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friendos @sporks and @Captn-Arrr who are on here but don't post that much, sent me a vintage Namiki Vanishing Point!

Namiki and Pilot are the same company; in the 90s when I first used a VP, most of the fountain pens and fountain pen inks were branded as Namiki, and everything else was Pilot. Later they rebranded so that Pilot is the brand on the vast majority of their fountain pen products, and the only put "Namiki" on some of the more rarefied limited editions.

Modern Vanishing Points are made of brass, which makes them heavy. This has benefits (feels "serious", very sturdy) and drawbacks (can be uncomfortable to use for long periods, and some finishes, particularly matte black, will scuff easily, "brassing" in the same way as old cameras -- although this can also be cool.) The 90s Vanishing Points had plastic bodies, which made them very lightweight by comparison.

The modern Vanishing Points are also thicker and the cap is shifted downward a bit.

They're all excellent pens (and, among gold nib pens, some of the best values, even irrespective of the convenience and novelty of the retracting mechanism), but I greatly prefer the plastic version in use.

BTW Pilot has been making these pens in various forms for many decades -- if you're curious about the history, this venerable blog is a cool resource. They're so old that the patent on the mechanism has now expired, if I recall correctly, which is why Platinum was able to introduce the Curidas a few years back.


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