Fortunately I had a few hours to attend on Saturday from late morning to early afternoon. Took me almost half an hour to find a parking space so i knew it was going to be busy. Sure enough, massive crowds, the aisles were jammed full and difficult to even get close to tables. So it was difficult to even get photos of tables.
There were many new exhibitors of mostly new hand made pens, parts, tools some wonderful stationery sets and many manufacturers we all know and even an exhibitor from Utrecht Denmark. New fountain pen products were shown from Pelikan, Lamy, Canid, Edison, the ever famous Shawn newton from Newton Pens, Taccia, and more.
My mission was primarily to see old friends from so many years of attending shows. Some looked expectedly older, some, by some form of magic have not changed a whit in the last 30 years. How does that happen?
So I managed to meander the aisles, I sold a few NOS mint in box Montblanc ballpoint pens I found in a cabinet after 34-some years of overlooked storage, bought some stationery, inks, and got some free magazines from Pen World, Stylus and Paul Erano's Fountain Pen Journal. It was a really heart-warming session for me to see many of my old friends.
Here are a few images from the show, the main ballroom and the overflow entrance area that was also jammed with exhibitors.
Here is an amazing pen. This Sheaffer pre-dot pen was salvaged from the USS Arizona which sunk in the Pearl Harbor attack. This pen and many others were salvaged, sent to Sheaffer and were given to employees. Hard to read the attached but I will get a better image of this text later from the collector Bruce Mindrup.