Pilot VBall Liquid Ink Rolling Ball Stick Pens, Fine Point, Blue Ink, 12-Pack (35113)

Bought this pen for the first time in Paris for some happy travel journaling, and this is a follow-up purchase. Love this pen, the flow of ink, the thickness, the lack of bleeding while still providing good, solid gel ink.

My students hate these pens. Yes, I buy them in bulk. When you teach as many compositions classes as I do, you go through a lot of red ink. I prefer these Pilot Vballs to just about any other pen. They're silky smooth to write with, always create a tight, uniform line without blots or blemishes, and don't over-saturate the paper. That's especially important as more and more students print double-sided for environmental reasons. Though I prefer single-sided printing, I don't forbid double-sided as it does cut down on waste paper. Thankfully with these pens, I can write notes and markups on both sides of the paper without it soaking through to the other side (yes you can see the ink one side to the other, but it's "ghostlike" not intrusive). So while my students hate seeing their papers come back obliterated with red ink, I enjoy using a pen that does its job well each and every time.

This pen could re-write the Magna Carta, the US Constitution, and all the Harry Potter novels,... and never clock a sweat. It is a marathon pen, an endurance specialist, a free-flowing yet quick-drying durable companion to your half-baked dreams of over-throwing the planet, solving global warming and eliminating your Boss without people ever noticing (you KNOW that won't miss him). You can sign your Will with it, inscribe a card to your mom (call her, you!) or an anonymous note on your neighbor's poorly parked Prius. Best damned pen on the planet for lefties. Seriously.

Solid pen

I first bought a VBall pen at my college book store back in 1999. I've loved these pens ever since. They write smoothly, and even after I found one that had been hidden away in a box for at least 10 years it still wrote flawlessly! They don't clog and ink flow doesn't stop until it's all gone. I'd ordered a couple of dozen of these pens a few years ago (black and blue), and most of them have since gone missing so I just placed my Amazon order for another couple of dozen. I thought it was a bit odd when they arrived and had gold printing on the barrel and the black pens had a grey insert at the top of the cap. (My old ones were all printed with silver as pictured on Amazon, and the black pen caps were all black). I figured that they'd just changed packaging. However, I still have a couple of the old pens left and the ink on these new ones seems just a little lighter and thinner. If I hadn't been using them for so long then I probably wouldn't have noticed. A change in packaging is just fine with me, but a change in ink formula for the worse is unfortunate. I suppose it could be that the ink in the older pens had just thickened up with time, and I'm being overly picky. Even so, I would still wholeheartedly recommend these pens. They also only need a very light touch to get good transfer to paper, so they're great for lengthy writing sessions. Even though they're apparently less ergonomic than the VBall Grip version, I find them to be more comfortable to use. If anyone knows that they in fact did make more of a change than the packaging, please leave a comment. (I'm quite curious.) I can't find any difference discussed online, and the product pictures on Pilot's and Amazon's sites still show the old silver design. EDIT: Though the packaging has indeed changed over the years, the gold printing is indicative of the 0.7mm tip, and the silver printing of the 0.5mm tip. Looking back I believe it was always colored that way, but the 0.7mm was simply called "fine" and the 0.5mm was "extra fine". The top of the cap is also off-color (light blue for blue ink and grey for black ink) to indicate 0.7mm. I've since bought the 0.5mm versions, and on those the tips of the caps are the same color as the rest of the cap. I attached a photo showing a new black 0.7mm pen and its ~15 year old ancestor for comparison, in case anyone is as nostalgic for a simple pen as I. I still contend that the ink is now a bit less viscous, though.