There Are Pandas, and Then There Are Pandas.
And this isn't either of them! The Pandas we're talking about here, are watches, not bears. And what got me thinking about them (again) was a link posted this morning by @cm.rook who pointed a few of us to the very attractive (and not terribly priced) Yema "Rallygraph" Panda which, in it's most traditional arrangement, looks like the one on the left, but can also be had in the version on the right: The model on the left is a true Panda, while the model on the right is called a reverse Panda. The reason for that distinction is clear--Panda bears, only come in the first arrangement. Now at this point, everyone should be thinking about the most well-know Panda, The Rolex Panda, which is actually a Daytona, and among Rolex Daytonas, the most famous of which is the Paul Newman Daytona, which was famous first, because it was Paul's, and second because it sold at auction for $17.8 million (US Dollars). The story of that auction is well-known so I'll only...
Nov 8, 2019
About ten years ago I bought a Pelican M205 Demonstrator because I wanted a piston-filler, and I like the techy Demonstrator look. At that time I kept a day planner, and the bold nib in the Pelican was just too big to use, so I bought a custom-ground nib from Richard Binder. The regular side was ground to a 0.9 mm cursive italic, that writes like a dream and really makes my handwriting pop, but the nice thing about the nib is that the top side is ground to a fine point. I would keep notes and other writing using the cursive side, then just roll the pen over to write in my day planner.
Alas, that demonstrator suffered a tragic and ignoble end caused by the owner's negligence, the details of which I would prefer not to go into. I finally replaced it earlier this year with the Pelican M205 "Coffee and Cream" from a recent Massdrop. The old custom nib (which lived through the unfortunate "accident") fit right in, and now it is most often my EDC pen - light and compact for t-shirts, a little bit classy, and I get comments on my signature when I use it.