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Tag: Rankings

My 2023 Top Tens

Posted in Fountain Pens

Once again, I’m sharing my current top pens. Last year’s approach to my top tens worked well, making me actually stick to lists of 10. I swear, this post gets harder every year. The nibs aren’t too hard, but the pens! It takes me more and more time to narrow down to ten, and then actually figure out the order.

Since I’m keeping to the same format as last year, I’ll compare my lists

But without further preamble, enjoy my top tens of 2023.

My 2022 Top Tens

Posted in Fountain Pens

Once again, I’m sharing my current top pens. I took a somewhat different approach this year, so that I actually choose a top 10. I’m judging my pens based on appearance and the way they write. So I have two different top ten lists. Because of this, I won’t be comparing to last year’s top pens, which ended up being a top 28.

This was just as hard as I expected it to be. I’m fortunate enough to have an absolutely fabulous pen collection, so narrowing it down to my favorites grows increasingly difficult each year.

But without further preamble, enjoy my top 10 pens of 2022 by appearance and by nibs.

My 2021 Top Pens

Posted in Fountain Pens

DISCLAIMER UPDATE (6/24/22): TWSBI and Narwhal have released a joint statement which I cover in my most recent TWSBIgate post. While not completely satisfied with TWSBI’s response to the situation, I no longer feel the need to dissuade people from purchasing their products.

DISCLAIMER (5/1/22): Since writing this post, TWSBI has been involved in some unsavory actions, and I am currently boycotting them. For more information, refer to the #twsbigate tag page.

My planning from last year has paid off. This year, I’m revisiting my 2020 Top Pens and seeing what differences there are in comparison to my 2021 top pens.

As I said last year, I tend to sell or trade pens that don’t make me happy to own. I’m getting closer to all of my pens being favorites, but I made myself narrow them down to a top 10 and top 20. I kind of cheated with the Always Inked section, but don’t judge me too harshly.

This was so much harder than I expected it to be. I slightly adjusted my judging criteria this year. I did my best to put these pens in order of which ones I’m most disappointed to un-ink (clean out). And so, I give you my top pens as of the end of 2021.

Ranking Large Pen Brands

Posted in Fountain Pens

DISCLAIMER UPDATE (6/24/22): TWSBI and Narwhal have released a joint statement which I cover in my most recent TWSBIgate post. While not completely satisfied with TWSBI’s response to the situation, I no longer feel the need to dissuade people from purchasing their products.

DISCLAIMER (5/1/22): Since writing this post, TWSBI has been involved in some unsavory actions, and I am currently boycotting them. For more information, refer to the #twsbigate tag page.

I’ve seen this ranking system on YouTube a lot lately, and it seemed like a fun idea. I don’t know how well it will work in a blog post, but I’m giving it a try. Since I always want to jump to the end to see what the rankings are, I’ve started with that. You can continue reading after the ranking list if you want to find out why I placed a brand in any given ranking.

OK, so what am I ranking? Large/Mainstream pen brands. I’m not including Indie Brands because a) I don’t think that’s fair to them, given I have no idea how experienced any person is with pen making at this time and b) I think all Indie Brands that don’t have shady business practices should be shown more love, not shade. You can see the Indie Brand qualifications in my Indie Pen Makers Update post. For me, large/mainstream brands are those readily available in pen stores.

Let me know if I’ve missed any brands, I can write an update to include them. That said, I’m also not including defunct brands — sorry OMAS lovers. I’m also only considering modern experiences with vintage brands (e.g. Esterbrook, Sheaffer, etc.) not their vintage pens.

Let me know if you agree or disagree with my rankings. And if this looks fun, you can use my template to make your own ranking list.

My 2020 Top Pens

Posted in Fountain Pens

DISCLAIMER UPDATE (6/24/22): TWSBI and Narwhal have released a joint statement which I cover in my most recent TWSBIgate post. While not completely satisfied with TWSBI’s response to the situation, I no longer feel the need to dissuade people from purchasing their products.

DISCLAIMER (5/1/22): Since writing this post, TWSBI has been involved in some unsavory actions, and I am currently boycotting them. For more information, refer to the #twsbigate tag page.

In working on blog posts for the new year, I wanted to revisit last year’s favorite pens, only to realize I hadn’t previously written such a list. So, to have something to revisit next year, I give you my top pens as of the close of 2020.

I tend to sell or trade pens that don’t make me very happy to own. I’m hoping to eventually get to a point where all of my pens are favorites, but I was able to come up with a top 10 and top 20 this year. It was difficult to do, but these are basically the pens you’d have to pry out of my cold, dead hands.