Pelikan Nib Swapping: A Primer

I’ve run out of pens to review (hopefully only for the short term) so I’m turning to writing articles about the things I’ve picked up over these years of being in the hobby. I hope you’ll find these as fun and informative as the reviews have been! And thus, the first of these how-tos: There...

Pelikan 400NN Brown Tortoise (1950s)

I jumped on this one because Pelikan no longer makes anything near the range they used to have, both in terms of pen shapes as well as nib types: The 400NN was developed after the 400N was a “neu” version of the old 400, which looks like the modern M400. The finial and knob gradually...

Pelikan M620 Grand Place

The pride and joy of my collection and my favourite pen: I first learnt of this design when I came across the larger M800 Grand Place of 2015, which had a black piston knob and a black section. But then I saw a comparison picture with this and instantly fell in love: thus began my...

Mabie Todd Swan 2C (c. 1920)

It gets interesting here: this is (half of) the first vintage purchase I made, and it has a real flex nib. I bought this off eBay, and it came fairly cheap because of a previous owner’s personalised engravement on the cap. I didn’t mind that at all; it was really strange to realise that this...