In a carefully planned experiment I’ve been keeping a selection of pens from a bygone era in my top desk drawer. They’ve sat in my Shanghai office drawer for 5 years and before that they sat in my UK office top desk drawer for 3 years.

In total that’s eight long years in a drawer, never opened from the day they left the factory in 2002, with nothing but a 12 hour flight in a box amongst my collection of erasers to disturb them (ok, except that time I lost that receipt and had to go digging round for it, oh and every time I need to fill up my stapler. In fact now that I come to think of it they’ve been shuffled around almost continuously).

Anyway, here’s the science bit, this afternoon when I opened the drawer time capsule from a bygone era and took out the pens how many of them still worked do you think?

Well let me keep you no longer:

The pens on the right all still work, some of them needed a bit of tempting with some rough paper to get the ball turning but most of them were still as moist as the day they left the factory. The pens on the left don’t work, interestingly enough it was the two bics that have let me down and completely dried up (Take THAT France!!!), the other pen didn’t have an ink cartridge in..

Now, here’s my dilemma, the pen in the middle is a double fancy one, it’s got about 15 different coloured inks, but about a third of them don’t work (the colours made by Bic I’ll wager..), so I don’t know whether to put it in the “still working” category or the “no longer working” category. Readers, I need your help!

Anyway, I had a good sort through the pens that still work and I’ve decided that there are some I can live without, I was about to wrap them up as a thoughtful Christmas gift for a relative but thought “hold on a minute, what about the readers at Dinglespeaks”.

So, in a one time only offer I’ll allow you, the reader, to pick a pen at will* and I’ll get it sent over to you as a souvenir to cherish forever**

Some details (from top to bottom)

1 – a bic style pen which used to reside in my labcoat when I worked in the UK, you’ll notice that the cap is in “used” condition, it has been chewed regularly and judging by the residue has been used to scratch my earhole.

2 – a clicky pen with a white chunky body, a blue rubber grip, emblazoned with OMIC – organic materials innovation centre

3 – a slim white clicky pen with a rattly feel about it, emblazoned with the word Ryton

4 – one for the ladies perhaps? a slim, transparent pink pen, another clicky one with the catchy phrase “LG – transparent ABS” emblazoned down the front.

5 – a white pen with a cap, you can’t see here but I believe the pocket clasp is stainless steel (but it might be white plastic), emblazoned with “ENGEL” in bold capital blue letters.

6 – my pick of the bunch, a chunky clicky pen with stainless steel accessories and an ergonomic rubber grip, this pen wouldn’t look out of place in a modern kitchen or an executives office. The text “M&G Plastics Ltd” is emblazoned on the side.

7 – my final choice and quite an arty one, it’s a clicky pen with the name “nordica elastoner AB” on the side, the whole thing is decorated with overlapping geometric shapes  in all different colours, just like one of them paintings from Ikea..

*French readers have to take one of the bics

**pending shipping costs