The manufacturers of fountain pens apparently have not seen such increase in sales since the year Lewis Waterman made the 3 key inventions that allowed the mass-production of quality writing instruments. While ballpoint and rollerball pens were reported to kill the market of fountain pens, and hi-tech presented by email and cell-phones was to eliminate writing as activity, something unpredicted happened ? and changed the world of writing instruments.



I believe this can be explained by several factors.

First, writing made a man, as many of us were taught at school. No technology can replace the art of writing and diminish the value of habit.

Spell-checkers in Word make us rely on automatic scripts which, as we all know, cannot guess our thoughts. You never can trust a spell-checker to make your article grammatically correct, and human reviewing is always necessary, be it a term paper, an agreement, or some internal company policy. Typing involves making more errors than writing with a pen, that's for sure.

Second, email serves for conveying information, and not empathy. Writing involves much of emotional component, changing the style, pressure on the paper, and handwriting. A hand-written letter tells the reader a lot about the writer, while typed email is a pure text lacking soul.

Finally, fountain pens are a tradition ? and this is something we badly need in the unstable world. We all lack connections with the past. Gadgets we use lack the spirit, lack humanity, and are considered as devices only. You can't really express your personality, your attitude towards assets and values with an iPod, which is just about in everyone's pocket.

So we have solid reasons to state that fine pens are seeing the second birth. Enthusiasts started the wave, collectors supported it, and then ordinary white-collars joined the craze.

So why do you need a fountain pen?

Here's a brief list of reasons that might urge you to have a look at reviews of different brands.

1. Fountain pens are easier to write with than rollerballs and ballpoints. Thanks to construction and special mechanism, fountain pens do not need additional pressure on part of a writer. The ink literally flows onto the paper itself.

2. If gold is best investment of money, then fountain pens are sure to hold the spot among five most reliable investments. While cars are too huge to keep and normally drop in prices quickly, fountain pens are often made in limited quantities. If you ever got a slight interest in Mont Blanc Limited Editions, then you might know that these fountain pens become rare too fast, and their price tag literally sky rockets. If you buy a pen for $300, a couple of years later you can sell it for $500. Every broker will tell you that this ain't that bad :-)

3. Fountain pens reflect personality thanks to all kinds of models, manufacturers, filling mechanisms, etc. The world of fountain pens probably is way more diverse than the world of computer games.

4. If you care about you health, a fountain pen can help you. Yes! Doctors say that muscles involved in holding a fountain pen release tension on heart. Besides, people with some diseases like arthritis have difficulties in writing with ballpoints, but fountain pens help to alleviate the pain.

5. Collecting fountain pens is a great hobby, many people find it to be a great fun. There are online communities with thousands of members enjoying communication and sharing experience, posting reviews, solving repair troubles. Every year Pen Shows take place in cities all over the world, like those in Chicago and London. These are spectacular events where every fountain pen lover can look at and feel almost any pen displayed, and receive most accurate information about all aspects of collecting fountain pens.

So owning a fountain pen is something you might really enjoy for the rest of your life, and your children and grandchildren will have s chance to inherit the asset that never looses in price - your fountain pens.