves and follow their own interests. In some cases this was constructive -- new attention to underappreciated brands and models, for example -- but in others, less so. Knowledge and experience that should have been passed on, wasn't. Friendships that could have been, weren't. And while eBay and the internet seemed to have rendered the pen market fully visible, this apparent transparency was an illusion that kept many from realizing how much of the picture they were actually missing.

One telling symptom of what was lost is the still-anomalous distribution of strength and weakness in the pen market. In any field of collecting, an episode of market weakness normally plays out in a predictable pattern, with demand for the very best pieces remaining strong, the low end holding steady, and the middle collapsing. Yet from the end of the 1990s into the early 2000s on, something very different happened in the vintage pen market: the high-end pieces went weak, with the mid-range holding steady and the low end strongest of all. Demand for certain brands and subfields also shrank -- typically the more esoteric items, including ephemera. This wasn't so much a natural change in tastes as a massive reboot. It was the commonly available items in the low to middle range that the internet generation had been exposed to; the rare and the esoteric remained too remote, inaccessible, and incomprehensible to make it onto their collecting radar, let alone their want lists. There were exceptions, of course. And the overall level of knowledge has steadily increased -- though it sometimes feels like watching the wheel being reinvented. More progress has come in the last several years, as social media platforms have allowed a comparative handful of advanced collectors to share and discuss notable items from their collections with the pen community at large. Meanwhile, more online collectors are making their way to pen shows, yet too often there is more parallel play than mixing and interchange.

So where do we go from here? The fact that this has become a topic of conversation strikes me as a good sign, and an opportunity to clear up misunderstandings and misperceptions. There is no shortage of good will in the pen community, which should pull it through (and together) in the end.

---

Pen show frictions, other entries: Part 1: retailer shoppers vs traders, Part 3: meet the older collectors, Part 4: users vs collectors

Pen show frictions, Part 1: retail shoppers vs traders

The online pen community has been abuzz the last several months over frictions between older and newer participants at American pen shows. The lines of conflict have generally been framed in terms of age, or at least length of time involved with pens. There is quite a bit to be said about how pen collecting has changed over the years, and about the generation gap between those whose experience was rooted in pen shows and those who came into pens online -- but that is a topic for another post. Right now, I'd like to draw attention to a completely different issue, one whose importance has been almost entirely overlooked to date.

The modern American pen show is a hybrid event. There are old pens and new pens, collectors and users. Yet within these categories, there is more overlap than division. Where the differences are truly pronounced is along another divide entirely, one that most of us don't even give a moment's thought: the divide between those who set up as swap-meet traders, and those who present themselves as full-service retailers. Nearly all of the traders are amateurs, dealing mainly (but by no means exclusively) in vintage, while most of the retailers are professionals, their focus leaning towards the new. But it is not what they sell that is of primary significance: it is the mode of selling that is key.

At pen shows, traders and retailers get along just fine, as each understands what the other is all about. Where misunderstandings have arisen is when buyers come to a pen show expecting a retail shopping experience, only to run across exhibitors in full swap-meet mode. If the buyer is already familiar with markets of this sort, there's no problem -- but increasingly, that is not the case. The resulting clash isn't generational so much as cultural. This goes in both directions, for when buyers start demanding retail-style service from trader exhibitors, there can be pushback.

Let's pause for a moment for a closer look at the two market cultures. Shoppers expecting a modern Western retailing experience count on prices to be fixed and prominently posted, with items provided with descriptions and/or sales staff on hand ready to answer any questions. Buyer and seller roles are sharply demarcated. And though the shopper doesn't see it, prices are padded to factor in the cost of the customer services already noted, as well as 3-4% off the top for credit card or PayPal fees, and -- not least -- picking up the tab for any buyer blunders, such as breakage, handling damage, and returns of nondefective merchandise.

Collector-to-collector swap meets work very differently. Participants are equals, since virtually everyone both buys and sells. Pricing is flexible, bargaining is expected, and trading (bartering) is common. Not everything will bear a price tag, for a number of possible reasons: sellers may lack time or inclination (too much like work instead of a hobby); they may not be certain how much to ask (or even if they really want to sell); they may want to be free to adjust their asking prices on the fly (as when dealing with someone known to be a particularly hard bargainer, for example). Condition can run the range -- with pens, anything from straight out of an old desk drawer to fully and professionally reconditioned -- and sales are as-is and final. Though sellers are expected to disclose hidden and nonobvious defects, shoppers are also expected to exercise due diligence in inspecting prospective purchases and asking questions as necessary. Likewise, it's largely up to the shopper to ask about items of interest. Since shoppers are regarded as fellow collectors rather than retail customers, table holders typically give them space to look in peace rather than try to play the salesman: the eager attentiveness that many retail buyers expect can come off as offputtingly slick and aggressive in a swap-meet setting. And while most sellers will accept PayPal and some are set up for credit cards, the default payment method is cash or check, with prices negotiated accordingly.

How does all this play out? Let's take a look at some examples. Some of the conflicts illustrated here bring up issues other than the trader-retailer divide -- issues that we will discuss shortly, in further posts.

Los Angeles, yes; Philadelphia, no

No, we're not at the Philadelphia pen show this weekend. Too many conflicts with family events this year, so we will be staying home. The scheduling of the show actually isn't bad, since the Martin Luther King holiday weekend makes it a good candidate for a family trip -- and we are long overdue for some Philadelphia sightseeing.

We will be at the Los Angeles show in February. As usual, we will not be setting up, so if you are planning to attend and want to see something from our inventory, please get in touch beforehand so we can be sure to bring it along.

Big snow!

The warnings were not exaggerated: we got a lot of snow here in Providence. Lost power for a day, too. It was beginning to get pretty chilly, but we got electricity restored a bit past midnight. There's still some digging out to do and things are far from back to normal, so please bear with us if there are some delays in answering phone calls and emails and getting orders shipped (I'm sure the folks at the Post Office are pretty overwhelmed, too).

We should be able to catch up with everything by Wednesday, when we will be closing down the shop for a few days to attend the Los Angeles pen show. Very much looking forward to the show, and to a bit of warmer weather. As usual, if you will be attending the show and would like us to bring something, be sure to let us know beforehand.

Washington, DC pen show

We're on our way back from this year's DC pen show. Once again, it was a big show and very active, the major emphasis on new pens, but still with a large vintage contingent. I was particularly happy to be able to buy some items from Mike Fultz's collection that I'd been tracking for nearly two years now -- not necessarily the sort of things that would set the average collector's heart a-flutter, or that would even be remarked upon on the average pen forum, but esoteric bits that are pure gold to those who love the odd, the old, and the eccentric.

I was also pleased to be able to spend some time talking with Jim Marshall about the early history of the iridium-pointed gold nib and my recent research into Simeon Hyde (and others). Jim has written and published in this same area, but with a stronger emphasis on the British side of the story, so it was useful to compare notes. The Hyde article here will probably receive an update or two over the next several days to incorporate new material.

Chicago Pen Show report

Got back from Chicago late last night. Did some good buying, mostly in dip pens and earlier writing equipment, but also brought home some notable fountain pens.

There were some real steals in the show auction, but also some surprises. Most notable was the Canadian Monroe set, which fetched a totally unexpected $880 ($800 hammer, plus 10%). Though this metal-capped version had never been seen before, most of us expected a final price less than half that. The most expensive lot was the large Parker blue-on-blue set, misdescribed by most as a Duofold Senior, which sold at $2500 hammer. The price was a surprise to many, though not to experienced collectors who realized that pen and pencil alike were much less common versions without any Duofold markings, the pen equipped with a #7 Lucky Curve nib. The pen was also a rare example illustrating factory coloring of the barrel imprint: not the crude filling as often done by collectors nowadays with grease pencils and the like, but just a trace of gold at the very bottom of the imprint, its originality guaranteed by the overlapping paper price band.

Washington DC pen show

We are back from Washington (Tysons Corner, to be precise) and will be working away to catch up over the next several days. Buying was good, as was overall turnout.

This is one of the few American metropolitan shows that has managed to find the sweet spot as far as location: for many big cities, holding the show right in the middle of town both drives up costs and makes access difficult for those driving in (and especially for exhibitors), yet putting the show too far from the center makes it less accessible for local urbanites and drastically reduces the appeal for those wanting to partake of the city's amenities, whether for dining or for tourism or shopping. All this is less critical in less densely built-up areas, but for venues such as Boston, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, location is going to be key.

Back from Chicago

We bought quite a bit at the Chicago Pen Show this year, most notably dip pens and 19th-century pencils. It will be a while before it is all listed, but we should have a few goodies posted within the next few days.

Chicago Pen Show time!

We've closed up the shop for a few days to attend the Chicago Pen Show. We won't be exhibiting, but if you'll be around, do say hello.
We'll also be doing a bit of double duty, visiting the pipemakers' show the same weekend to show off our newly-made American Art Plastics ebonite and celluloid products.
Monday will be back to business as usual -- haven't decided yet what our next featured update theme will be. . . .

Summer hours

We are back from the Washington, DC pen show, but things will remain slow for the remainder of August, between family time and moving our workshop.

Attendance at the pen show was good, yet it seems that most shows -- this one included -- are becoming more and more dominated by consumers, rather than collectors. This goes beyond the divisions between new-pen and old-pen people, for while few who come to pen shows to buy new pens are collectors, a substantial numbers of those buying old pens aren't really collectors, either.

The need for collectors to carve out a space for themselves is becoming increasingly apparent, at shows and online as well. This has been highlighted in the discussions recently prompted by the temporary shutdown of the Lion & Pen site -- one of the few collector-dominated pen forums -- and the launch of David Isaacson's new Fountain Pen Board -- clearly aimed at collectors over users.

LA show report

Another very successful Los Angeles pen show. Despite a handful of cancellations due to the snowstorm back East, turnout among dealers and full-show registrants was strong, and there were some truly outstanding pens on offer, with notable strength in early Watermans. Sunday's "public" attendance seemed to be down a bit, though this is often quite variable at this particular show. In fact, this is not so relevant for those of us on the vintage side, as most of the Sunday shoppers are more consumers than collectors, and are looking almost entirely for new pens. This year, however, we were wearing two hats, and the table display was devoted entirely to the American Art Plastics line of celluloid and ebonite stock -- so we were hoping for as many penturners and custom pen fans as possible on Sunday. As is, quite a few ended up with samples of our new materials; and when you have something good, all you really need is for word to spread.

Philadelphia, here we come!

First pen show of the year is coming up this weekend; we'll be heading down there Thursday, closing up shop until Monday. It's been quite a few years since the last time we were there; used to spend a lot of time in Philadelphia, before moving from Manhattan to Providence.

Happy New Year!

2010 is here, and we'll be back in the shop Monday, catching up. It's been a pretty hectic holiday season here, enlivened by a fair amount of snow and minor colds brought home by the kids.

For the first time in many years, we're planning on attending the Philadelphia pen show, which runs from January 22-24. We'll be bringing some pens, but are not planning on a full setup -- so if you want to see anything in particular, please let us know ahead of time so we'll be sure to bring it. The main focus will be our other venture, American Art Plastics, and we'll have a large batch of newly-made hard rubber stock available by then, which we will be selling at the show. Getting this classic material re-made has taken much time and effort, and I can't begin to tell you how satisfying and gratifying it is when the results come through. The stuff is just beautiful: rich colors, great feel, vivid patterning, plus it machines like a dream and polishes up like glass -- easily the equal of the best of the vintage hard rubbers.

Washington DC pen show

We'll be closing up shop this week to attend the pen show. As usual, we'll be taking only a small selection of our inventory, so if you'd like to see a particular item, let us know right away so we can be sure to bring it along.

Our main focus will be displaying and selling newly-made celluloid and hard rubber stock. You can read more about it at the American Art Plastics website.

Los Angeles show recap

We got back from the LA pen show Tuesday night, totally exhausted. It was a good show this year, with lots of great pens on offer and consistently good crowds. Despite concerns about the economy, there was a real buzz throughout the whole event. Many dealers reported particularly active buying of cheaper pens, but whether this was the result of purse-tightening or the impact of new collectors making their way to shows after discovering pen collecting online is impossible to say.

A big show like LA is usually tiring enough, but this year it was nonstop, at least for me. Not only was there the usual vintage pen hunting and trading and networking -- this show was also the occasion for the soft launch of a new venture, American Art Plastics, with partners Mark Hoover and Lynn Sorgatz. Our aim is to offer a range of old-time plastics for penmakers and restorers, of the sort that are now for all intents and purposes unfindable. We are starting with that queen of vintage plastics, celluloid, and the response has been overwhelming. We had samples on display at the show, with delivery of the first batch of colors expected within the next couple of months. The Art Plastics website has only just launched, and is still rather rudimentary. It too should be coming into shape within the next several weeks.

Pen shows: a buyer's perspective

I got back from the Columbus, Ohio show weekend before last. It was a good show for me, with a few keepers for my own collection, quite a bit purchased for resale, and much schmoozing time with collector and dealer friends. But, as usual, the orders and the correspondence piled up in my absence, not to mention stuff on the home front -- so, also as usual, I've only really been able to start going over the new purchases and preparing them for the catalog this week.

A pen show is a great place to buy vintage pens. Yet whenever I go over my purchases afterwards, there are always disappointments. Earlier this year, for example, I bought what appeared to be a very clean pair of Mandarin Yellow Duofold Juniors; the seller was firm on his prices, and represented them as excellent specimens. When I got them on the bench, though, one turned out to have had its ends dye-reblackened, with the cap end's inner cap shortened to unusability. That wasn't the bad one, though -- the other then turned out to have had a name removed from the barrel. Not so crudely as to leave an obvious flat spot, but the barrel was now definitely out of round. Luckily, I had a spare barrel, though that also meant I had to come up with another section to match, plus feed and nib. Add in all the time and parts, and those became an expensive pair of pens indeed.

The Columbus show had its share of the same. A Nozac with an undisclosed cap lip crack. A couple of Conklin crescent-fillers with sac nipples broken away inside and shellacked shut. And a custom pen, bought for myself, based on a Parker 51 but assembled so poorly that I had to remake it entirely: resetting the cap clutch and rerolling the cap lip; reforming the barrel mouth and reattaching the threaded bushing; and completely replacing all the innards -- Aerometric filler unit, hood, nib, feed.

While in some of these cases the seller is to blame, in many others, it is just a matter of the risk assumed in buying stuff in as-found condition -- much as it is when buying on eBay. So next time you see someone at a show with a handful of pens bought cheap, keep in mind that at least some of them are likely to require some serious work to put them completely right.