Have you seen this $48,000 Omas pen? It’s reduced from $60,000 so I suppose that makes it a bargain.
$48,000! Google tells me that’s £28,742.50. That’s a lot of money when you can buy a perfectly good Pilot V-Pen for £7.76. I could buy a really snazzy car for that or, more to the point, a whole stable of hot motorbikes. Or even enough used pens to fill my workshop to the roof. I’d have them but I couldn’t work on them because I couldn’t get in.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say, but for me that’s one very ugly pen. It’s bulbous, the colours are garish and the clip looks like the handle of a teapot. In the sales-speak blurb they say “The highly original clip is inspired by movement and harmony.” Yeah? Well so’s my dog’s hind leg, the one he lifts at every lamp-post.
There are some comments on the page that are highly amusing.
Is this kind of thing good for our hobby or does it expose it to ridicule? What do you think?
While I cannot stop the commercial antics of a given manufacturer, it is important to remember that OMAS has a fine reputation as a manufacturer of excellent fountain pens. Most of the OMAS line does come with an appreciable price tag, though none that I know of are in this range. I don’t find this pen interesting or attractive, and leave it to those who choose to invest in it. I deplore that taste involved, but remind myself that most of the OMAS pens that I’ve seen look quite different.
There is nothing in what I have said that disparages other Omas pens. Yes, I’m sure that most Omas pens cost less and look better, but that’s irrelevant. They produced, and are trying to sell, this particular pen and they have to live with whatever opprobrium and adverse criticism it brings.
Absolutely.
It’s got to be a joke, hasn’t it?
No. Not at all.
I believe it was Phineas T Barnum who remarked that “No-one ever lost money underestimating the taste of the public.” On that basis I predict great success for this outstanding piece of gross vulgarity.
I’m afraid you’re right. Many ghastly limited editions support you.