Every start is difficult to say the least, I recently turned my hobby into a business and I am finding out if this works for me and I hope I can document my adventure.
A few years ago I bought my first Montblanc, a Meisterstück 144. As a child I remember looking at beautiful fountain pens through the windows of a pen shop in my birth city. The prices then were astronomical to me. I attended part time education in the evening hours and my wife gifted me a Waterman which I used extensively, so I did enjoy pens but never really went into the premium game. Now in my thirties I somehow remembered the brand Montblanc and just went on a search for my true first great pen. As one does, I read, and searched and read even more and eventually found an ad for a Meisterstück. I called the man and made an appointment.
When I arrived at his house, I directly noticed that his quite average sized house had the interior style of a mansion, lush Chesterfield furniture, grandfather clocks, basically a house filled with beautiful things. He explained to me that at some point he owned 15 shops all around the country and had a luxury life but somehow he lost overview of his business, a large part of the inventory simply vanished and he went bankrupt. He contracted lung cancer and was now basically in the final stages of his life. He bought his Meisterstück at the height of his life, and it was time to let it go. Although he had quite some misery in his life, he was grateful for what he had and has had the chance to experience. A true life lesson. That day I learned that you can appreciate a pen for what it is, but the story that it was part of might be far more interesting and in some way valueable than the physical object. Therefore I like to find objects with a great story, some mundane and some so great you might doubt they are true, but always a story worth sharing…
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