New-pen day: TWSBI Diamond 580ALR Nickel Gray

When I first stumbled upon TWSBI thanks to various posts on Reddit and the Pen Addict podcast I was intrigued: most of their fountain pens have a transparent shell and use a piston ink-filling system which means I don’t have to resort to converters in order to use ink bottles. Especially their ECO line is also very affordable costing only € 36.00 on Amazon.

The one that caught my eye, though, was the Diamond 580ALR Nicke Gray. As with the ECO line, the Diamonds are transparent but have a slightly larger ink capacity (1.96ml vs 1.76ml) and look more “solid” than the functional ECOs. And I just love metallic pens 😉

Another great feature of the Diamond series is that they can be refilled with a special opening on their ink bottles which doesn’t require me to dip the nib and eventually also part of the grip deep into ink. Instead, you can unscrew the nib and plug the reservoir directly onto the bottle ❤️

Something about the 580ALR just made me want to have it but ordering one turned out to be more complicated than expected.

First I checked if my local fountain pen store could get one for me. Turns out, they can’t and there seems to be no distributor in Austria for TWSBI as a whole. Amazon also only had one with a F nib but I need EF nibs for my handwriting style. So I checked the list of retailers available on the TWSBI website, focusing those in Germany. Turns out, none of them looked like online-shops I’d like to order from (for various reasons). Luckily, during last year’s Secret Santa I had received another fountain pan from a Dutch store called P.W. Akkerman that also showed up in the list. Even more luckily, they had the 580ALR in Nickel Gray, with the right nib size, and could ship it to Austria!

So after 8 days I’ve received received my new pen today and I couldn’t have been happier! P.W. Akkerman wrapped the pen and the bottle into gift paper and added some sweets making the whole package appear like a Christmas gift 😀 What a nice way to treat a new customer 😍

I immediately filled the bottle up with Pelikan Edelstein “Moonstone” ink which matches the color of the pen perfectly! The grip is great but still very stylish and I’m finally lucky again when it comes to nibs. The last couple of Lamys were scratchy but with this one I can see myself writing all day long! Just what I wanted!