I have a number of good pens without nibs, brands for which I don’t have spares. Some were given to me and others arrived in a batch that I bought. I am tempted to say that the batch were the result of stripping out the nibs for their gold value but I don’t know that with certainty.

What to do with them? If I try to hang onto these pens until correct nibs happen to become available they may sit here forever. What I have done with several is to fit them with either suitable (but not correct) gold or steel nibs and I will offer them for sale at a very low price, making sure that potential buyers are made aware that the nibs are not original. It’s a poor solution but the only one I have.

Nibs are a rare resource. Cracked nibs – everyday ones – cannot be economically repaired. More worrying is the constant sacrifice of valuable pens for the paltry few pounds that the gold of the nib will fetch. There has been much discussion of this over the years but it still continues because we are preaching to the choir. We are not reaching the people who actually do this, the house clearance people or gold traders. They see the gleam of the nib which is all that interests them, unaware or uncaring that the whole pen is worth a lot more.