Purchased from Amazon.ca's "Warehouse Deals" department last month - my new Monteverde 'Impressa' fountain pen in Gunmetal with Red Trim...
(all photos by Maja ~ please click on images to enlarge)
I'd seen the pen in the Warehouse Deals department before, and the price was very good ($28.32 CAD) but its condition was described as "Used - Acceptable - Large cosmetic imperfection(s) on bottom or back of the item. Accessories may have cosmetic damage. Item will come in original packaging. Packaging will be damaged", so I balked at buying it when I first spotted it there.
A few weeks later, I looked for the Impressa and it was still there. I felt sorry for the pen, sitting there forlorn and unwanted (and at such a darned good price ;) so I purchased it and hoped for the best....
When it arrived, the pen looked fine in the capped position....
...and also from this angle, when posted....
...as well as this angle.
The top of the pen looked perfectly alright.....
...as did the bottom.
The exterior of the capped pen looked to be in excellent shape, but I'd read some accounts of the lacquer flaking off the section, so I was very apprehensive when I removed the cap...
....but the section didn't have any such issues (whew!)...
...and neither did the nib.
I then turned my attention to the pen's cap....
....but the front of the cap looked undamaged.
Where the heck was this cosmetic damage??
And then I re-read the description of the pen's condition and noticed it specifically mentioned "a large cosmetic imperfection(s) on (the) bottom or back of the item", so I nervously turned the cap over...
...and I finally found it---a dark grey something on the back of the cap, marring my beautiful pen's otherwise pristine condition (Tip: in case you can't see it, left-click on the photo, then right-click & select "view image", then left-click again)
"Ah well...", I thought, "...at least it's on the back of the cap, where it's not as noticeable."
Still, I was curious as to what that "something" that had knocked >$20 off the retail price of my pen was (it looked like a crusty, metallic mass), so I gently ran my finger over it...
...and it came off !
I rubbed a small amount of glue-like residue off the cap with a couple of swipes of my thumb, and snapped the photo above.
"Well, that was surprisingly easy!", I thought to myself.
I didn't think much of it until a few weeks later when I was looking to see if Monteverde had included a spare ink cartridge in the bottom of the case....
...and then I noticed something I hadn't noticed before.
It was a very small bare patch in the lining of the pen's case (see photo above), where a tiny bit of dark grey lining was torn off.
So that's what was stuck to the back of my fountain pen's cap---mystery solved!
As mentioned earlier, several people have reported issues with the finish on their 'Impressa' flaking off. There's been speculation that some of the flaking was due to the friction-fit cap (perhaps its inner cap liner??) rubbing against the end of the section (ie. the part nearest the nib) and causing the section finish to flake off. Others have blamed the finish's coating process itself. I don't have a definitive answer. So far, though, my own 'Impressa' is doing fine, but I have been handling it
very gently and being extra-cautious when capping and uncapping it.
The pen writes well (I forgot to mention the nib is a Medium) and feels good in the hand both posted and
unposted, and I think it looks quite handsome (I love the combination of gunmetal and bright red trim). For $28 CAD, I think I did quite well for a pen that I
fully expected to arrive in merely "Acceptable" condition :)
~Photos and text by Maja
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