Drippy Musings
70 Pen News posts. Shop news, pen show reports (Chicago, DC, Dallas and Ohio through 2020), holiday shipping deadlines and what came in this month. The running diary of ThePenMarket.com since 2013.
The holiday postal rush is on! Our primary postal service remains the United States Postal Service. You still have plenty of time to order inside the United States for delivery by Christmas…and the end of Hanukkah. Overseas customers must ship by FedEx if they have any hope of their order arriving by Christmas. These are…
Our new international insured rates from FedEx are about as bad as finding a dead fish in your bed, but you’ll love having your pens arrive in about a week, once again. We think these are alewife fish or shad left behind with the tide. Good news, bad news. Our international orders have been taking…
Time seems to drag on forever when waiting for a pen in the mail. Packages to central Europe are now traveling by ship, so expect several months of lag time. Further shipping delays to central Europe have prompted me to check in once again with the United States Postal Service. A shipment to Switzerland is…
We have a guard toad, so watch out. He might spray you with toxins. Nature lover that I am, I love having an “American toad” living on and near our front porch. Greetings from Gales Ferry, Connecticut! What a crazy, unpredictable journey life is. My fiancé found her dream job, and I sure wouldn’t say…
Howdy, Gang! We’re taking a bit of a holiday and will be mostly out of touch until around July 15. Nobody’s sick. Nothing bad is happening in our little pen world. We’re just gearing up for a new adventure, which we’ll share soon. In the meantime, updates are on hold and orders won’t likely ship…
International Shipping has seen significant delays due to the lack of international air travel. Several of our international orders lately have gone noticeably late in arriving. I spent more than two hours on the phone today trying to track down a shipment that was 28 days late in arriving. What I learned from the United…
Have you ever lived through a hurricane? I was visiting my grandmother in Cocoa Beach, Florida, in 1995 when Hurricane Erin struck. It was a minor, catagory 1 hurricane, but it was impressive for this Midwestern boy to witness and experience. Whereas hurricanes strike a much smaller location than a global pandemic, hurricanes were all…
Honestly, I haven’t even caught my breath from the Baltimore Pen Show, and now I’m heading out the door to attend the Arkansas Pen Show in Little Rock! Wowzers! If you are anywhere within a few hundred miles of Little Rock this weekend (March 13 – 15), you have got to come out and see…
For the last several years, we have heard about the splendor of the Baltimore Pen Show. This is what we’ve heard: It is well organized by our buddy Bert Oser. It is a premier place to buy and sell premier luxury pens. It is well advertised to the public, and it is becoming the premier…
You can now search for our pens by nib size. Although this box is just an illustration, the one near the top left column of the vintage pens or pre-owned pens pages is live and will show you the way. Size matters…at least when you’re writing and want to use a specific nib point. Following…
As many of you have probably noticed over the past couple years, the United States Postal Service has raised its rates three or four times. Our payment processor, PayPal, has also raised its rates. We have resisted raising our shipping & handling rates for as long as we could, but, we finally had to give…
Season’s Greeting from Wausau, Wis. We hope your holidays are joyous and bright. Wasn’t it John Lennon who said that “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans”? I had a lot of plans for ThePenMarket.com in 2019. SQUIRREL! There are still so many blog posts I’ve started and haven’t yet finished. Oh, look at this…
