When I wrote about my previous month’s purchases in January and February, I intended it to be a monthly post, but life derailed that idea. Now that we’ve made it halfway through the year, it seems like a good time for a check-in on my 36 pens maximum for the year.
I’m only counting the fountain pens I purchased. Gifts don’t count, and neither do rollerball or ballpoint pens.
To start, I currently have 23 pens for sale. Some are at Bertram’s Inkwell, some are on Virtual Pen Show, some are on Reddit, and a couple still need to be posted somewhere.
I’ve already sold five pens this year. Assuming I manage to sell all of the pens I want to, and I stick to 36 total pens, I could have a net gain of only 8 pens for the year! That would be highly impressive for me, although I need to let more go, since I’m so close to my max acceptable number of pens.
But, on to purchases. With 19 new pens purchased as of June 30, I’m at one pen over the 3-per-month maximum necessary to end at 36. Part of that was a couple of customs getting completed faster than expected.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | 2 | 4 | 1 | 6 | 2 |
It should come as no surprise that the majority of my new acquisitions — 10 — are from indie makers. Of those, 3 are custom commissions, and 3 are commissions of existing pen models/styles.
Of the remaining purchases, 3 were store exclusives, 3 were second hand (including one I only purchased for the nib), 1 was a deal too good to pass up, and 1 was the new TWSBI Mini, which if you’ve been here a while, you know I’m collecting.
Overall, I’m pretty proud of myself. I’ve kept myself from getting impulse purchases, and, as of right now, there’s only one pen I may let go soon because it’s somewhat disappointing the longer I have it. I thought it would make me happy, but it hasn’t really.
I also plan to really question my current collection to find what I truly enjoy, and what I’m just reluctant to let go because of reasons.
How have you been doing with your pen purchases this year? Have you sold any pens? Are you happy with the state of your collection? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear from you.
Thanks for reading to the end, I hope you enjoyed my post. Make sure to subscribe to my blog or follow me on Instagram so you don’t miss any posts. I generally post at least once a week.
