Pelikan 800 Series Fountain Pen - Blue/Black, Broad Nib 995969 Review

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(More customer reviews)I spent a year of my childhood in Germany. Like all good little German schoolkids, that meant that I learned to use a fountain pen. (For anyone who hasn't written with a fountain pen, there's just no comparison to how a decent fountain pen works as compared to what we usually use on this side of the pond). The pen I learned to write with was a Pelikan, and although it was an inexpensive school kid's version, it set the standard for how it *should* feel to use a pen.
Now I'm 44, and I've gone through a variety of pens. But the basics still hold. Pelikan pens write beautifully. Yes, this is a big and impressive looking thing with its two-toned 18k nib, beautifully engineered piston filling system, and its classic interpretation of Pelikan's long-established Stresemann striping. But aside from the good looks, this pen gets the basics of what a fountain pen should do very, very right. It just feels good how liquid ink flows down the nib and onto paper. More like painting than writing. The only question is, how big does a pen need to be? This pen is definitely at the larger end of what feels comfortable for me to write with. Other than having a piston mechanism made of brass, and perhaps having an 18k versus 14k gold nib, the smaller pens in Pelikan's Souveran series all offer similar levels of goodness. Some people like big pens, but Pelikan's smaller pens are also very much worth considering.
Best of all, Pelikan supports what it sells. You'd expect no less from any company which makes what sounds like a pretence of calling its pens "fine writing instruments," but I suspect in the case of most companies you'd be disappointed. But Pelikan is the real deal, with a history of making pens for people who actually use fountain pens everyday. I bought my 800 a long time ago (early 2000's?), but when it recently broke (alas my 6 year old son knocked it off a fireplace mantel onto a hard tile floor) Pelikan's US customer service branch took care of all necessary repairs quickly and efficiently. In this day and age, it's rare to be pleasantly surprised by customer service. What a nice perk on top of all the good things there are to say about Pelikan pens!
There are a lot of fountain pen offerings out there that have never seemed to me much better than silly overpriced trinkets. They're more about conspicuous consumption than good writing. And Pelikan is not above selling you its own fancy special editions, if that's what you want. But for sheer function, you can't get much better than buying this pen.

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