Tag: Pelikan M800

Pelikan Hubs 2025 and On Being A Female Pen Collector

Yesterday was the 2025 Pelikan Hubs event. Pelikan is so wonderful to organize these events, so generous and thoughtful with their gifts, and I love the company and their pens so much that I’m really heartbroken that this isn’t just a glowingly happy post.

This isn’t Pelikan’s fault. Their organization was as usual, impeccable. Their gift was tremendous – a beautiful box, with the Edelstein’s ink of the year Apricot Achat, a postcard and a notepad. Everything was so well designed it was breathtaking to open the box and see it all laid out perfectly.

The box

Here’s the open box and the postcard:

The open box and the postcard

Here’s the notepad. You can see the design on the cover better in the next photo, but the paper is smooth, thick and perfectly fountain pen friendly.

Small notepad

I love the design of the cover of the box, the postcard and the cover of the notepad. It’s playful but elegant, and it works well together and ties in well with the typography and the design of the Edelstein box. That’s a 10/10 for design and quality.

Everything that was in the box: postcard, Edelstein Apricot Achat ink, and notepad

The that we received is the Edelstein Apricot Achat, which is the ink of the year 2025. The bottle is gorgeous, and the ink is non-shimmer this year, so it should be easy to clean out of pens.

Edelstein Apricot Achat

The ink itself is indeed an apricot ink, with a hint of shading. It’s bright but light – a tad too light for me if I’m honest. I think that this exact ink just slightly more saturated would have been the perfect orange for people who like their orange right in the middle of the orange spectrum – not too yellow or too red.

Swab on Col-o-Ring

I filled a Pelikan M215 Rechteck (rectangle) with this ink, but I chose poorly, forgetting that it has an EF nib. Pelikan EF are on the wide side, but this ink would fare better in a medium or even a broad nib. I will still enjoy it as it works well with the other inks I currently have in rotation, but if you are looking to use this ink I’d suggest wide and generous nibs for it.

Writing sample on Kokuyo paper.

I tried it on the Postcard. The paper isn’t coated but is still rather sleek:

The postcard with an ink swab and writing sample

So thank you very much Pelikan for organizing this worldwide event and for your wonderful gift! I am actually considering buying the matching M200 because I like the look of the ink.

Now for the sad and ugly part:

Pen collection has a misogyny problem. I have experienced it during the previous Pelikan Hubs, I have experienced it when I tried to buy pens in brick and mortar shops, in flea markets, from pen makers. I experienced it during this year’s Pelikan Hubs and I’m tired of it, and kind of tired of all the talk about how wonderful and welcoming the pen community is. It’s wonderful and welcoming if you’re a guy, and time and again I have seen it close ranks and snarl if you’re a gal.

Just during yesterday’s event, where I stayed on for less than an hour (and even that was just to be at the edge of the group photo), I was told several times that:

  • Women don’t collect pens.
  • Only men collect pens.
  • I am not a real pen collector.
  • I can’t possibly be a pen collector.
  • I can’t possibly have enrolled to the Pelikan hub.
  • I am there as someone’s plus one.
  • Women don’t understand pen collecting.
  • I am a rare bird, the exception to the rule.

They had facts to back it up, they said. Their closed pen collectors group only had three women in it. That proved the point. I eye-rolled so hard. I had met and talked to one of the other female collectors at last year’s event and I fully understand why she didn’t brave this treatment to collect her gift this year. It’s because nobody wants to go out of their way to spend their precious free time with a bunch of *holes.

There are women collectors, they have every right to enjoy this hobby, and if you’re a guy and you don’t see women in your group, it’s not because they don’t collect pens. It’s because you’ve created a group that women don’t want to join.

Do better.

End of rant – and to end on a more positive note, I did manage to do a few 2-3 minute sketches while I was waiting for the group photo:

Sketched with Pelikan M805 Ocean Swirl F nib and Montblanc Maya Blue on a Pith Kabosu Sketchbook
Sketched with Pelikan M605 Stresemann M nib and Sailor Ink Studio 123 on a Pith Kabosu Sketchbook

Thank you again Pelikan for the wonderful event. I intend to return next year even if the menfolk find my presence abhorrent. There were a few nice fellows that were willing to talk to me, and I will not let the trolls dissuade me from participating in a hobby that I have been enjoying for close to 20 years.

My Flock of Fountain Pens for the Pelikan Hubs 2024

We just had the 2024 Pelikan Hubs event and I wanted to talk about which Pelikan fountain pens I brought with me to the event, and to note a few things that may be useful for those looking to get into Pelikan fountain pens.

This was my flock:

From left to right they are:

  • Pelikan M800 Blue O Blue – one of the most expensive pens in my collection, and one that I (partially) got as a gift for my birthday. This pen has an 18 Karat fine nib that is soft and springy. Note: Some of Pelikan’s gold nibs are softer than others, so it’s worth testing the pen out before you buy it, especially if you’re not used to Pelikan nibs. This pen has a semi transparent blue swirly body and a typical Pelikan wide and juicy nib.
  • Pelikan M805 Ocean Swirl – gorgeous, gorgeous pen that draws attention every time I use it. The depth and shade of the material is something else, and the palladium trim and rhodium plated 18k nib work very well with the turquoise and black shades of this pen’s body. This pen also has a fine 18k nib but this one is much firmer than the one in the Blue O Blue.
  • Pelikan M620 Place De La Concorde – so, so glad I got this pen though it was expensive for me at the time. This was part of Pelikan’s city series and the only Pelikan I have in the M600 size, which is just a shade longer than the M400. There’s marbling in this pen’s stripes, as is befitting its name, and the 18K M nib is wide and juicy and of a standard Pelikan nib firmness.
  • Pelikan M400 W. Germany vintage black and brown tortoise shell – I brought this pen so that people could compare the old tortoise shell design to its modern counterpart. There’s just one band on the cap, the bottom and top finials are more rounded and there’s the old Pelikan logo engraved (not screen printed) onto the finial. The nib design is also completely different, though it still feels like a standard fine 14k Pelikan nib (wide and on the firm side).
  • Pelikan M400 white tortoise shell – this is the modern counterpart of the previous pen, and it has a 14k medium nib that is on the soft side. Both the black and white tortoise shell pens have semi transparent pen bodies so you can easily see the pen level through them.
  • Pelikan M100 storm trooper – on the rarer side of Pelikans, this steel nibbed fountain pen has a medium nib that feels just as good as Pelikan’s gold nibs. While I understand why Pelikan didn’t want to continue making M100 still nibbed fountain pens, I kind of wish they would have. These could have been slightly higher end alternatives to Lamy’s Al Stars and Safaris – a step down from the M200.
  • Pelikan M320 Pearl – the rarest Pelikan in my flock, and always a crowd pleaser. This fountain pen is tiny, and came as part of a set with Pelikan brown ink and a nice presentation box. I bought it more than 10 years ago in Berlin, and nobody was interested in them because of the pen’s size. It’s a piston filler, a fantastically well made pen and it has a very soft 14k medium nib.

Here’s a writing sample for all these pens:

Writing sample on a Pelikan Hub 2022 notepad

Did you go to a Pelikan Hub this year? If so, which pens did you bring with you?