Hello Deb,
I fully adhere to your distinction between writers and collectors. I personally belong to the former and have a loathing for special editions,which I view as a pretty thin pretext for wringing money out of wealthy people, often with no understanding of pens. What has always fascinated me about f.p.s was the technological effort behind them, which, sadly, almost entirely disappeared afer the seventies in last century. I am an admirer of snorkelled Sheaffers, although their inking system was neither very durable, nor capacious. I never got to accept cartridge pens as true fps either, and with all the modern sustainability considerations, I like them even less. A the end of the day, my preference would go to piston fillers (of which converters are in my view but a poor substitute). One further consideration goes to the ink view, which should be a must, especially in a piston filler (shame on Omas, as well as many limited edition MBs, for not providing one): few situations disappoint me as running dry when taking notes with my pens and I would like to be always be able to see how much mileage I got left. I hope I didn’t bore you with my considerations, but I thought I found another pen lover with similar view to mine. Piero, from Italy
Goodwriterspens's Blog 
Hello Deb,
I fully adhere to your distinction between writers and collectors. I personally belong to the former and have a loathing for special editions,which I view as a pretty thin pretext for wringing money out of wealthy people, often with no understanding of pens. What has always fascinated me about f.p.s was the technological effort behind them, which, sadly, almost entirely disappeared afer the seventies in last century. I am an admirer of snorkelled Sheaffers, although their inking system was neither very durable, nor capacious. I never got to accept cartridge pens as true fps either, and with all the modern sustainability considerations, I like them even less. A the end of the day, my preference would go to piston fillers (of which converters are in my view but a poor substitute). One further consideration goes to the ink view, which should be a must, especially in a piston filler (shame on Omas, as well as many limited edition MBs, for not providing one): few situations disappoint me as running dry when taking notes with my pens and I would like to be always be able to see how much mileage I got left. I hope I didn’t bore you with my considerations, but I thought I found another pen lover with similar view to mine. Piero, from Italy