Pen Quest

Someone at work was compiling a list of “favorite things” for occasions like birthdays, etc. I found myself noting under hobbies: Quest for the perfect pen. Ah, but is anything so simple? What is preferable to me is not preferable to others. In fact, I see a lot of trends towards very thin point pens, and I find myself preferring bolder, thicker lines. What is a person to do? We have two main office supply stores where I live, and they carry very similar items. If you’re lucky, they have something set out as a sampler to test and try out a pen before you buy. One can waste a lot of money buying pens because they get good reviews. It’s not as if everything on the internet is true (eye-roll). I’m starting to doubt how many reviews are legitimate out there anymore. I recently skimmed through an article about helpful items or gadgets . . . or whatever it was, I don’t recall. It was sad how almost every single “noted review” started “Love, love love this _____.” Could you get any more obvious that the reviews were fake? At least attempt to make an attempt to pretend they are by different people. So that has tainted my trust this week a little. The other incident that saddened me was trying the Uniball Vision Elite rollerball pen as I saw this write-up of it being the supreme affordable rollerball pen, also claiming rollerballs were highly superior to gel pens. Sadly, I took the bait. It was “only” $13 down the drain, to get a set of 4, but they were hardly worth 3 dollars a pen. Worlds like “tolerable” and “completely underwhelming” came to mind. And so we will try again. I miss those stores with columns or shelves of pens, that go on and on, and there is a tester of each. The last store I went to like this was the Kinokuniya Bookstore adjacent to Uwajimaya in Seattle, Washington. Aisles upon aisles of pens, with tester paper and one tester of almost every single pen available for purchase. Some $10+ pens may not have had testers, but I’d say 90% or more were available. I could easily spend an hour there, which isn’t a good idea, since a purchase of any size will only validate one hour of parking. But I digress. I realize I don't know much about different types of pens as I should, so I need to do some research and find out more about them, especially considering how many pens I have. And NOT believe stupid buttery reviews just because I can't seem to find a wealth of pen reviews outside of Amazon. They have to be out there somewhere. Just not at www.jetpens.com