Preppy Fountain Pen

Platinum Preppy is the world's best cheap fountain pen. Despite its incredibly low price, Preppy packs a surprising list of features and offers a writing experience well beyond its class. It's smooth and easy to use, even at the popular Extra Fine 0.2 mm size, and even on less-than-ideal paper. Preppy is refillable, unlike other fountain pens at this price, and can be used many times with a variety of different inks.

Several of the advantages of Platinum's high-end pens can be found in the humble Preppy. Notice the spring inside the cap? That's Platinum Slip & Seal, a patented inner cap that makes an airtight seal around the nib. With Slip & Seal, you can store your pen for weeks or months without the ink drying out. We recently found a Preppy that had been unused for over a year, and when we uncapped it, the ink was still wet and the pen wrote easily. (Your mileage may vary, of course, but it's a pretty impressive system!)

We love that Preppy is compatible with Platinum Carbon Ink, the best waterproof fountain pen ink on the market. Available in a four-pack of cartridges that pop right into your Preppy, Carbon Ink is utterly permanent and can even be used under watercolors and inks without bleeding. Carbon Ink isn't included with Preppy (the cartridge inside is regular dye ink), so don't forget to grab a box if you'll be using this pen for art.

That's not the only ink option for Preppy, of course. You can add a Platinum piston converter to use this pen with the bottled fountain pen ink of your choice. Or, if you're feeling adventurous, the airtight barrel of a Preppy can be converted into an "eyedropper pen," where the barrel itself is filled with a huge amount of ink. We offer a conversion kit with the supplies to convert five pens for eyedropper use.

As with other Platinum models, Preppy has a reliable flow and rarely skips or blots. A new Preppy is almost as good a writer as many $20-$30 pens, but please keep in mind that the Preppy nib will not last forever. Durability is the main tradeoff with inexpensive fountain pens, and although the simplified steel Preppy nib can last for years with light use, it will lose tensile strength in the long term.

But how many other $5 pens can genuinely be used for years and filled with the finest inks in the world? Designed to be simple, dependable, and accessible to everyone, Preppy might just be the best value in our entire shop.

Sold individually. Available in three sizes (Extra Fine 0.2 mm, Fine 0.3 mm, and Medium 0.5 mm.) Made in Japan.