Although there are other pen-oriented discussion groups, the following have been singled out for number of participants and for content likely to be of interest to vintage pen and pencil collectors. For more, see some of the links listed under Collectors' Home Pages. Note that most online pen forums are dominated by user-hobbyists, and by discussion (and selling) of newly-made pens. Note too that you will often see the same posts on several different boards, which leads to an unfortunate duplication and fragmentation of the resulting discussions.
Fountain Pen Network (FPN) and Lion & Pen: These two sites are not connected, but both follow a similar format and have, most usefully,
divided old-pen from new-pen topics. In the first site, there's the "Pen History" forum; in the second, there's "Pens Past". Both have other subforums that contain material of
interest to vintage collectors, though
Lion & Pen is the site that goes the furthest in collecting old-pen discussion all in one place.
UPDATE: despite some fractiousness that has led to the absence of a few established pen historians,
Lion & Pen
is currently the leading site for serious researchers.
FPN is dominated by users and those curious about pen history, but not necessarily well-informed
about it.
Zoss list: An active listserv site run by Tom Zoss. Posts to the site are sent as email to subscribers, but if you are already overburdened with email, you can elect to receive posts in digest form. This is a moderated list, with a good balance of old and new.
Pentrace: Sociable chat, often veering off in directions unrelated to pens. Very active, but focus is more on using pens than on collecting them, more on new pens than on vintage. Threaded, lightly moderated. Sunday show-and-tell picture posts have become an established tradition there.
Stylophiles: Very similar to Pentrace, though less active and more focused on pens -- not surprising, since it was founded as a haven for one very active poster and his followers after he was banned from Pentrace.
alt.collecting.pens-pencils: The Usenet newsgroup for pens. Threaded, unmoderated. This newsgroup can also be reached through Google.
Copyright © 1997-2008 David Nishimura. All rights reserved