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Comment by karlding | Hacker News Reader

For what it's worth, the consensus on /r/fountainpens and other fountain pen enthusiast sites is that you risk receiving counterfeit Lamy Safari pens when purchasing from Amazon. These fakes often have poor quality nibs and ruin people's first experience with fountain pens. The recommendation is to purchase a pen through a reputable dealer so you know that you are getting the real thing.

There's a post here on Imgur [0] regarding an individual's experience after receiving a fake on Amazon if you want to compare the fake and original.

[0] https://imgur.com/gallery/RC0hU

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Thanks for this post. Bought a Lamy several years ago and never crossed my mind it could be counterfeit. It felt so scratchy when writing that eventually I just gave up on it. Now when I compare it to the fake one from the images in the post above, it has all the telltale signs.

You know, mine felt scratchy too. Always just figured I was doing something wrong or that's what you get for getting a cheaper fountain pen.

Fairly sure mine was from an official reseller but I'll have to double check

Goulet Pens (https://www.gouletpens.com/) is a good place to buy FP items.

Goulet Pens were fantastic for my fiancee.

She has lupus, so holding and writing with a ballpoint pen is agony for her and her hands on bad joint days. She can usually do okay with a gel ball roller, but one day I let her try my fountain pen and it was the least painful writing experience in her life.

She emailed the Goulet Pen company for suggestions on good pens for lupus/arthritis and got a detailed response with suggestions. They were fantastic and helped her place an order for a less expensive pen that fit her hand better to test the waters for future orders.

Their YouTube pen videos are good too.

In Canada, Wonderpens is an excellent source of fountain pens & inks (based in Toronto). Stylo is also great in Montreal and ships.

But you might have a local shop (most cities seem to have at least one -- either catering to artists or catering to the wedding/cards types).

The Lamy Safari is a great starter but I found the Platinum Plaisir and the cheaper Platinum Preppy to also be great introductions. The Plaisir also comes in finer tips, down to 0.3mm, which helps for those of us with angry writing :) It's also quite a bit cheaper, and the piston refill is cheaper.

(although these days I just use a syringe to refill as drawing ink up any other way seems to never work right...)

This is true, most use https://www.jetpens.com/

More making the point that the barrier to entry is low considering Pilot makes a $3 disposable fountain pen. I suppose that would have been a better example.

I second jetpens. I trust them, and it seems like they always have what i'm looking for.

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