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Aurora Alpha Fountain Pen

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Aurora Alpha Fountain Pen

Name: Aurora Alpha Fountain Pen
Brand: Aurora
SKU: aurora-alpha-fountain-pen
Price: 265 USD
Availability: OutOfStock
Rating: 4.8 (5 reviews)

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Product Description

Italian for “dawn,” Aurora was founded in Turin at the end of the First World War. Indeed, it was the dawn of a new era for battle-weary Italy Read More

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freshmaker

Mar 29, 2018

I received this pen as part of the last drop. I *love* this pen. It’s now part of my daily rotation. I have the black Alpha with a stub nib. I honestly wasn’t expecting the finish to be so iridescent and pretty. I find myself twirling it under the light to watch it “change“. The nib writes beautifully (it is a stub so you have to hold it correctly) and is super smooth. I don’t experience any of this “Aurora feedback” that I keep hearing Aurora is known for. It’s very wet, so I get lots of sheen or shading depending on the ink.
The knurling on the section is great. I was concerned that it would dig into my fingers and be uncomfortable, but so far that fear has been proven unfounded. That said, I haven’t yet sat down with this pen for a multi-hour writing session.
Unexpected bonuses: - The cap comes off with slightly more than half a full rotation. This makes it very convenient to get the cap on/off during meetings. - You can post the cap safely. They have a nice little beveled area inside the cap that hugs onto the back of the pen body so that the metal isn’t the part hugging the pen. Hopefully the plastic in the cap won’t wear down the beautiful finish over time. - I don’t care about packaging, but wow, was this ever an elegant presentation. It’s the biggest and heaviest box of any pen I own, with what smells to me like real leather inside.
Cons: - While I mentioned you can post the cap, it doesn’t post deeply. The body is really long (longer than my M805), so posting makes it a bit unwieldy. I do like posting my pens so this is unfortunate for me, but it’s a wonderful size un-posted. - The converter is a proprietary size so none of my international converters work. Just need to source a spare :) - I got dinged by customs for this package and had to pay an extra $85 CAD. I don’t usually have to pay customs on items coming through USPS, but I wonder if the weight of this package triggered something through customs. This is complete speculation.
Anyway, this pen is so good it has made me now want to try other Aurora’s!!

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freshmaker

Apr 3, 2018

I‘m not sure exactly, but I’ve attached a writing sample. My apologies for the bad photo quality (hopefully uploading it here doesn’t make it worse).

A community member

Apr 3, 2018

freshmakerLooks great!

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charlizeworshipper

Nov 25, 2018

Massdrop really needs to stop making LCdC's offers so attractive, darn it! Not that Massdrop's prices for these pens are bad, but in comparison, getting the black 'Tuscan Night' version of this pen with an EF nib, for a tad less than €200 (⋍ US$225) shipped to Australia, looked even more compelling an opportunity than it otherwise would. I'm now sucked in into buying yet another fountain pen I don't need, thanks to Massdrop prompting me to go look at offers in the market.

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charlizeworshipper

Nov 26, 2018

Who am I really? An out-of-control shopaholic and fountain pen user living in Australia who loves bargains (and hates often exorbitant shipping charges that kill the advantage of global access by way of online shopping). Why else would I sign up to Massdrop? My ink collection went from 52 different ink colours (all in retail bottles and no 3ml samples, of course) to about 175, all within the span of the last five or six months. I lose count of how many pens I've ordered in the same time frame; the number is probably around 80, including both cheap knockabout pens and expensive ones that I prize. I'll order from anywhere – local retailers in Australia (such as Milligram and LarryPOST), Amazon.com(.au), sellers on eBay, AliExpress, Rakuten Global Market (and Rakuten Ichiba), as well as retailers in Japan, Malaysia, Netherlands, Germany, UK and the US that operate their own web sites – as long as the all-inclusive price is right. US sellers outside of Amazon Marketplace don't generally get a look in on my discretionary spending these days because, other than Nibs.com (and now, as I've discovered, Fountain Pen Revolution), they tend not to offer free international shipping past some minimum spend, or ‘reasonable’ shipping charges; the same Lamy CP1 pen Bureau Direct (which also does not offer free shipping) would send to me from the UK for £3.04 in postage, major US-based fountain pen retailers would ask US$19 or more to ship. Sorry, that's just not going to make me commit to buy. I have never even heard of Massdrop until someone (in America) recently suggested to me in discussion, on the Fountain Pen Network, that Massdrop offered the Lamy 2000 for less than US$100 from time to time, beating all of the discounted prices I've seen offered by Milligram in Australia, Cult Pens and Bureau Direct in the UK, LCdC in the Netherlands, Pen Gallery in Malaysia, Pen Boutique and Pen Chalet in the US, et cetera, all of which I've bought (plenty!) from in the past. I've also seen some other Australian regular on FPN who mentioned (years ago?) that he bought some Karas Kustoms pens through Massdrop, and I could only assume that the prices with international shipping factored in were favourable. Now, I'm not really after a Lamy 2000 – since I don't like piston-fillers, and I don't like pens that are apt to lay down thicker lines than their nib width grades suggest – and its only value to me would be as a fountain pen icon, one for the collection just to say, “Yeah, I have one of them too; I don't really like it and don't use it much.” I wouldn't pay €135.54 (LCdC's current offer) or even US$135.54 for it, but if Massdrop offers it for less than US$100 plus a few dollars in shipping, I'd be interested; and so I signed up for an account here. So far, with the (past and current) drops I've seen for pens and ink, it's been disappointing or at least uninspiring. As for LCdC not having stock to immediately fulfil orders they take, I only discovered that issue recently. Before Fountain Pen Day weekend this year, I've only bought from them once, back in 2014; the customer service was good then, the prices was right, and the order was fulfilled promptly without delay. I ordered 22 bottles of ink and a Diplomat Aero from LCdC that weekend. I was informed a couple of days later that they were waiting on stock on the pen with the EF nib I wanted, and also three of the inks, and offered to fulfil my order immediately with alternative colours (of pen and ink). I declined. That said, all but one bottle of ink in that lot of purchases are due to arrive today (within the next several hours), or so Australia Post advised me. Also, while the orders were sitting there unfulfilled waiting on stock, I was able to secure through LCdC – at a very good price – several bottles of a limited edition ink that was quickly sold out from most European and US online retailers, and would cost me more than double to source locally from a small-time Australian online seller I have never heard of or dealt with before. LCdC was very obliging in letting me piggyback on unfulfilled orders and get free delivery for any items I add on in the meantime. These LE inks are also due to arrive today. I was notified about two hours ago that the Aurora Alpha ‘Tuscan Night’ with EF nib I ordered not 48 hours ago will be shipped tomorrow, and I wasn't expecting any delay because it was the only unit LCdC offered with a steep Black Friday special discount on top of the 20%-off site-wide code. Just for the hell of it, I tried adding a second one to my cart after placing my first order for it, and the system let me but warned in red that they didn't have the quantity (of 1) of the item in stock, but it could be backordered and for me to contact them. Therefore, I expected that LCdC really had that one (and only) unit on hand, as perhaps a loss leader item to attract some shopper traffic. I guess we'll see if it follows through with a tracking number for it within the next 48 hours. I also ordered a large wooden pen display box (before the most recent drop here for the Lanier) from LCdC. Yes, backordered again. It's annoying. However, everyone else wants to charge me north of US$70 for delivery of such an item to Australia, whether I order from Japan, or USA, or via eBay. LCdC will ship it ‘free’, after I got a fantastic discount on the price with 20% off. On the balance of things, it's absolutely worth it to me. I don't know when that one will be shipped, but I did ask LCdC to hold off shipping it because I don't want such an item to arrive while I'm overseas next week. We'll see what happens with that. If I want something delivered quickly, I'd probably order from Pen Gallery in Malaysia (free shipping for orders over the equivalent of A$200 or so, and in my recent experience, by FedEx for delivery within about four days) or some Japanese retailer shipping by Japan Post EMS (at my expense) – in one instance, I only put in the request to ship on a Saturday, and it was in my hands here in Australia by lunch time on Tuesday. With over a hundred pens and nearly two hundred inks here for me to play with, I can afford to wait for most new purchases to be backordered, and I prefer the bargain, even though of course I'm not saving any money if I'm spending it like there is no tomorrow. You have your priorities as a consumer, I have mine, and neither of us is more ‘right’ or representative of the broader ‘community’ of shoppers and bargain hunters on the Internet.

charlizeworshipper

Dec 13, 2018

The Aurora Alpha ‘Tuscan Night’ fountain pen I ordered from LCdC arrived yesterday. By the way, Pen Chalet only recently advised me – 19 calendar days after I placed the order, and 18 days after it has charged my credit card the full amount for the order – that it is unable to source a Pilot pen I ordered in the colour I specified in the drop-down menu (which was supposedly populated at the time with in-stock options only), and asked me to nominate a different colour… even though it actually didn't list any other colours as being in stock with the nib width I wanted, when I received the notification. That, to me, is far worse than LCdC telling me within a day or two of my placing an order that an item isn't in stock. To be fair, after I adamantly rejected the alternative Pen Chalet suggested, but pushed twice for what that I thought was reasonable instead (replacing the unavailable item with a model in the same product line and listed at the same RRP, but effectively more expensive because of the difference in discounts they themselves choose to apply as the retailer), they considered it for a day and then obliged. All the same, in spite of my actually paying explicitly for international shipping and placing the order more than a month before Christmas, now it looks like I won't be getting what my pen and inks until after Christmas. That's disappointing.

Vote

RogierFvV

Apr 28, 2018

All I can say is this is a fine pen, and along with another Aurora pen, which I've had about 30+ years, it is immediately one of my favorite pens. If there is such a thing as flawless, this is it. Simply a superbly comfortable writer that always makes it inviting to sit down and write some more.

Shinewu

Jan 15, 2018

I also feel the need for huge capacity might be a bit hyped. If you are buying this pen, it is about experience. If you need a workhorse, pelikan m205 or lamy 2k is probably a better buy.
And I also find that high capacity makes me wait longer in between inks. Last thing, piston fillers do degrade and fail. So a converter is actually my favorite filling mechanism now.

SkipPp

278

Jan 15, 2018

I want this so badly, but I need to stop buying so much stuff. I always wanted an Aurora (the Nembulosa has been on my mind for months), I simply need to re-group after moving, not to mention having bought a couple grand worth of pens in the last four months (not to mention watches and leather goods, and Christmas presents). That said, Mass Drop has had some good ones lately. I wish I could grab this one, but discipline must win out.

ravkesef

198

Jan 15, 2018

For those not familiar with the brand, Aurora is, quite simply stated, one of the best pens you are likely to buy. Their quality is unsurpassed, and if you find one that you like, at a price that you can afford, by all means snap it up. It will never disappoint. And to go along with your Aurora pen, there is no ink that will match Aurora inks. Until two years ago they made only two colors: blue and black. They’ve expanded their offerings by 50%, and have now added blue-black. The blue has a slight purplish shade to it, but all the inks write a beautiful, wet line, with excellent lubricating qualities. I reserve my Aurora inks for my best pens (such as Aurora.). So, if you like these pens, and you can shell out the bucks, grab one.

Honeybadgers

371

Nov 26, 2018

I really want an aurora OBBB but every time this pen comes up it's just after I drop $300 on something else. Oh well, time to wait for it to end and request it again.

BlMa

Feb 28, 2018

Received mine yesterday. Put in the cartridge and it started up without problems. Very smooth. Going to order another if this drop become active again. This is a great price for this pen. Classic pens is selling it for $450.