A nice watch is a good value.
Here's something everyone needs though
The $730,000 PenWant to add some flair to your writing?
Pen maker Montblanc and jewelry giant Van Cleef & Arpels have teamed up to launch what is believed to be the most-expensive writing instrument ever sold. The “Limited Edition Mystery Masterpiece,” unveiled this afternoon, practically drips with precious stones and diamonds.
Price: $730,000.
In a panting press release for the “Mystery Masterpiece,” the companies say craftsmen in Germany and France spent a year and a half to make each pen. The pen comes in three versions: ruby, sapphire or emerald, and all have 840 diamonds and 20 carats of gemstones. The companies will make three pens of each version, for a total of nine to be sold world-wide.
The selling point is something called a “mystery setting,” patented by Van Cleef in 1933, which conceals the gemstone settings and “creates the illusion of vivid blossoms formed by the rubies, sapphies or emeralds.” The release also goes on at length about the pen’s various lapidaries, grooves, facets and cutlets and lattic threads.
But does it write?
The release doesn’t say. So I called called the president of Montblanc USA, who told me that the Limited Edition Mystery Masterpiece does in fact write like a pen. It uses a fountain-pen system, with a fill piston, so you have to dip it into an inkwell, give the pen a twist and wait for the pen to soak up the ink.
The inkwell, it turns out, is sold seperately. (So’s the ink.) Montblanc suggests a crystal, limited-edition model. Price: $1,000.
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