Top 10 Favorite Fountain Pens: A Collection Countdown Plus Three Honorable Mentions

Introduction

If I had to sell off my entire fountain pen collection and keep only ten pens, which ones would survive? That was the only rule behind this list: no price limits, no brand restrictions, just the pens that matter most. The initial shortlist ran to about thirty pens, but the final ten came together surprisingly clearly. The hardest part was actually cutting the list down to three honorable mentions.

One thing worked out unintentionally: the final lineup spans ten different manufacturers, which says something about how much variety a great collection can hold.

The Honorable Mentions

Three pens came painfully close to making the cut, and each deserves a place on any shortlist of exceptional pens.

The Conid Bulkfiller King Size is meticulously engineered and very well constructed. The inlaid finial design represents the interlocking bulk filler mechanism, and the broad, wet 18k-style nib is one of the biggest gushers in the collection. Excluding it says more about the strength of the top ten than about this pen.

The Roxter Daydreamer is all about the material: an amethyst-dyed maple burl, stabilized by impregnating the wood’s cellular structure with resin for stability. The coloring and patterning are mesmerizing, and Roxter pairs the purple resin beautifully with the rest of the pen. This is exactly the kind of pen to carry around a pen show for its sheer wow factor.

The Pen 1811 Night Sky Sakura is an artisan creation that makes it impossible not to smile. The cherry blossom flowers are laser engraved into the pen and then painstakingly filled with a resin mixture, so the blossoms become part of the material rather than paint on top of it. A tree branch roll stop wrapped around the cap completes a genuinely joyful package.

1. Visconti Blue Ripple

A long-time grail pen. The Blue Ripple pairs a white cracked-ice resin base with a deep sapphire blue sterling silver overlay symbolizing the waves created when a stone drops into calm water. The overlay is so deeply colored it can look almost black in certain light. Visconti’s older 18k gold nib delivers an excellent writing experience, and tracking this one down at an acceptable price made the acquisition all the more satisfying. Other strong Visconti candidates, like the sterling silver model, the Millionaire in marble, the Divina Desert Springs, and the Opera Crystal Dark Age, did not make the final cut.

2. OMAS Milord Arco Celluloid

OMAS stands for Officina Meccanica Armando Simone, the company Armando Simone founded in 1925, and the arco celluloid on this Milord is spectacular. Light reflects off the golden-brown layers beautifully, and no two arco pens look the same: each has its own personality. This was a grail chase that took a couple of years of searching before one appeared at an acceptable price. The nib has been professionally tuned and now writes like a dream. This is a pen that will never be sold, precisely because of how much effort went into finding it.

3. Pilot Custom Urushi

This pen is a beast, with one of the softest, most pleasant nibs imaginable. It is an urushi lacquered ebonite pen, and handing it to someone for the first time guarantees a reaction, typically a “wow.” For fans of oversized pens, it feels great in the hand. One minor drawback: at a distance the black urushi does not look dramatically different from resin used on other Pilot models, though up close the brush strokes used to apply the urushi are clearly visible. On a top five list, this pen would have made the cut.

4. Nakaya Dorsal Fin 2

The looks of this pen are stunning, from the akatame nuri urushi treatment to the dual fins that give the model its name. There is a long-running debate about whether the fins are built up layer upon layer in urushi or whether the underlying ebonite is carved with the urushi applied on top, and since the only way to settle it would be to cut the pen in half, nobody really knows. Either way, it is one of the favorite fountain pen designs in the collection, and no other pen looks anything like it. One practical note: Nakaya wait times can run long, sometimes over a year, though this one arrived in about four months.

5. Sailor King of Pen Pro Gear Sky

Sailor’s King of Pen nib family is held in very high regard, and each example has its own subtle personality, like twins you learn to tell apart. The Pro Gear Sky’s transparent blue shade is beautiful, and this limited edition had been eyed for a while before a single last one turned up in a medium nib, the preferred size, at a famous fountain pen store in lower Manhattan. That trip gives the pen a layer of good memories on top of what is already one of the favorite nibs in the collection.

6. Classic Pens LB5 Kuseki

These legendary pens use the same oversized nib as the Sailor King of Pen, made as a collaboration between Classic Pens and Sailor, essentially a slightly larger King of Pen with no Classic Pens branding, just the Sailor name on the band. Seven colors were made, only 50 of each, and they have long since sold out. Choosing between the deep blue Tensui and the brown Kuseki was tough, but Kuseki wins because the vibrant brown shows off the diffusion-bonded acrylic far better, and the gold trim suits it well. Originally sold for around $1,200, examples have since appeared on the secondary market at asking prices from $5,500 to over $12,000, which makes it one of the rare pens that has genuinely appreciated.

7. Montblanc Alfred Hitchcock

The most expensive pen in the collection and far more than was ever planned for a single pen. As a film buff who has studied all of Hitchcock’s films, even the hard-to-find silents, this limited edition hits every note: engraved resin on the barrel and cap inspired by Vertigo, a knife-shaped clip nodding to Psycho, one hash mark on the piston knob for each of the films Hitchcock directed, and a nib featuring his famous portrait. The only complaint is a modest one: it could be slightly larger. No regrets whatsoever about this purchase.

8. Danitrio Genkai Tame-nuri

One of the largest pens in the collection, with an all-time favorite nib design. The full model is the Danitrio Tame-nuri on Shu on Genkai, and the tamenuri finish plus the artisan signature on the bottom of the pen serve as a reminder that a craftsman spent many hours on it rather than an assembly line. The huge nib is size-appropriate and intricately decorated, and the medium nib is outstanding: one of the wettest in the collection, laying down a great deal of ink in a controlled manner. Its size rules it out as an everyday carry, but it is a joy every time it comes out of the case.

9. Leonardo Momento Zero Figboot on Pens and Carolina Midnight

Two Leonardo pens earn a place here. The Momento Zero in a custom Jonathan Brooks resin was inspired by his Earth Magic material, reworked with more turquoise and less copper for a more consistent turquoise feel. It is a solid pen with a low-profile ebonite feed, and the gold nib version writes fantastically. Its success led directly to the Carolina Midnight, another partnership with Jonathan Brooks and Leonardo, a dark blue with a subtle pearlescence and depth that is quieter than the turquoise but genuinely beautiful.

10. Namiki Emperor

The final pen might very well be the favorite of the entire collection. This is an extremely large ebonite and urushi pen, big enough that a fellow airline passenger once seemed to wonder what on earth was being written with. The crowning glory is the oversized number 50 nib, stamped by Pilot with its production month and year, this one from January 2019. The remarkable thing is that despite its comical size, the nib writes like a standard number six or number eight: not too soft, not too bouncy, essentially perfect. It lives up to every bit of the hype and rightfully earns the name Emperor.

Overall Buying Advice

A few patterns emerge from this list. Grail pens, like the OMAS arco and the Visconti Blue Ripple, reward patience: waiting for the right example at the right price makes the acquisition far more meaningful. Artisan and lacquer pens from Nakaya, Danitrio, and Namiki carry real human craft into every use, and oversized pens from Pilot, Sailor, and Danitrio show that big nibs can be surprisingly refined writers. Finally, limited editions and collaborations can hold or grow their value, as the Classic Pens LB5 demonstrates, but the best reason to buy any pen is that it earns a place in your hand, not in a vault.

Conclusion

Ten brands, ten pens, and three near-misses that would headline most collections. The goal for the year ahead is to find a pen good enough to knock one of these off the list, which would be a genuinely fun discovery. If you were choosing only ten, which of yours would survive?