(This is a guest Post from Sam Alpert. Sam is a geologist, gamer, and general lover of all things with good, clean design. See more from Sam on Instagram @samalpert.)
Note from Brad: It’s all my fault for how late this is! Or, is it perfect timing with pen show season just cranking up in 2026? 🤔
Pen shows are crazy; the DC Show doubly so.
I find the best way to manage the sheer stimulus overload that is a massive show like DC is to go with a focus. I had a few things I wanted to get for myself, but I knew they would be fast, so I floated the idea to Brad of me doing a sort of “fetch quest” style shopping challenge for him, similar to what Mike over at Inkdependence had his friend do, but this time with a twist. Brad was the one who ultimately hit on the idea that we try to “shop around the world” by hitting as many countries of origin for products from as diverse a vendor group as possible. And all that on a tight $100 budget.
What a crazy idea.
There were so many ways I could approach the challenge. Obviously I could just find the cheapest thing from as many countries as possible, a Jinhao from China, washi from Japan, et cetera. But to me that wasn’t fulfilling, I wanted this to also be things that I myself would buy, something that could be a fun memory of the show and, where possible, even be something Brad had never tried before. This, it turns out, took the difficulty up another level.
After doing multiple passes of the show floor on Friday, I thought I was ready to begin the search Saturday. The first thing I underestimated is how fast time flies when you’re doing things you love. Saturday was a blur of amazing classes, meeting tons of awesome people (some of you may have seen in Mike’s walkthrough tour, I was also giving a geology quiz to anyone who stopped me, with ink samples as the prize). What I came to realize was that instead of trying to look for specific countries, I needed to instead look for specific items, and then go to vendors that had that item in abundance and see what countries I could “shop” from. To that end I decided to go for a “full” setup: fountain pen, ink, notebook, carrying and desk accessories. This dovetails with the idea I love of getting people into the hobby with minimal fuss, but maximal awesomeness.
So the puzzle became who had what from where? I decided that the easiest thing was to start with the most expensive things and move backwards. I was fairly confident I could get a pen for cheap if I had to, and ink, so the first stop was a desk tray. And who better to get it from than a master of the craft, NFP Design. The two pen tray in a gorgeous mustard yellow was a big ($25) chunk of my budget, but it was perfect, starting my journey off in Turkey. As a bonus, Galen Leather was giving out drawstring bags at the entry to the hall they were in, which came with a lovely leather pen sleeve, a free bonus just for coming to Turkey!
Right around the corner from NFP was Smruti Pens, who had the Dominant Industry Takasago Notebook, conveniently also a new product to Brad, and putting me in Taiwan for a reasonable $.
Next was a pen. Here’s where I struggled the most. I had this crazy idea to try and find something German and vintage, but my lack of knowledge of the vintage pen world meant that I just couldn’t find anything cheap and effective. My next thought was a cool Lamy Safari, but nothing stood out in my price point, so I “settled” on what I think is one of the GOATs of “one for life” pens, the Pilot Prera. Now here’s where things get a little tricky. I maaaaay have bargained this one down a little, but hey, that’s the beauty of coming to a pen show, especially late on a Saturday afternoon (and especially Sunday), vendors are starting to be willing to haggle on things they may not want to schlep all the way back home. So for a cool $ I was able to pop over to Japan.
Now all I had to do was find ink. Thankfully I now had a plan. Heading to a major (unnamed) vendor who I knew would be happy to offload a couple bottles at a deal I grabbed a gorgeous Diamine Imperial Blue (alongside a bottle of Diamine Oxford Blue for myself, I just couldn’t resist) a bargain deal brought it down to $15 for the bottle, a steal to put me in England.
In my browsing at the very end of the day, I stumbled across notebooks. Made in Italy, and theoretically fountain pen friendly. The sadly now-discontinued pocket-sized journal was an easy $7 addition for on-the-go notes to round out the package and take me all the way back around to close the loop!
Brad’s verdict: Nailed it! Sam did an amazing job, taking me on a stationery tour to five different countries, and ending up with a full writing setup as a result. This is a kit that belongs together, so you know what that means. Stay tuned for tomorrow!
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