Goldspot’s Weekly Dip is the only fountain pen-related page I check on a regularly scheduled basis. I look forward to Wednesdays, and seeing what new special they’re featuring there.
Last week it was the Visconti Opera Demo Carousel that I desire deeply in Pink Blush, but usually I’m sort of relieved to see it’s something interesting, but not something I feel compelled to order to take advantage of the sale price.
Conklin’s shiny Special Edition Rainbow Durograph fountain pen is on sale for half-off at Goldspot.com this week
This week’s Weekly Dip features the Conklin Durograph Special Edition PVD Rainbow pens. And again, I am relieved not to feel overwhelmingly compelled to get it.
A bunch of these rainbow-finished pens came into vogue in recent years; in theory metallic “rainbow” colorations would be right up my alley, but none of these pens really do it for me. The finish looks cheap (in pictures, anyway; I haven’t seen any of these in real life yet), like a thin plastic-y foil that will easily get scratched or peel off. I’m not a snob about stuff like this (I genuinely think one of the most beautiful sights in the world is a gas-station puddle with a coat of oil on its surface creating a rainbow effect very similar to the this pen’s look), but it looks more like a gimmick than a fifty-dollars-worth-of-fancy pen (to me … again, just judging from photos online and in catalogs). It reminds me of Generra’s heat-sensitive Hypercolor clothing trend that came out the year I graduated from high school.
Having said that, if I were to get one of the rainbow pens, this Conklin SE is probably the one I’d choose. I like the flat-top. I like the bright, light, continuous silver-and-yellow metal colors and trims (as opposed to the darker blacker backgrounds and accents on some pens (like Conklin’s Rainbow Crescent Filler and the Monteverde Invincia Nebula) or the unsmooth broken-up bodies of the Laban Skeleton and Monteverde Regatta Sport Demo).
Shit … I’m kind of talking myself into buying this pen by writing this and looking at all of these pictures.
It *is* a good price, and chances are the shine and colors are WAY prettier and more impressive in person … sitting on my desk, for example. There are just other pens I’d rather spend fifty dollars on at this point in my collecting journey, like two more Kaweco sports, or two more Magnum Diplomats. I actually bought my first Conklin FP last year and have been saving it as a reward, so I haven’t actually used it/don’t know how it’ll write for me / if I want another Conklin. The one I got but haven’t used is a really pretty Duraflex I picked up at a similar sale price; it’s super pretty, but much bigger than I am used to. I’m not sure yet if I will actually use and enjoy pens so much bigger than what I am used to (the Platinum Preppy is honestly the longest and thickest pen I use on the regular, and its dimensions feel just right for my hand, if a little on the lightweight side).
After I saw this new Weekly Dip today, I decided to see if last week’s feature, the Visconti Opera Carousel Demo, was back to its old price. IT IS NOT! It is still at the weekly-dip 50%-off-the-$750-regular-price of $375!!
That means a) I did not lose my chance at collecting / investing in the Pink Blush at significant savings, and b) I now need to spend some time talking myself out of doing just that. So stay tuned for that blog entry, in which I remind myself of things I want to spend $375 on more, and other reasons why I shouldn’t choose a single luxe fountain pen to blow that kind of money on even if I had those dollars to do it with.
*The title of this post, “Rainbow Dippin”, alludes not only to this week’s Weekly Dip on Goldspot.com, but also to the name of a bull that my wife and I saw on a televised rodeo many years ago, and we continue to say out of the blue to each other in an announcer’s voice for fun: “Rainbow DIPPIN’, folks … now that is one rank bull!”
