Los Angeles Pen Show Feb 2014. Booty Shots.

[AltecGreen]

I buy vintage pens, and was really surprised by the prices I saw at the pen show I attended, I found them very, very high for the most part. Especially for Montblanc and Pelikan pens. Some of the smaller vendors had some good prices on more obscure brands, but I was pretty put off by the prices.

The trick of course is that buying at a pen show is not like buying from an online store with a buy it now price. You have to haggle with some vendors and the trick is to figure out how much they have into a pen. Some dealers will always start high because they can (rarity, condition, reputation, etc.). Hunting is part of a pen show. There are bargains to be had everywhere. This is where building a relationship helps. The price I paid for a few pens were much less than if someone had asked because I have done a lot of business with the seller. Then there is patience. I have at least one pen where I outlasted the seller. He had a high price so I did not buy the pen the first two years. The third year he relented and sold it for much less because it had not moved in three years.

Another point is that many of the desirable vintage pens are sold by collectors to collectors. The pens tend to be much cleaner and in better condition than random eBay pens or pens found in the wild. Thus the pricing reflects that fact.


A final point concerns vintage European and Japanese pens. These were never really sold in the US when the pens were new. They had to have been brought into the country at some point. It is extremely rare to find such vintage pens in the wild in the US. People who go to Europe to buy vintage European or Japanese pens and bring them here for sale can command a higher price. I collect vintage Italian and Japanese pens and you see a premium on these pens because of both general scarcity and the fact the supply is limited in the US. I could travel to Italy to buy and pay a lower cost but you then have to factor in the cost of travel and other expenses.