Eye-numbingly brilliant
I’ve been wanting to do a follow-up on the Platinum Preppy for a while now. Was my initial review too harsh? I don’t know about that—it accurately reflected my feelings at the time. But now I have a few more feelings.
This is the worst plastic, against which all other plastics are compared.
I still stand by that sentiment: this is unforgivably terrible plastic. It cracks, even when living a gentle, docile life in a pen case. Even with the tape, the cap doesn’t stay on. The pen then dries out, and becomes completely useless. The fact that people will use this pen as an eyedropper strikes concern into my heart every day, and each night I go to bed wondering who among our kind has had the rage of shoddy plastic turn against them, leaving ink everywhere.
Maybe the pen did better this time around because I couldn't clean out all the dried ink?
For whatever reason, I did not have the writing problems I had before. No fuzzing or feathering. No atrocious bleedthrough on everything I wrote. I would like to recant my previous assessment of the fineness of nib: just as it is a fine nib in this writing sample, it was a fine nib before; I don’t know what my previous problem was on that front. The yellow was a tad scratchy on non-Clairefontaine paper, but this is still just a $3.30 refillable fountain pen, so I’m not expecting miracles.
Since the Sailor Ink Bar has left this world, I am forced to acknowledge the inferior Platinum Preppy as heir to the low-cost throne
It’s a decent, cheap, absolute entry-level starter fountain pen that is, most importantly, refillable (though only with special Platinum cartridges). I’m not nutso about this pen, and please know that I worry about you if you’re using one of these as an eyedropper, but I’ve come around to more enthusiastically admit that this pen is pretty alright.
No Pen Intended 