I'm on my 3rd Lamy Safari/Al-Star. I keep buying them and giving them away because I hate the triangular grip section! (here is why)

I love the Apple Green color of last year's LE Safari, and I like the ability to change nibs easily for fancy writing with a single ink, so I bought it from my friend who never used it much.

But, yeah, cheap pens on eBay! GouletPens.com sells a few Jinhao pens for less than $10 each, if you don't want to risk a Chinese ebay seller, and I really love the 450 with the mottled red/gold print. The nib is actually two-tone, and acts more like a gold nib than a steel nib, which impressed me. (The Goulets are the best, tbh - when my favorite De Atramentis pink ink had the formula changed, I was super sad, and then a month later they found an original bottle somewhere and remembered me and sent it to me for free, which is just amazing customer service. I'd only mentioned my disappointment about the change in the comments to the Ink Drop blogpost where we realized it had changed, and then once or twice on twitter, but I had talked to Rachel about how I was trying every single pink sample they offered in search of a perfect one, and that first formula was my favorite.)


This is the pen I bought yesterday, on a whim actually ("White Polka Dot Hooded Nib Piston Converter Calligraphy Fountain Pen Blue")