Newest Acquisitions (Virtual "Show & Tell") ~ part 297

Last November, we featured Lawrence's lovely Montblanc 'Heritage Rouge et Noir' black fountain pen here on our blog (link). Well, a little while ago, Lawrence acquired a fountain pen made by Moonman that very closely resembles his Montblanc, and was kind enough to share it with us. Here is his review:

(all text below by Lawrence)

 Moonman F9.

"This actually has a few different names depending on the seller. I got this from Amazon at a whopping "prohibitive" price of $35.00 plus tax (hahahah). It actually makes me very happy that there are now more and more reasonably priced pens that not only look nice but write well.

This is basically a stainless steel version of my MB Rouge et Noir. I know that the Rouge et Noir does have a silver variant (the solitaire? version) with snake etchings on the body. This one is just plain silver.

It came in a wooden box:

(all photos courtesy of Lawrence ~ please click on images to enlarge)

It's very nicely packaged. Very sturdy and a very nice way to present the pen. The unboxing is very satisfying this way.

Here is the pen side by side to my Rouge et Noir and yes it is a captive converter. The mechanism is a bit wobbly compared to the MB, but it works fine. I don't think I will be rough with this pen (nor any other pen for that matter).

They even got the details of the nib with the snake head:

The only thing that I'm not too sure of is the orange logo on the cap (I know that MB has it orange), since this is not really a counterfeit but a clone -- a tribute pen as I like to call it. There is no reason for this orange color at all, since the Moonman corporate image has nothing to do with this color scheme (I understand that the MB has a reason for the vintage orange logo they used for Rouge et Noir).

This is a very well behaved pen that writes smoothly. It only comes in fine at least that I know of. It has other color variants, brown, black, orange/red (just like MB). I'm very happy that they have managed to get a piston pen in this form factor (the main reason why I got the MB in the first place). I am looking forward to see what manufacturers come up with using this format, with more original designs of course.

While using this pen, I kept on thinking "Where were you when I bought my Rouge et Noir" and then I realized that the Rouge et Noir is what led to this pen's existence in the first place....

Okay that's it for me for this pen. Onto the next one."

("The next one" Lawrence is referring to above is another new acquisition of his that we'll be featuring on Wednesday of this week, so keep your eyes peeled! Many thanks to Lawrence for sharing this interesting new Moonman fountain pen with us :)