The Fountain Pen Forum, Your place for fountain pen reviews, articles, and discussion.: Content / Pens / The Hunt For Cheap Pens

by Ed Svoboda

It is getting more difficult to find reasonably priced pens that can be left laying around without fearing substantial financial loss if they are lost. Here's an article about hunting down not only affordable pens but cheap pens.

The Hunt For Cheap Pens

A great cheap fountain pen is a wonderful surprise. But what makes a great cheap fountain pen? When I was in college in the late 1980�s and early 1990�s, I would go to the student bookstore and pick up Parker Vectors or Sheaffer school pens for about five bucks each. I would sometimes pick up a pack of cartridges for a dollar or two. As a student, I hated taking notes so I purchased fountain pens to at least give me something interesting to do while performing the mundane task at hand. Since I was a student, I really didn't have a lot of extra spending money and I seemed to loose pens at a pretty regular rate. The Vectors fit the bill for my needs. I have managed to hang on to a couple of them and they sit in my pen box waiting for more note taking. The definition of a great cheap fountain pen during my college years was a pen that was very reasonably priced, wrote smoothly and didn�t fall apart in a book bag. Looks were secondary but comfort was somewhat important as well (but what wouldn�t be more comfortable to write with than a cheap Bic).

I use cheap fountain pens every day at work. Of course, I have the normal compliment of more expensive and or collectable pens in my pocket but it is nice to have a pen or pens that can be left out on the desk without fear of them being borrowed. In addition, I can loan them to a co-worker who wants to try a fountain pen out and I have even been known to give them to people who show an interest. I have them in various nib widths and colors. Some have cartridges and some have converters. Most were impulse buys. Cheap pens serve as the first real exposure to fountain pens for a lot of people. These cheapies are really great entry points for pen companies as they cultivate these folks for future sales. A well made cheap pen instills confidence that a company's high end products will be every bit as reliable or even better. I know a number of people who mostly buy Parker pens because they are used to the cartridges and they know where they can get more. Even though they own pens that can fill from a bottle they are so used to using cartridges that they see no reason to change.

These days it is getting harder to find fountain pens in most retail stores. Even harder to find are cheap fountain pens. If you want a Pilot G2 you can find them in multiple colors and in a couple of line widths in most every store listed below. But let�s face it, a Pilot G2 does not write as well as most decent fountain pens. The major retail chains no longer seem to keep a small selection of pens or cartridges in stock. In fact in the Chicagoland area only Target carries any fountain pens. Over the course of a few weeks on lunch breaks and Saturday's I managed to visit all of the major retail stores in my area. Here's is a list of stores that I went to on my search for pens under $15.00 along with a notation showing if they had any cheap pens and how many they had in stock.

Office Depot - No
Staples - Yes (2)
OfficeMax - No
Local Office Supply - Yes (1)
Walgreen�s - No
K-Mart - No
Wal-Mart - No
Target - Yes (2)
Executive Essentials - Yes (2)

The found contenders include the Pilot Varsity, Parker Reflex, Sterling Kelt (from Target), Pelikan Pelikano, and Pelikan Pelikano Junior. While it may take a little searching to find these pens in the stores anymore they are quite easy to find online. We'll discuss each pen from least expensive to most expensive.

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