How Many Ways Are There to Define Mint?

Or perhaps, more accurately, how many ways should “mint” be defined?  The answer to the first question seems to be an infinite number while the answer to the second (and correct question) is one.

It’s really quite simple.  “Mint” when used as an adjective to describe something offered for sale, like a pen, means “new”, “unused”, and “perfect condition”.  Mint means that  the pen has never had a drop of ink in it, through it or on it.  It might have been tested with water to make sure that it operates properly but no ink.

Just take a look on a few pen discussion boards in the “for sale” section and you will see that it is obviously not so simple.  People love to use the word (almost as much as “rare”, but that’s another topic for another day!) to get your attention and hopefully buy the pen(s) that they are trying to sell.  Once they have your attention, that’s when the meaning gets modified (read: twisted) to suit their particular circumstances.  When I say “modify” what I really mean is that’s when they pull out the weasel words and thus begins the slippery slope.  You know what I am talking about - ”mint but its been dipped … a few times” or “mint but its had just a few cartridges (or converters) run through it”. 

The best ones, of course, come from the wild west of capitalism, Ebay.  In fact, those are the ones that inspired me (read: pi$$ed me off) to write this.  Here is one of the latest (after I have corrected the spelling and grammar) – “MINT CONDITION…(please note I use the word “MINT” meaning that in my opinion it is excellent and shows little usage wear, if it wasn’t for the slight split in the cap …  If you look at the picture of the cap by the split it maybe missing a very thin gold band as well…”.  The vendor seems to think that if they clearly explain THEIR definition of ”mint” or provide what they think is full and fair disclosure, they have absolved themselves of their irresponsible use of the word to begin with.  C’mon folks, get with it!

“If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, it must be a duck”

NOT 

“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.”

Although I occasionally chuckle at some of these descriptions that are so off the wall, I am so frustrated by the time they have wasted by getting me to look at an advertisement that is false.  When I clicked on their link (or whatever) and read their ad, I was interesting in reading about and possibly buying a mint pen, not one that has been used as a tester by their entire family and is now missing a few parts, has a few scratches, bent nib, etc…

You get the picture.  We’ll tackle “rare” another day!

FPN Inks – Van Gogh Starry Night Blue & Dumas Tulipe Noire

The great people at the Fountain Pen Network (FPN) have created a few inks of their own (in association with the ink wizards at Noodler’s).  To date, the FPN has created three inks to be exact – Galileo Manuscript Brown, Dumas Tulipe Noire and the just released Van Gogh Starry Night Blue.  I ordered a number of the blues and one each of the brown and tulipe noire, however, I have not yet received the brown.  In any event, here is a scan of the blue and tulipe noire.  The people at FPN are so artistic that they even created the labels for the bottles!
 

 

The first two scans are of the blue – one of handwriting with a Sailor King of Pens Professional Gear with a Togi nib and the other a swab using a Q tip. 

  

 
 
This is a scan of the tulipe noire scan, swabbed with a Q tip.

Omas Emotica Fountain Pen

A review by one of our members, KR, on a lovely (dare I say ultra-kewl?) yellow Omas fountain pen that she recently acquired.

Unfortunately I am unable to paste the review directly into this post; however, you can review it by clicking on the following pdf file: emotica-review .