Editing The Pen Addict 502/transcript (section)

== Time Flies ==


'''Myke:''' Wow. Many years. Wow, time flies. Time flies. Like, time flies to 502 episodes of this podcast, which I'm excited about still, to this day. And I'm also excited about the Pilot Custom 74, Myke. Did you know that?

'''Brad:''' I read this. I read this review that you wrote. It's like a re-review. Mm-hmm. Right?

'''Myke:''' Would you say, yeah, would you say it was fawning? A fawning review? I felt fawning writing it.

'''Brad:''' I would say that you are deeply in love, it would appear.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. And that's an issue in the grand scheme of things, was my discovery process, right? My re-discovery process. So the Pilot Custom 74, I just reviewed it on penaddict.com on Monday, but it is not a new pen. And it is, in our modern world, it's a pretty old pen. It's probably got a good decade behind it, if not more. I don't know the history of the 74. I'm guessing the 74 was maybe 74 years from the anniversary. So it could be a 30-year-old pen. Yeah. For all I know. Like, I'm not that smart, y'all. I get emails like, you are not smart. And I'm like, I know. I know those things. So Pilot Custom 74, I learned about it back when I just started getting into fountain pens about a decade ago. And I bought one. I had an orange one. And I really, I enjoyed it. Like, it was cool. It fit right in the category at the time with, hey, this is your first upgraded gold nib pen, right? So like, we would be dabbling in, you know, our Lamy Safaris or our Twisbees or trying to figure out what, you know, next kind of ramp up pen would be. And then there was a batch of gold nib pens that was like that next tier, you know, the Lamy 2000, Pilot Vanishing Point, Sailor Pro Gear at the time. And like, I wasn't even including the Platinum 3776 at the time. We'll get to that in a minute. But, you know, that was what we did like, you know, eight years ago, right? And the market has changed a bunch in the years since. And I wanted to rethink where the Pilot Custom 74 landed because it's still a really good pen, right? I raved about it the first time. I raved about it the second time I reviewed it. The reviews were seven years apart. I think my original one was 2015. And while the 74 itself hasn't changed in that time frame, the market has, right? I talked a lot about how we've gone through a lot of price changes, especially, you know, starting with the pandemic. It seems that all the prices escalated, you know, just the world got more expensive, right? It's not, you know, something exclusive to the stationary hobby.

'''Brad:''' Production is more expensive. Materials are more expensive.

'''Myke:''' Like, literally tick everything across the board got more expensive, right? So that shifted where these certain pens lie in the price market, right? There's different, the price brackets changed where you could just pretty much like throw a dart, you know, at $125 10 years ago and come out with a great gold-knit pen, right? And you would be just thrilled. And, you know, we could say, just pick whichever one you want because you'll be happy and your budget is the same. And in the past few years, a lot of those same pens got really, really ramped up in their different, you know, their different companies had different levels of price increase. You know, Sailors had a big price increase. Lamy's had a big price increase, you know, with their gold-knit pens, the Lamy 2000. Pilots had a big price increase. The vanishing point was especially hit by that. Platinum had a big price increase. And the Pilot Custom 74 had a little price increase. Like, it went up. It went up. And I looked at my seven years ago review, I paid $135 for the 74, okay? And this year, I paid $160 for the 74. I mean, that's a pretty reasonable just cost of living increase, you know, over the years. Whereas the Sailors are now starting at like $180, and that's just, you have very little choice there. And then they go on up from there. The Platinum 3776 gold and black ones are $176, I think. So, they're, you know, close to $160, right? These are not too disparate prices, but they're in the ballpark. But if you want rhodium trim, it's $200, you know, which that's the one I want is $200.

'''Myke:''' And it's just on and on. The Lamy 2000, you know, was back in that $125 range before $140. And now it's around $200. The Vanishing Points was in that price range. Now it's close to $200. So, yeah, it made me rethink the Pilot 70, Custom 74. And why wasn't it not only not on my top five pins in the $100 to $200 category, why isn't it the number one pin in that category? And I don't even have it listed. And I think the result of this article was that's a huge oversight on my part. And that list is going to change. And it's probably going to be the number one pin.

'''Brad:''' I don't understand that part. Which part? I specifically wrote, like, copied and pasted this quote from your review, which you basically just said, which is, not having the Pilot Custom 74 on my top five pens list in the $100 to $200 fountain pen list is a huge oversight on my part. In fact, I think it needs to be in the number one spot. I just am surprised you can go from not being there to number one. Like, that's a pretty big jump.

'''Myke:''' I think the way I see it is that it was a mistake on not my part by missing it, as opposed to I chose to, say, put it sixth in the list, right? It wasn't even a consideration for me, right? So therefore, if it wasn't considered, hey, here's 10 pins, and I'm going to rank them one through five, and it came out number seven, it was just almost like the Forgotten Man of not being considered. So therefore, it's not moving from seven to four. It's moving from oops to one.

'''Brad:''' Yeah. No, I get it. It's just still a surprise to me, though.

'''Myke:''' Yeah. And it may not be number one. It may be number two, but it's going to be one or two, because I think the gold nib pens have to be at the top of that list, because there's very few gold nib pens. It's that I would recommend in that price point now. All right.