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BY DON FLUCKINGER • Every once in a while, I get in an “ideas” mode. I jot down six months’ worth of article ideas. I ring up clients and babble their ears off with quality-improvement concepts for their editorial content.

And to you, dear readers, I serve up another 10 ideas for limited edition pens that ought to be — free to the public domain, I might add, for any pen companies whose designers who might be reading this and might need a couple inspirations for future models.

Every once in a while, I get in an “ideas” mode. To you, dear readers, I serve up another 10 ideas for limited edition pens that ought to be.

(Confession time: The inspiration for this column came from my perusal of some of the new limiteds I’ve seen in recent sales fliers sent out from a certain east-coast store.)

Without further ado:

1. The Jennifer Lopez Wedding Pen: Has a patina finely crafted from years of speculation. Gorgeous signature pen that only uses Nathan Tardif’s Noodler’s Disappearing Ink. Great for marriage licenses.
2. The Rafael Palmeiro: The cap resembles the Orioles slugger’s face; the clip — his nose — grows longer each day. This pen will make your signature larger than life when you use the special stanazol-loaded cartridges.
3. The Dukes of Hazzard: Made with aged cedar and orange metallic trim, this one features a genuine turquoise cap jewel on which is painted a genuine replica of the Stars & Bars. It will take you a while to figure out where’s the secret compartment for hauling ’shine.
4. The Notting Hill Carnival Special: A colorful, festive model with a hooligan’s heart you sometimes have to bail out of jail the next morning.
5. The Michael Moore: While the points you make while writing with this annoyingly large pen — whose noisy nib makes grating noises against the paper — might have started out as valid arguments, by the time you’ve finished, no one will ever read it.
6. The Steve Jobs special: It’s hard to describe, foresee, or even imagine, but you know it will have clean lines and be insanely great. And it also should be able to broadcast MP3s over your wireless network.

7. Could this be Steve Jobs’ next project, the iPen?

8. The Ricky Williams Pen: Perfectly centered and beautifully woven from natural hemp products, this pen might be expensive but it still quits on you.
9. The Marilyn Manson Special Edition: Loaded with tattoos and piercings, it’s tough to figure out how to hold this pen. Leading candidate for the ugliest pen of all time award to be bestowed in late 2006 by Stylus.
10. The Martha Stewart: Prim and graceful, jet black on the inside. Don’t worry about accidentally dropping this or even stepping on its precious resin, because it will survive and come back better than ever with its own reality TV show.
11. The Brad Pitt: Weathered and unshaven, this pen only writes short sentences. Discriminating collectors will go ga-ga over the even more limited special double-botoxed edition.

Laugh if you want, but don’t be surprised if one or two of the abovementioned concepts get turned into an actual pen, because after I perused some of the newest commemorative pens out there, it appears they’re running out of good ideas and reaching into the “B” list. I mean, once you start making pens commemorating Nicole Kidman movies, can The Dukes of Hazzard be far behind? Yeee-haw!

	Further Reading: Collectible Fountain Pens, by Juan Manuel Clark This little tome, only a trifle bigger than pocket size, will show you which pens actually are collectible.

Freelance writer Don Fluckinger lives in Nashua, New Hampshire, and is the son-in-law of Richard Binder. His articles have been published in Antiques Roadshow Insider, The Boston Globe, and on the Biddersedge.com collectibles Web site. Please note: Any opinions stated in this column are Don’s alone and do not necessarily reflect those of Richard Binder or this Web site. If you have questions, comments, observations, or suggestions for future columns, please write to Don at don@virtualcrate.com.

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© 2005 Don Fluckinger

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