Your Favourite Fountain Pens for Fountain Pen Day 2024

We could talk all day about our favourite fountain pens. And sometimes we do. Yes, we’re a lot of fun at parties. Though, come to think of it, we don’t seem to get invited to many these days.

But what about your favourite fountain pens? As Fountain Pen Day is here for 2024, we thought it might be interesting to pull up the figures - what fountain pens to people actually buy most? And that can be looked at two different ways - how many of each pen do people buy, and how much are people spending in total? Does one sale of a pen that costs hundreds of pounds count for more than one sale of a pen that costs less than £5? Maybe, maybe not, but we still think both are interesting.

When we pulled up the figures both ways, only one pen featured in both lists - the Lamy 2000. It’s long been one of our favourites, for the pretty much perfect design, an elegance that comes from a complete lack of decoration, just being exactly what it needs to be. German design at its very best. And we’re glad to see so many of you agree with us.

The Pelikan M1000 wasn’t too much of a surprise in the more high-end list, it’s one of the all-time classics. And it was the green striped version, which is the classic finish too. Though maybe we’d have expected the M800 to beat it - the M1000 is a big pen!

Also in the list was the Pilot Capless, which wasn’t a surprise, but maybe a little more surprising that it was the matt black finish. It’s a very different look to the rest of the range, which some people are going to love. Maybe more people do prefer the standard silvery finish, but those people have plenty of colours to choose from, splitting them up.

And finally, the Visconti Homo Sapiens Bronze Age. It’s the classic finish, made with lava, of a pen we still tend to think of as a little niche, so it’s good to see it becoming so popular. The vacuum filler holds a lot of ink, the bayonet cap is quick and easy to put on and take off, and it’s a tough pen. Very practical.

Counting just how many of each pen we sell obviously brought us a long way down in the price range, with the exception of the Lamy 2000, but still some really good choices.

The Lamy Safari is always at the top of lists of favourite pens, so it’s no surprise to see it here. We’d given up on counting individual colours and finishes at this point!

The bestsellers list also included two of the pens we most often recommend for anyone new to fountain pens - the Platinum Preppy and the Pilot V Pen. The V Pen is disposable, making it a great way to see if a fountain pen is actually something you’d enjoy using, but also great as a pen to loan to people when you don’t want them using your nicer pens, or to stick in a pocket when you don’t want to take anything expensive with you. It’s also a perfectly good choice for everyday use, with a large ink capacity and no worries about refilling.

The Preppy is refillable, but priced more like a disposable. Surprisingly nice to write or draw with, and while the plastic isn’t the toughest, they can still last a good long time, giving them ridiculously low ‘running costs’.