Thread: What do we do with our finished pens?

Originally Posted by dai sensei

Don't ask how many blanks I have

Gets like that, don't it? When we moved here a few years ago I filled 3 tea-chests with the "There's no way in Hell this is firewood!" type blanks.

The sad thing is I have no idea where the notepad I had oh so carefully catalogued them all in has disappeared to.

With luck I can probably ID maybe 10% of them for certain.

I have currently to the day made pens out of 28 native timbers and 1 foriegn timber and what i call mixed which is a pen made of more then 1 type of wood. I have everything documented from by the name of the wood then how many pens ive made out if it then how many ive sold what ive kept and what ive given away.

The red circle is what ive kept for my collection.
The black circle is what ive given away.
The \ is the ones ive sold.

if you would like to know the names of the woods if made pens out ive i could put them up so everyone knows what ive got and if i have something someone might want maybe a trade could be arranged so i can get something different just putting the offer out there.

Yeah

blanks are funny things

I hope I live long enough to turn all that I have at the moment - I reckon a couple of centuries should do it*


Oh back to the main topic, mainly word of mouth and the odd repeat customer




* I am starting to wonder whether I'm a collector

I haven't been doing this for long and the first 20 I made I would never put on the market as it was a learning experience made better with the advice I have received from this forum. Of the more recent pens I have sold 4 Majestics with an order for another 2 pens of different styles and that was from work. I now have about 25 pens in the different degrees of finish. I'm waiting for some non-stick bushes to arrive before I stuff up another one with CA. Its more a labour of love and relaxation but I can see me getting a stockpile over a period of time. It gets expensive ordering in the pen kits and blanks without replacement money coming in.

I would never bother to go to the markets and have someone try to bargain a pen to $5. They don't understand quality and don't deserve it. If they went to the Pen Shoppe they would be looking at $900+ for a hand crafted pen, however, I must admit the nib would be of very high quality for that price.

The solution to me is to set up an online shop. I am currently finding out the costs of registering a domain name and having a website built and the rental costs for that site on the internet. I don't know whether it will be financially viable for me just yet as I am not sure if I could turn enough pens at the moment.

But if anyone is interested in a Group Pen Website where we could advertise and display our pens and split the costs of maintaining the site, then let me know. Your return would be whatever your pen sold for but you would have to make a monthly contribution for the site rental. I have looked at some pen websites and the markup is huge compared to the cost of the parts (however, labour costs are expensive and hard to recover). Anyway only an idea - but I am interested in your suggestions. I will do another post when I get some concrete figures on a website as I have never used one before.

Greg

You mean the ones my wife lets me keep or the ones she doesn’t know about?
I hit all the local gun shows in and around my city, we sell bullet pens, and I take a dozen or two of other styles both wood and acrylic along, normally sell between 10 and 15 of them.
Bullet pens pay for themselves and then some, most of the other pens I sell between $40.00 to $70.00 American.
I figure over the years I have broken even on the wood and acrylic pens, and made 4 to five times my cost on the bullet pens.
If I could get them away from her and sell all the ones my wife snagged, I could retire…