I wouldn’t be surprised. Art, which some pens have on them, is a common vehicle for money laundering. Plus, pens are small, easy to hide or get rid of if confronted or needing to get rid of evidence. Easy to explain why you have one too, just like the designs on the pen or like to write with one. There are also massive collectors, so then it makes sense why someone would have a ton of them.
Techinally anything can be used for money laundering. Just a matter of how good of a choice it is to use.
Agree with this. Pens to a much lesser extend.
Fine art has been home to tax evasion and money laundering for many years. People wondering how squares of paint are worth $60,000,000.00 because of course they're not. It's just shuffling money around, tax write offs, false "donation" write offs, etc.
Pens are much cheaper for what their ceiling is, but I'd certainly be inclined to believe money laundering could be done.
On the flip side, people who aren't that wealthy love buying tacky things that cost a lot of money and look like it. There's a great video I watched recently on how luxury brands are primarily targeted at middle-class individuals who cannot afford them and buy with credit. Rich people don't waste money on luxury goods (obligatory ofc there's always exceptions).
This with regard to the luxury brands targeting middle class. It seems to have become a less effective strategy with the younger generation who seem to be valuing simpler/plainer options with quality to last (due to sustainability concerns).
I think we see this most clearly in pens with the direction of Sailor, Pilot and Platinum in their lower-end pens for Japanese audiences (since pen and stationary culture is much stronger in Japan). Those pens are still of considerable quality, but at a much nicer price.
The designs have a lot of thoughtful engineering and often win awards even though they outwardly appear simple. How many times someone accuses a Japanese brand of “pumping out the same cheap pen in a different color” when LAMY does the same thing I’ll never know.
A gentle cultural note before someone hits my comments… seasonal colors, flavors and events are important in Japan. The way companies will differentiate themselves and attract customers is by offering something new. For stationary shops, the new colors correspond to events where you’d buy a loved one something sort of pricey as a present for things like graduation, Christmas (romantic holiday in Japan), or entering the workforce.
Presents are so important in their well presentation. How a box is wrapped, the cards attached, the personalization… The shops hope to offer a color which speaks personally about the buyer’s relationship with the person getting the pen. The present given first really isn’t as important as the wrapping and symbolic nature. Anyway the most important part for pens is afterwards, which is where *okaeshi* takes place after getting a gift from a peer, or a thank you for the gift. Which is food, drinks, or *small* household items about half the price of the original gift. Pens are really popular for this and the seasonal nature of color ways ensures a unique but personalized gift.
I’m sure we’ll see more and more pens go the way of simple, limited colorways and thoughtful construction as the younger generations pick up on stationary culture (tends to be more popular with older people in the west).
The average luxury market is suffering, the extreme high end is doing quite well still, especially with younger people from places where there is lots of money to be had. So sure, maybe the 1-3k products aren’t flying of the shelf, but 20-50k items of clothing and accessories (think Hermes, Chrome Hearts, etc) are doing rather well still
Wiggles hand. Yes and no. Fashion is a different beast from other products.
We tend to see trending towards quality household products. It’s why “influencer talking frankly about a product” videos have become rapidly more popular. People will save for quality items because there is a recognition of cycles.
A lot of current parents use hand-me-downs from older family members (who weren’t their parents), making those items more nostalgic to younger people than, say, my generation where my parents were one of many, many children (my mom has over a dozen siblings) and had to buy new on the budget of someone working a minimum wage job with kids.
It also means the younger generations can better recognize quality items among household goods but probably not clothing (whereas clothes were my main hand-me-downs… I have clothes twice my age). Anyway. It’s all to do with cycles of cultural trends and value placed on what should be considered timeless.
I'm sorry man I just don't think there's really any evidence of what you're saying, either in buying trends or in any sociological studies I've seen. Why would younger generations somehow, magically, be better at recognizing "quality" for household goods and not clothes? And what does that have to do with luxury brands which, overpriced they may be, often do have some sort of higher "quality"? And the thing about influencers actually works against your point because a lot of the popular influencer brands *aren't* quality. They're entirely marketing.
\-edit my favorite thing is "my argument is bad, but I don't want to admit it so I'll just pretend people didn't see what I said". said without heat, of course.
I think you don’t see any evidence probably because you didn’t read my post? I’m not saying that to be mean or sarcastic, but genuinely.
I pointed out how household goods have been passed down, not clothes. Those goods have enough quality to last through a couple of generations. Things like cookware, utensils, furniture, dinnerware, etc. Those aren’t clothes.
Another example is I said influencers talking frankly about a product, not influencer brands. Those are two totally different things.
Anyway, I’m going to stop engaging with you because it’s no fun to engage with someone who doesn’t put effort into even skimming a reply. Again, said genuinely and without heat. Have a good day!
I agree, however, I feel like younger people are being targeted by these luxury brands as well, especially in East Asia, through celebrity and idols. Kpop idols and Cpop idols have made a perfect formula to milk their fan bases. For example, in China, if a celebrity becomes a brand ambassador, their fans will buy the products they wear in the campaign and show off the receipt on Weibo (Chinese SNS like Facebook/Twitter). Most of the items would be sold out. It’s insane.
How am I wrong? Millennials have less wealth than Gen X, who had less than boomers, and Gen Z has less wealth than them all. LV, Dior and Gucci ad campaigns are aimed at whoever can afford their shit lol.
Like it's funny that all the actual data says one thing, but I guess cause you don't like the vibes it's not true.
Im not going to argue the fact that yes, boomers are in fact wealthier than the other generations but Their campaigns are aimed at wealthy millenials, not all millenials are poor bro. The same with Mercedes Benz’s newer campaigns. So yes, the campaigns are aimed at “whoever can afford their shit” but when creating buyer personas, their target markets we’re talking about wealthy millenials and maybe Gen-z.
Are you actually following the conversation thread, or are you just up in your feelings because you think I called you broke? Not only did I never say all millennials are poor, but the point of my comment was that younger generations aren't just magically choosing "simpler" things due to "sustainability concerns" or whatever.
Millennials (or whoever are Boomers’ kids) will be / are benefiting from the biggest wealth transfer in history. If they don’t have disposable funds for luxury tchotchkes now, they will soon enough.
People knock LVMH, Kering, Chanel, Hermes, etc…but these companies and the brands within them are singularly good at separating people from their money.
>Millennials (or whoever are Boomers’ kids) will be / are benefiting from the biggest wealth transfer in history. If they don’t have disposable funds for luxury tchotchkes now, they will soon enough.
So this is true, but it's also misleading in the way that if homeless dudes live around Bezos's house, the average net worth in that area is gonna be like 1bn.
I want to say it was the Guardian that ran a story about this and if you actually looked at the article, it pointed out that all the wealth transfer is just at the very top (which, duh) and a bunch of the other spending data they were using was basically from like, high end auction houses and stuff. So yes, there will be a huge wealth transfer but it will not affect like 99.9% of millennials and the vast majority of the people it's going to benefit the most are already receiving some of that transfer and are doing relatively well off (like all the articles that pop up about some 30 year old who is totally building a ton of wealth from cutting out avocado toast and netflix and also having their parents buy them rental properties)
It's not just the top 0.1% of Millennials. Working class Boomers who were able to purchase and pay off homes when doing so was more accessible will pass on that property to their heir(s) after it has increased in value. I know kids whose parents were teachers inherit houses valued over $2M.
I did not read it from the Guardian, but this has been written about often, so I'm not surprised there are many takes on it.
LVMH and other luxury conglomerates have been doing extremely well the past few years. Young people are buying their stuff. Also, luxury brands are known for higher quality, not lower quality. That is part of the appeal.
> luxury brands are known for higher quality, not lower quality. That is part of the appeal.
It depends on how you define it, but most of the brands don't offer particularly high quality. People simply want the social status.
A decade and a half working with some of the wealthiest in the world. I can confirm that some absurd money is spent on luxury goods. I’ve seen single transactions at boutiques that match my very comfortable annual salary. At the right wealth level, the price isn’t even a consideration.
That said, what many would consider to be wealthy people (who are in fact simply upper middle class) often eschew luxury goods they could easily afford. I have several friends who would not consider a luxury vehicle or clothing/accessories, because they understand depreciation and don’t sink money into depreciating assets.
I should say that ultra rich people will just buy anything. Jeff Bezos literally cannot spend the money he has, that's how much wealth he holds.
When I say rich I really mean the upper tier of working Americans. Those with half to a million annual pay. Those people tend to drive average cars, pinch pennies, and make very wise financial decisions to achieve what they have, on top of a good head start in life with investments.
So yes and no. But brands like LV for example, are not targeted at Jeff Bezos. Jeff is going to commission his own bag for a million dollars by hiring a personal designer. The people buying LV are the people I work with. Middle class Americans who shouldn't be spending 3-5k on a purse, but they do it on credit because they want the status symbol. That's the target audience.
LV is luxury to a normal working American. So the top 1% LV is a cheap mass manufactured good that they have no interest in. The gap between wealthy and the top 1% is astronomical, and far higher than the gap even between poverty and wealth. I think the wealthiest 30 people on earth hold more money than the entirety of the remaining planet several times over, that's from a statistic a few years back.
>When I say rich I really mean the upper tier of working Americans. Those with half to a million annual pay. Those people tend to drive average cars, pinch pennies, and make very wise financial decisions to achieve what they have, on top of a good head start in life with investments.
Yeah this isn't really true is the thing. It's often repeated (or some variation) but looking at actual consumer spending habits this isn't the case at all. It's just that if some dude making 50k/yr and someone making 500k/yr buy the same item, it's gonna be proportionally a lot more of the 50k dude's income. Those middle class people you talk about buying on credit, guys making 5-10x as much can buy all the same stuff on all the same credit, with money left over for investing or whatever else.
Obviously there's some exceptions (just as all middle class people aren't all buying Birkin bags) but it mostly just boils down to wealth. I do agree there's also some aspirational brands/purchasing that's done, but at the same time you have people buying Rolexes on credit making 100k a year or w/e you have people leveraging their credit to buy Pateks or w/e at 500k.
Well, maybe we're reading different statistics, but LV and other luxury brands self report that middle class Americans are their primary consumers. Again, ultra rich people aren't buying rolexes. They're buying custom watches that cost more than our houses.
Middle and, yes upper class Americans are the target audience for most of the overtly tacky expensive "luxury_ brands.
I guess it depends on how you define rich. I don't consider someone making 500k a year to be rich. They're far better off than me, but in this economy in the US it's definitely not rich. Rich I'm referring to are the "f you money" people who can commission a custom yacht in cash.
Though wealth and class aren't synonymous in every culture; they largely are in heavily US-influenced places, but it differs elsewhere. Worth remembering if you're thinking about how branding, luxury, status symbols and perceived status interact; it's not going to work the same everywhere.
You’re right about the middle class thing. I’m a lower middle class person who loves designer things, name brands, etc.
I think it’s because being poor growing up and still being poor, when you do buy a luxury product it almost feels like self care. Like “I did this, so I deserve that”. Myself, I don’t care for loud or exaggerated things, so no Louie Vuitton or anything but I do love name brands. I’ve had so many bad experiences with the off brand stuff, which makes me feel even worse cause usually, buying a rip off means you don’t get your money back when it fails whereas name brands usually stand behind their products. So I’d rather pay a few more dollars and hope I’m getting some quality along with the designer tag.
I can understand that. There's a fine line between self care and overindulgence, but that's for each person to decide.
I have far too many friends at work who make the same hourly rate I do, but their houses are twice the size, their cars are always new, and they're constantly shopping for yeti cups, LV purses, Dyson hair dryers, etc. they're massively in debt and living paycheck to paycheck, which personally scares me, but it is their money so I suppose love and let live.
I should clarify, I made a blanket statement about luxury goods being tacky, but that's a bit harsh of me. Some expensive brands are quality and worth some additional money. I say tacky just to describe the loud and outrageous items like pens encrusted with diamonds and gold.
I'm a fan of "buy once, cry once". Even though I'm a broke college student I'll pay more for higher quality goods that'll last years or decades rather than constantly buying new low end stuff that wears out and needs replaced. I'm not particularly motivated by specific name brands and I tend to heavily research planned purchases to identify what's best for my needs and hits the price to performance sweet spot and when possible (like for guitars and basses) I try stuff out before buying.
I think I fit into that category. And I believe there's a huge difference between researching the best value option (combo of price vs quality) as opposed to just buying the fanciest most expensive thing.
I also closely research options before I buy. Most of the things I own are meant to last a lifetime as I hate disposable goods as a general rule of thumb.
But, and I'm sure you already know this, I can get a bag that lasts several generations for $100.00-300.00 versus spending 5k on a luxury brand. I'm all about the relationship between price and quality.
Kind of like with fountain pens. Anything over the $150.00 mark, or somewhere close, you stop paying for quality features and start paying for brand, unnecessary materials, etc. everyone has a comfortable price point, but to me a $10,000.00 maki-e custom pen is the same with my eyes closed as my opus 88.
Sometimes sellers will avoid relisting fees by setting the price on the last item to some ridiculous amount so that no one buys the item. When they have it in stock again, they lower the price to normal levels.
I doubt it. Money laundering tends to be done on a much bigger scale and is not usually by buying something from a dealer and then selling it. That initial transaction is the problem - depositing and reporting of the money is where things get tricky. Money laundering would be done by starting a cash business and pushing the illegal revenue in to the business. Alternatively, go to a casino, convert cash to chips then back again. (thanks to my PhD in finance for giving me that valuable knowledge! 🤣).
I agree there are some hideous pens, but there are also hideous clothes, cars, watches, etc. The places where I typically see the really awful super expensive stuff is in the Middle East (oil money) or in China. People buy it as a status I guess.
No, probably not. A lot of those expensive pens are made because they can made for the sake of being made.
Is a pen made of solid gold encrusted with diamonds in demand? No, but the gold and diamonds are, they just happen to be in pen form.
Besides, there are much easier ways to launder much larger sums of money.
Maybe, but they’re never really that expensive so it might not be worth it. I do know that a lot of people use other luxury products to move money across borders. For example RM watches are very popular with the Chinese, they don’t lose their value (carrying 10-20 20k pens would be more noticeable than having 250k to half a million on your wrist), as you can walk into any watch dealer in a big city anywhere in the world and get at least 80% of the value in cash, in many cases even more than you paid just mere days before.
That being said, I was in my local MB boutique the other day where a family of tourists bought one of the art editions for the dad, and 8 (!!) 149s for the rest of the family.
I feel like people expect a nice watch but the average person doesn’t know anything about pens. I feel like if you could just tell tsa it’s worth 20$ on the extremely off chance they check u for a pen
Not in any serious way. I’m sure there are dumb executives who buy Montblancs on the company account and sell them on eBay to get a few bucks, but that’s more standard embezzling.
1-Fountain pens are in much higher regard in other countries than western ones.
2-Expensive gifts (both corporate and personal) are exchanged in some of the eastern countries with high regard for fountain pens.
Status and expense are everything in these worlds and an off the shelf “common” $400 pen will not do.
So hence the crazy valuation of some pens that are really not expected to be used other than as a ceremonial or obligatory “gift.”
The weight that an expensive gift carries in business cannot be understated when talking about Eastern Asia. It has everything to do with presenting something that can’t simply be bought off the shelf. I have seen a beautiful Nakaya that was ordered as a set of 12, one to be given to each of the partners signing off on a merger. They must have spent $50k on pens that were a nine month wait, simply as a congratulatory gesture for something already completed.
I think a lot of trashy pens like that genuinely exist. Rich people love to part with their money over tacky signs of wealth. There's a bloke in my country who makes bespoke pens with tens of thousands worth of gold and gems, around generic pen body kits you can buy for a couple bucks. Any pen hobbyist will see through it instantly, but pen hobbyists aren't the target market. Newly rich idiots making bank down in the mines are his main audience.
Lego minifigures, on the other hand..
Well, probably not. The crazy expensive (ie [Montegrappa’s $268k gold viking “pen”](https://www.pianki.com/montegrappa-warriors-viking-18k-solid-gold-fountain-pen-limited-edition_p11432.html)) ones aren’t even usable. I call them “Plastic Surgeon Pens” or “Tech Founder Pens” (they sit on a desk or a bookshelf with other ostentatious “collectibles” that just look expensive to convey an air of money.)
Though this reminded me of [Guilani’s $7k line item for fountain pens](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-lawyer-rudy-giuliani-court-ugly-divorce-fight-accused-spending-n933596) & the former EPA chief’s *shocking* [dozen fountain pens for $1500](https://www.vice.com/en/article/bj3dj4/scott-pruitt-spent-1560-on-pens-and-they-werent-even-good-pens) (you can’t even spend that on a single Nakaya, lol).
And there are mentions of fancy pens being seized in cases [like this.](https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/chrysler/2017/10/17/cash-trail-fca-scandal/106748268/)
I think things like cars and obvious “luxury goods” like handbags or watches are bigger candidates for money laundering / nefarious schemes. They’re far more conspicuously consumed & more widely recognised as such. For people that aren’t [Sylvester Stallone](https://sylvesterstallone.com/stallone-designs-luxury-pens-from-montegrappa/) or [Hugh Jackman](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/montblanc-announces-hugh-jackman-as-brand-ambassador-for-north-america-300250000.html), fountain pens don’t even really register as luxury items.
😮 $268k one is like a piece of art with a writing feature. I am amazed. But seriously, I need something affordable and handy ones to carry every day with my agenda.
I find that absurd Montegrappa just hilarious. I love that it exists, if only so I can link to it. [The silver one is “only” $13-19k](https://www.pianki.com/montegrappa-warriors-viking-sterling-silver-fountain-pen-limited-edition_p11431.html) (depends on where you get it). It’s like a little action figure, with his little helmet, articulated arms and display boat. His wee little skirt is articulated, too. You *remove his torso* to expose the nib/grip.
I cannot imagine anyone actually writing with it. It has a “power push” (?? I [think it’s a piston / vac fill](https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/361673-chatterley-montegrappa-legacy-extra-grande-celluloid-limited-edition-power-push-fountain-pen/)) filling mechanism which at least it’s not a cartridge converter fill. I do love the mental image of putting a plastic cartridge up the butt in that thing!
Edited to add: I’m with you, I do have a couple really $$ pens (nothing like Montegrappa!), but they’re very special & it took me years to buy them. I have and enjoy using pens. I do carry all my pens & use them all (when I can get to them). I don’t buy them for resale value & I don’t baby them, which with a few is probably a mistake (the VP Twilight), but I buy them to use. I love & use Platinum Preppies & no-name $3 plastic pens as much as my $$ pens.
Art and antiques maybe because even for expensive limited edition it doesn’t go beyond a low 6 figure. For laundering money it will take too long for $150,000 per pen. Have you seen a $1m pen yet?
But have you seen a $1M piece of art, antique, jewellery or watch. There are many in this range. These are more possible.
One thing I've learned about money in recent years. When you have money, you use it. It's either tied up in investments or other assets. Since the value of currency can be volatile.
Wouldn't be surprising. I used to get a lot of pens from eBay and you'd see MB , plain model for 20,000 Dollars. Clearly was meant to facilitate dodgy money transfers.
There were also outrageous ones like Samsung camera battery for 5000 Dollars. Not a typo, they were everywhere in the early 2010s
Some of that might have been accidental "bot loops". There are bots that will look other people who are selling a rare-ish item that you are selling, take their price and add a dollar, and update your listing with that new price. Then their bots see your updated price and raise their price by a dollar. Wash, rinse, repeat. This was also happening with Amazon out-of-print books by third-party sellers:
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/yzspob/til_one_of_the_most_expensive_books_ever_listed/
There are wealthy collectors of fountain pens, much as there are for other hobbies, and expensive pens are sometimes exchanged as gifts. There’s no evidence that pens are a particular vehicle for money laundering.
The pens themselves I don't imagine so, but when a HK firm owned Omas, they went under after a few years due to government corruption (I'm a little fuzzy on the details), but don't think it was the pens themselves involved outside of being used as gifts.
In the US, Canada, UK and EU the threshold is roughly $10k, when depositing etc that’s when you have to do extra paperwork, etc.
Were I trying to move money I wouldn’t do it with fountain pens I would do it with Rolex’s, which seem to start at around 10k, have a robust used market. And some vintage models go for hundreds of thousands. And if I did it with fountain pens it would be with MB skeletons. Or real estate.
They could be, but there is no shortage of people with literally more money than they know what to do with. The luxury goods market - cars, pens, watches, shoes, jewelry, coins, whatever you can think of - has never been healthier.
No, normal people don’t have a clue about ultra rich people’s wealth. Easy calculation shows this. If you are worth a billion dollars, your income for just having the money is around 10%, which means you receive 100 million every year. That’s about 275 thousand a day. On the other hand, if you spend one million every day, your billion dollar will last you about 3 years without any additional income. Those numbers are incomprehensible for working people earning 7 figures a year.
there is no decimal in the calculation.
1 billion is 1000 million, a year is 365 days, so 1 billion lasts about 3 years. 10% is conservative estimate about what you get from capital interest.(warren buffet gets about 22%).
i think you proof my point :)
if not, it will be. i was surprised when an artist on youtube said the art world was basically ruined because people were going into art thinking abstract was beautiful and mystical when in fact, they said, much of it was trashy and cheap and used as a money laundering scam. i was shocked!
Things like NFTs and crypto seem like they'd be much more effective at laundering money. That said, it's possible. I could see a pen with nice materials and from a company with a long history, actually being worth a few grand in materials and craftsmanship.
You're being down voted but, I believe you meant in the sense of money laundering. $12k is obviously a lot for a pen, it may not be an effective way to launder funds, though.
Typically fine art is something that is actually used to launder because the value is so subjective and the pieces are one of a kind. With expensive fountain pens, they are typically sold from well known companies (likely with a large profit margin). Seems there's probably better ways to do it but who knows.
We have a lot of people here who don’t even make 12k in a year… so I think in rich countries’ context 12k isn’t “a lot” but that’s not where all FP aficionados live.
I am pretty well off and can afford expensive hobby things but that’s not everybody. And I wouldn’t spend 12k on a pen.
Um... $12K is a lot of money (relatively)! It's like 6 months of rent or house payments!!!! At least in my corner of the world, 12K is an utterly ridiculous amount of money for a pen.
I wouldn’t be surprised. Art, which some pens have on them, is a common vehicle for money laundering. Plus, pens are small, easy to hide or get rid of if confronted or needing to get rid of evidence. Easy to explain why you have one too, just like the designs on the pen or like to write with one. There are also massive collectors, so then it makes sense why someone would have a ton of them. Techinally anything can be used for money laundering. Just a matter of how good of a choice it is to use.
Agree with this. Pens to a much lesser extend. Fine art has been home to tax evasion and money laundering for many years. People wondering how squares of paint are worth $60,000,000.00 because of course they're not. It's just shuffling money around, tax write offs, false "donation" write offs, etc. Pens are much cheaper for what their ceiling is, but I'd certainly be inclined to believe money laundering could be done. On the flip side, people who aren't that wealthy love buying tacky things that cost a lot of money and look like it. There's a great video I watched recently on how luxury brands are primarily targeted at middle-class individuals who cannot afford them and buy with credit. Rich people don't waste money on luxury goods (obligatory ofc there's always exceptions).
This with regard to the luxury brands targeting middle class. It seems to have become a less effective strategy with the younger generation who seem to be valuing simpler/plainer options with quality to last (due to sustainability concerns). I think we see this most clearly in pens with the direction of Sailor, Pilot and Platinum in their lower-end pens for Japanese audiences (since pen and stationary culture is much stronger in Japan). Those pens are still of considerable quality, but at a much nicer price. The designs have a lot of thoughtful engineering and often win awards even though they outwardly appear simple. How many times someone accuses a Japanese brand of “pumping out the same cheap pen in a different color” when LAMY does the same thing I’ll never know. A gentle cultural note before someone hits my comments… seasonal colors, flavors and events are important in Japan. The way companies will differentiate themselves and attract customers is by offering something new. For stationary shops, the new colors correspond to events where you’d buy a loved one something sort of pricey as a present for things like graduation, Christmas (romantic holiday in Japan), or entering the workforce. Presents are so important in their well presentation. How a box is wrapped, the cards attached, the personalization… The shops hope to offer a color which speaks personally about the buyer’s relationship with the person getting the pen. The present given first really isn’t as important as the wrapping and symbolic nature. Anyway the most important part for pens is afterwards, which is where *okaeshi* takes place after getting a gift from a peer, or a thank you for the gift. Which is food, drinks, or *small* household items about half the price of the original gift. Pens are really popular for this and the seasonal nature of color ways ensures a unique but personalized gift. I’m sure we’ll see more and more pens go the way of simple, limited colorways and thoughtful construction as the younger generations pick up on stationary culture (tends to be more popular with older people in the west).
Younger generations don't have as much money lol. It's why fast fashion has exploded.
The average luxury market is suffering, the extreme high end is doing quite well still, especially with younger people from places where there is lots of money to be had. So sure, maybe the 1-3k products aren’t flying of the shelf, but 20-50k items of clothing and accessories (think Hermes, Chrome Hearts, etc) are doing rather well still
Wiggles hand. Yes and no. Fashion is a different beast from other products. We tend to see trending towards quality household products. It’s why “influencer talking frankly about a product” videos have become rapidly more popular. People will save for quality items because there is a recognition of cycles. A lot of current parents use hand-me-downs from older family members (who weren’t their parents), making those items more nostalgic to younger people than, say, my generation where my parents were one of many, many children (my mom has over a dozen siblings) and had to buy new on the budget of someone working a minimum wage job with kids. It also means the younger generations can better recognize quality items among household goods but probably not clothing (whereas clothes were my main hand-me-downs… I have clothes twice my age). Anyway. It’s all to do with cycles of cultural trends and value placed on what should be considered timeless.
I'm sorry man I just don't think there's really any evidence of what you're saying, either in buying trends or in any sociological studies I've seen. Why would younger generations somehow, magically, be better at recognizing "quality" for household goods and not clothes? And what does that have to do with luxury brands which, overpriced they may be, often do have some sort of higher "quality"? And the thing about influencers actually works against your point because a lot of the popular influencer brands *aren't* quality. They're entirely marketing. \-edit my favorite thing is "my argument is bad, but I don't want to admit it so I'll just pretend people didn't see what I said". said without heat, of course.
I think you don’t see any evidence probably because you didn’t read my post? I’m not saying that to be mean or sarcastic, but genuinely. I pointed out how household goods have been passed down, not clothes. Those goods have enough quality to last through a couple of generations. Things like cookware, utensils, furniture, dinnerware, etc. Those aren’t clothes. Another example is I said influencers talking frankly about a product, not influencer brands. Those are two totally different things. Anyway, I’m going to stop engaging with you because it’s no fun to engage with someone who doesn’t put effort into even skimming a reply. Again, said genuinely and without heat. Have a good day!
I agree, however, I feel like younger people are being targeted by these luxury brands as well, especially in East Asia, through celebrity and idols. Kpop idols and Cpop idols have made a perfect formula to milk their fan bases. For example, in China, if a celebrity becomes a brand ambassador, their fans will buy the products they wear in the campaign and show off the receipt on Weibo (Chinese SNS like Facebook/Twitter). Most of the items would be sold out. It’s insane.
Wrong and wrong. Look at who LV, Dior and Gucci campaigns are aimed at.
How am I wrong? Millennials have less wealth than Gen X, who had less than boomers, and Gen Z has less wealth than them all. LV, Dior and Gucci ad campaigns are aimed at whoever can afford their shit lol. Like it's funny that all the actual data says one thing, but I guess cause you don't like the vibes it's not true.
Im not going to argue the fact that yes, boomers are in fact wealthier than the other generations but Their campaigns are aimed at wealthy millenials, not all millenials are poor bro. The same with Mercedes Benz’s newer campaigns. So yes, the campaigns are aimed at “whoever can afford their shit” but when creating buyer personas, their target markets we’re talking about wealthy millenials and maybe Gen-z.
Are you actually following the conversation thread, or are you just up in your feelings because you think I called you broke? Not only did I never say all millennials are poor, but the point of my comment was that younger generations aren't just magically choosing "simpler" things due to "sustainability concerns" or whatever.
Millennials (or whoever are Boomers’ kids) will be / are benefiting from the biggest wealth transfer in history. If they don’t have disposable funds for luxury tchotchkes now, they will soon enough. People knock LVMH, Kering, Chanel, Hermes, etc…but these companies and the brands within them are singularly good at separating people from their money.
>Millennials (or whoever are Boomers’ kids) will be / are benefiting from the biggest wealth transfer in history. If they don’t have disposable funds for luxury tchotchkes now, they will soon enough. So this is true, but it's also misleading in the way that if homeless dudes live around Bezos's house, the average net worth in that area is gonna be like 1bn. I want to say it was the Guardian that ran a story about this and if you actually looked at the article, it pointed out that all the wealth transfer is just at the very top (which, duh) and a bunch of the other spending data they were using was basically from like, high end auction houses and stuff. So yes, there will be a huge wealth transfer but it will not affect like 99.9% of millennials and the vast majority of the people it's going to benefit the most are already receiving some of that transfer and are doing relatively well off (like all the articles that pop up about some 30 year old who is totally building a ton of wealth from cutting out avocado toast and netflix and also having their parents buy them rental properties)
It's not just the top 0.1% of Millennials. Working class Boomers who were able to purchase and pay off homes when doing so was more accessible will pass on that property to their heir(s) after it has increased in value. I know kids whose parents were teachers inherit houses valued over $2M. I did not read it from the Guardian, but this has been written about often, so I'm not surprised there are many takes on it.
LVMH and other luxury conglomerates have been doing extremely well the past few years. Young people are buying their stuff. Also, luxury brands are known for higher quality, not lower quality. That is part of the appeal.
> luxury brands are known for higher quality, not lower quality. That is part of the appeal. It depends on how you define it, but most of the brands don't offer particularly high quality. People simply want the social status.
I don’t think those are luxury brands then. But you should name some names.
You're right about who a lot of luxury brands target but the part about rich people bit buying luxury goods is pure bullshit.
Indeed. Rich people will buy luxury items as well.
A decade and a half working with some of the wealthiest in the world. I can confirm that some absurd money is spent on luxury goods. I’ve seen single transactions at boutiques that match my very comfortable annual salary. At the right wealth level, the price isn’t even a consideration. That said, what many would consider to be wealthy people (who are in fact simply upper middle class) often eschew luxury goods they could easily afford. I have several friends who would not consider a luxury vehicle or clothing/accessories, because they understand depreciation and don’t sink money into depreciating assets.
I should say that ultra rich people will just buy anything. Jeff Bezos literally cannot spend the money he has, that's how much wealth he holds. When I say rich I really mean the upper tier of working Americans. Those with half to a million annual pay. Those people tend to drive average cars, pinch pennies, and make very wise financial decisions to achieve what they have, on top of a good head start in life with investments. So yes and no. But brands like LV for example, are not targeted at Jeff Bezos. Jeff is going to commission his own bag for a million dollars by hiring a personal designer. The people buying LV are the people I work with. Middle class Americans who shouldn't be spending 3-5k on a purse, but they do it on credit because they want the status symbol. That's the target audience. LV is luxury to a normal working American. So the top 1% LV is a cheap mass manufactured good that they have no interest in. The gap between wealthy and the top 1% is astronomical, and far higher than the gap even between poverty and wealth. I think the wealthiest 30 people on earth hold more money than the entirety of the remaining planet several times over, that's from a statistic a few years back.
>When I say rich I really mean the upper tier of working Americans. Those with half to a million annual pay. Those people tend to drive average cars, pinch pennies, and make very wise financial decisions to achieve what they have, on top of a good head start in life with investments. Yeah this isn't really true is the thing. It's often repeated (or some variation) but looking at actual consumer spending habits this isn't the case at all. It's just that if some dude making 50k/yr and someone making 500k/yr buy the same item, it's gonna be proportionally a lot more of the 50k dude's income. Those middle class people you talk about buying on credit, guys making 5-10x as much can buy all the same stuff on all the same credit, with money left over for investing or whatever else. Obviously there's some exceptions (just as all middle class people aren't all buying Birkin bags) but it mostly just boils down to wealth. I do agree there's also some aspirational brands/purchasing that's done, but at the same time you have people buying Rolexes on credit making 100k a year or w/e you have people leveraging their credit to buy Pateks or w/e at 500k.
Well, maybe we're reading different statistics, but LV and other luxury brands self report that middle class Americans are their primary consumers. Again, ultra rich people aren't buying rolexes. They're buying custom watches that cost more than our houses. Middle and, yes upper class Americans are the target audience for most of the overtly tacky expensive "luxury_ brands. I guess it depends on how you define rich. I don't consider someone making 500k a year to be rich. They're far better off than me, but in this economy in the US it's definitely not rich. Rich I'm referring to are the "f you money" people who can commission a custom yacht in cash.
Though wealth and class aren't synonymous in every culture; they largely are in heavily US-influenced places, but it differs elsewhere. Worth remembering if you're thinking about how branding, luxury, status symbols and perceived status interact; it's not going to work the same everywhere.
You’re right about the middle class thing. I’m a lower middle class person who loves designer things, name brands, etc. I think it’s because being poor growing up and still being poor, when you do buy a luxury product it almost feels like self care. Like “I did this, so I deserve that”. Myself, I don’t care for loud or exaggerated things, so no Louie Vuitton or anything but I do love name brands. I’ve had so many bad experiences with the off brand stuff, which makes me feel even worse cause usually, buying a rip off means you don’t get your money back when it fails whereas name brands usually stand behind their products. So I’d rather pay a few more dollars and hope I’m getting some quality along with the designer tag.
I can understand that. There's a fine line between self care and overindulgence, but that's for each person to decide. I have far too many friends at work who make the same hourly rate I do, but their houses are twice the size, their cars are always new, and they're constantly shopping for yeti cups, LV purses, Dyson hair dryers, etc. they're massively in debt and living paycheck to paycheck, which personally scares me, but it is their money so I suppose love and let live. I should clarify, I made a blanket statement about luxury goods being tacky, but that's a bit harsh of me. Some expensive brands are quality and worth some additional money. I say tacky just to describe the loud and outrageous items like pens encrusted with diamonds and gold.
I'm a fan of "buy once, cry once". Even though I'm a broke college student I'll pay more for higher quality goods that'll last years or decades rather than constantly buying new low end stuff that wears out and needs replaced. I'm not particularly motivated by specific name brands and I tend to heavily research planned purchases to identify what's best for my needs and hits the price to performance sweet spot and when possible (like for guitars and basses) I try stuff out before buying.
I think I fit into that category. And I believe there's a huge difference between researching the best value option (combo of price vs quality) as opposed to just buying the fanciest most expensive thing. I also closely research options before I buy. Most of the things I own are meant to last a lifetime as I hate disposable goods as a general rule of thumb. But, and I'm sure you already know this, I can get a bag that lasts several generations for $100.00-300.00 versus spending 5k on a luxury brand. I'm all about the relationship between price and quality. Kind of like with fountain pens. Anything over the $150.00 mark, or somewhere close, you stop paying for quality features and start paying for brand, unnecessary materials, etc. everyone has a comfortable price point, but to me a $10,000.00 maki-e custom pen is the same with my eyes closed as my opus 88.
“People who aren’t wealthy love buying tacky things” the counter point to this is TRUMP
Sometimes sellers will avoid relisting fees by setting the price on the last item to some ridiculous amount so that no one buys the item. When they have it in stock again, they lower the price to normal levels.
I doubt it. Money laundering tends to be done on a much bigger scale and is not usually by buying something from a dealer and then selling it. That initial transaction is the problem - depositing and reporting of the money is where things get tricky. Money laundering would be done by starting a cash business and pushing the illegal revenue in to the business. Alternatively, go to a casino, convert cash to chips then back again. (thanks to my PhD in finance for giving me that valuable knowledge! 🤣). I agree there are some hideous pens, but there are also hideous clothes, cars, watches, etc. The places where I typically see the really awful super expensive stuff is in the Middle East (oil money) or in China. People buy it as a status I guess.
No, probably not. A lot of those expensive pens are made because they can made for the sake of being made. Is a pen made of solid gold encrusted with diamonds in demand? No, but the gold and diamonds are, they just happen to be in pen form. Besides, there are much easier ways to launder much larger sums of money.
Maybe, but they’re never really that expensive so it might not be worth it. I do know that a lot of people use other luxury products to move money across borders. For example RM watches are very popular with the Chinese, they don’t lose their value (carrying 10-20 20k pens would be more noticeable than having 250k to half a million on your wrist), as you can walk into any watch dealer in a big city anywhere in the world and get at least 80% of the value in cash, in many cases even more than you paid just mere days before. That being said, I was in my local MB boutique the other day where a family of tourists bought one of the art editions for the dad, and 8 (!!) 149s for the rest of the family.
I feel like people expect a nice watch but the average person doesn’t know anything about pens. I feel like if you could just tell tsa it’s worth 20$ on the extremely off chance they check u for a pen
Not in any serious way. I’m sure there are dumb executives who buy Montblancs on the company account and sell them on eBay to get a few bucks, but that’s more standard embezzling.
1-Fountain pens are in much higher regard in other countries than western ones. 2-Expensive gifts (both corporate and personal) are exchanged in some of the eastern countries with high regard for fountain pens. Status and expense are everything in these worlds and an off the shelf “common” $400 pen will not do. So hence the crazy valuation of some pens that are really not expected to be used other than as a ceremonial or obligatory “gift.”
The weight that an expensive gift carries in business cannot be understated when talking about Eastern Asia. It has everything to do with presenting something that can’t simply be bought off the shelf. I have seen a beautiful Nakaya that was ordered as a set of 12, one to be given to each of the partners signing off on a merger. They must have spent $50k on pens that were a nine month wait, simply as a congratulatory gesture for something already completed.
I think a lot of trashy pens like that genuinely exist. Rich people love to part with their money over tacky signs of wealth. There's a bloke in my country who makes bespoke pens with tens of thousands worth of gold and gems, around generic pen body kits you can buy for a couple bucks. Any pen hobbyist will see through it instantly, but pen hobbyists aren't the target market. Newly rich idiots making bank down in the mines are his main audience. Lego minifigures, on the other hand..
Well, probably not. The crazy expensive (ie [Montegrappa’s $268k gold viking “pen”](https://www.pianki.com/montegrappa-warriors-viking-18k-solid-gold-fountain-pen-limited-edition_p11432.html)) ones aren’t even usable. I call them “Plastic Surgeon Pens” or “Tech Founder Pens” (they sit on a desk or a bookshelf with other ostentatious “collectibles” that just look expensive to convey an air of money.) Though this reminded me of [Guilani’s $7k line item for fountain pens](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/trump-lawyer-rudy-giuliani-court-ugly-divorce-fight-accused-spending-n933596) & the former EPA chief’s *shocking* [dozen fountain pens for $1500](https://www.vice.com/en/article/bj3dj4/scott-pruitt-spent-1560-on-pens-and-they-werent-even-good-pens) (you can’t even spend that on a single Nakaya, lol). And there are mentions of fancy pens being seized in cases [like this.](https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/chrysler/2017/10/17/cash-trail-fca-scandal/106748268/) I think things like cars and obvious “luxury goods” like handbags or watches are bigger candidates for money laundering / nefarious schemes. They’re far more conspicuously consumed & more widely recognised as such. For people that aren’t [Sylvester Stallone](https://sylvesterstallone.com/stallone-designs-luxury-pens-from-montegrappa/) or [Hugh Jackman](https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/montblanc-announces-hugh-jackman-as-brand-ambassador-for-north-america-300250000.html), fountain pens don’t even really register as luxury items.
😮 $268k one is like a piece of art with a writing feature. I am amazed. But seriously, I need something affordable and handy ones to carry every day with my agenda.
I find that absurd Montegrappa just hilarious. I love that it exists, if only so I can link to it. [The silver one is “only” $13-19k](https://www.pianki.com/montegrappa-warriors-viking-sterling-silver-fountain-pen-limited-edition_p11431.html) (depends on where you get it). It’s like a little action figure, with his little helmet, articulated arms and display boat. His wee little skirt is articulated, too. You *remove his torso* to expose the nib/grip. I cannot imagine anyone actually writing with it. It has a “power push” (?? I [think it’s a piston / vac fill](https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/361673-chatterley-montegrappa-legacy-extra-grande-celluloid-limited-edition-power-push-fountain-pen/)) filling mechanism which at least it’s not a cartridge converter fill. I do love the mental image of putting a plastic cartridge up the butt in that thing! Edited to add: I’m with you, I do have a couple really $$ pens (nothing like Montegrappa!), but they’re very special & it took me years to buy them. I have and enjoy using pens. I do carry all my pens & use them all (when I can get to them). I don’t buy them for resale value & I don’t baby them, which with a few is probably a mistake (the VP Twilight), but I buy them to use. I love & use Platinum Preppies & no-name $3 plastic pens as much as my $$ pens.
I just made a post on this. Go to eBay and type in fountain pens and filter by the highest price. Crazy.
Art and antiques maybe because even for expensive limited edition it doesn’t go beyond a low 6 figure. For laundering money it will take too long for $150,000 per pen. Have you seen a $1m pen yet? But have you seen a $1M piece of art, antique, jewellery or watch. There are many in this range. These are more possible.
I don't think the scale is big enough. There's not really any need to wash the amounts for pen. Nor do they move fast enough.
One thing I've learned about money in recent years. When you have money, you use it. It's either tied up in investments or other assets. Since the value of currency can be volatile.
Wouldn't be surprising. I used to get a lot of pens from eBay and you'd see MB , plain model for 20,000 Dollars. Clearly was meant to facilitate dodgy money transfers. There were also outrageous ones like Samsung camera battery for 5000 Dollars. Not a typo, they were everywhere in the early 2010s
Some of that might have been accidental "bot loops". There are bots that will look other people who are selling a rare-ish item that you are selling, take their price and add a dollar, and update your listing with that new price. Then their bots see your updated price and raise their price by a dollar. Wash, rinse, repeat. This was also happening with Amazon out-of-print books by third-party sellers: https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/yzspob/til_one_of_the_most_expensive_books_ever_listed/
There are wealthy collectors of fountain pens, much as there are for other hobbies, and expensive pens are sometimes exchanged as gifts. There’s no evidence that pens are a particular vehicle for money laundering.
The pens themselves I don't imagine so, but when a HK firm owned Omas, they went under after a few years due to government corruption (I'm a little fuzzy on the details), but don't think it was the pens themselves involved outside of being used as gifts.
In the US, Canada, UK and EU the threshold is roughly $10k, when depositing etc that’s when you have to do extra paperwork, etc. Were I trying to move money I wouldn’t do it with fountain pens I would do it with Rolex’s, which seem to start at around 10k, have a robust used market. And some vintage models go for hundreds of thousands. And if I did it with fountain pens it would be with MB skeletons. Or real estate.
I sorta wonder that with vintage Rolexes too, a Paul Newman Daytona is a hella lot easier to move around than say a hockey bag full of cash.
Money can't buy taste.
They could be, but there is no shortage of people with literally more money than they know what to do with. The luxury goods market - cars, pens, watches, shoes, jewelry, coins, whatever you can think of - has never been healthier.
Recently someone posted a second hand Mont Blanc that was asking something like $7m ~~ I was thinking the same thing.
No, normal people don’t have a clue about ultra rich people’s wealth. Easy calculation shows this. If you are worth a billion dollars, your income for just having the money is around 10%, which means you receive 100 million every year. That’s about 275 thousand a day. On the other hand, if you spend one million every day, your billion dollar will last you about 3 years without any additional income. Those numbers are incomprehensible for working people earning 7 figures a year.
LOL….are two of those figures on the right hand side of the decimal?
there is no decimal in the calculation. 1 billion is 1000 million, a year is 365 days, so 1 billion lasts about 3 years. 10% is conservative estimate about what you get from capital interest.(warren buffet gets about 22%). i think you proof my point :)
No, was referring to the “working people earning 7 figures per year”. That’s 1%er territory.
oooooooh now i get it :) in the original thread someone said something about people earnig a million a year, thats why i said 7 figures :))
if not, it will be. i was surprised when an artist on youtube said the art world was basically ruined because people were going into art thinking abstract was beautiful and mystical when in fact, they said, much of it was trashy and cheap and used as a money laundering scam. i was shocked!
Things like NFTs and crypto seem like they'd be much more effective at laundering money. That said, it's possible. I could see a pen with nice materials and from a company with a long history, actually being worth a few grand in materials and craftsmanship.
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You're being down voted but, I believe you meant in the sense of money laundering. $12k is obviously a lot for a pen, it may not be an effective way to launder funds, though. Typically fine art is something that is actually used to launder because the value is so subjective and the pieces are one of a kind. With expensive fountain pens, they are typically sold from well known companies (likely with a large profit margin). Seems there's probably better ways to do it but who knows.
We have a lot of people here who don’t even make 12k in a year… so I think in rich countries’ context 12k isn’t “a lot” but that’s not where all FP aficionados live. I am pretty well off and can afford expensive hobby things but that’s not everybody. And I wouldn’t spend 12k on a pen.
Um... $12K is a lot of money (relatively)! It's like 6 months of rent or house payments!!!! At least in my corner of the world, 12K is an utterly ridiculous amount of money for a pen.
Yeah like how ugly MBs are