Win free Dickens on the Strand Tickets! How free ballpoint pens grow this writer’s collection

Win free Dickens on the Strand Tickets!

By John Toth

The Bulletin

Being a writer most of my life, I became a long time ago a connoisseur of pens.

“Use my pen,” I suggested to a clerk recently. “It has a smooth roll. I think it’s one of the best pens I’ve gotten for free.”

She agreed. The pen glided on paper like a knife cuts into butter, but not as messy. Her signature looked like a work of art. She tried to give it back, but I told her she could keep it. I have several more.

The pen came from a bank in Angleton. Each time I’ve gone there to do business, I asked if I could have one. The last few times I visited, though, there were none in the container. They may have seen me coming.

“They disappear fast,” said the clerk.

“I know why,” I replied. “They are very good.”

I used to get free promotional pens that quit working in just a few weeks. It took a while to get the ink flowing through the ballpoint. Sometimes I had to heat the tip with a lighter to make them work.

Not anymore.

Sharon, The Bulletin’s ballpoint pen quality editor, and I recently went to a pharmacy to get our Covid boosters and had to fill out a short form. The clerk gave me a Bic 1.6 gel pen to use. That is the pen of pens.

 I liked it so much that I started telling the clerk what a great pen it was, and she said I could keep it.

That’s like gold to a writer.

In one of the newsrooms I worked at before we started The Bulletin, I was told that I could leave a $20 bill on my desk, and it would very likely remain untouched. I never tried it - just in case it got pinched, I didn’t want to lose $20.

But if you left a pen on the desk, I was told, it was very likely that it would be gone in minutes, if not seconds.

My ballpoint pen habit wouldn’t be possible without a few inventors. It all began with John J. Loud, who patented the first design in 1888 for marking leather, though it was too coarse for paper.

The modern ballpoint pen was invented by Hungarian journalist László Bíró in 1938, who combined quick-drying newspaper ink with a rotating ballpoint tip.

Its commercial success came in 1945 with the Reynolds Rocket ballpoint pen and later with the widely recognized Bic Cristal in 1950.

Gimbels Department Store was the first to sell the Reynolds Rocketpens. Promotions promised an end to the messy mishaps users of fountain pens encountered – leaking ink, smudges and pooling ink blots.

The fancy new ballpoint pens, used (and still use) a special viscous ink which dried quickly and didn’t leave smudges. At the heart of it, the rolling ball in the nib – and gravity – ensured a constant, steady stream of ink that didn’t smear or leave solid pools of ink on the page.

It was clean and convenient. What it wasn’t was cheap. The new Reynolds ballpoint cost $12.50. Converted to 2025 dollars, that’s more than $180.

My pens didn’t cost that much. Most didn’t cost anything. All my favorite ones are on the right side of the desk. I take turns using each one of them.

Yes, this writer is a pen hoarder. If you see me coming, take all your pens off your desk. You can leave the $20 bill. I won’t touch it.