The oldest age - Pelikan 400

While I thought of an interesting way to introduce my pens, the idea of a personal "Best of" occured to me, since my "collection" doesn't have a specific theme yet. It's a crowded lot of vintage (few) and modern (most) pens, large and small, made of all kinds of materials, though there is a lot of Urushi, the traditional Japanese lacquer, around lately. So since it's a little hard to get an order into this, I'll just start by presenting the extremes and go from there.

Personal Best of, Part 1

Since I'm less than an expert at vintage pens it's hard to say. It might be this Pelikan 400 Tortoise from the 1950s (of course it's not genuine tortoiseshell but celluloid). I'd like to tell a nice story about how it has been my grandma's pen and she gave it to me when I finished school, but unfortunately I just bought it. Next to my mostly larger and heavier pens it looks like something from another era - fountain pens just used to be smaller back then! 

It has a very nice semi-flexible nib but I still don't use it much - it might be because of the size but more likely because the nib has some starting problems. Obviously, even back in that time some nibs just were annoying.

The pen pouch, however, is indeed a heirloom from my boyfriend's family. It comes from Eastern Germany and was used as a school accessory by his aunt and by himself later on. It's a little battered but still looks nice and, most remarkable, it's really well thought through. One of my pens leaked Diamine Oxblood onto the lining and it cleaned off very well which I hadn't expected at all (and wonder if this could be expected from a, say, Montblanc pen pouch?).
An interesting feature: The five lashes which hold the pens are made of leather and in different sizes. None of them would be large enough to accomodate a modern pen though - and vintage pens do look best in it.