An Esterbrook Estie has been on my fountain pen wishlist for a while, but I’d never settled on which one to get. I’m not the biggest fan of cracked glass resins, which rules out most of the regular edition Esties, and the special editions I’ve liked (Sweet Dreams and King of the Night) had too drastic a price hike. 

I did briefly consider getting one of the Back to the Land Esties, as I liked the retro colour combinations, but they didn’t tempt me enough to spend nearly £200 on a steel nibbed pen. 

And ultimately, I’m glad I resisted, because I finally feel like I got the perfect Estie for me: the Esterbrook and CoffeeMonsterzCo collab pen!

As a person heavily immersed in the online stationery world, I’m of course a big fan of Helen and the CoffeeMonsterzCo Youtube channel, so I was always going to be excited about this collaboration. But when I saw the pen itself…I had to have it! Especially as it was selling for the regular Estie price, which I think is very reasonable for a special edition pen of this kind (not to mention one that was going to be in such high demand whatever the price!).

I ordered mine from Cult Pens on the day preorders started, and received the pen a day after the official release day, which was nice, because I was super excited to get my hands on it!

And I was immediately blown away by how cute the packaging was! Having watched a couple of unboxings already, I’d already seen the packaging, but it was even cuter in real life, and I love the attention to detail, like making the pull-out section look like a desk drawer. It also came with a sheet of cute fountain pen themed stickers, which was nice. I’ll definitely be using them in my journals! 

And then there’s the pen…it’s so stunning! The beautiful creamy beige of the body of the pen contrasts nicely with the deeper brown of the swirly resin in the cap band and the section of the pen.

Until I got into fountain pens, I wouldn’t really have described myself as a ‘neutrals’ person, so I’m not sure what’s happened to me that my favourite TWSBI Ecos are the Creme and Caffe Bronze colourways, and then this pen ended up being my dream Esterbrook Estie! But I’m going with it, and enjoying having plenty of matches for all my brown inks (again, wouldn’t have thought I’d have been a brown ink person, but here I am!).

Having never had an Estie before I was also surprised by the size of this pen, especially because I assume this edition is just the regular sized Estie, and not the oversized.

After spending a couple of days writing with it though, I am already finding it extremely comfortable in the hand, and that it’s a nice size and weight unposted (which is unusual for me – I usually post all of my pens). In fact, I think this might be one of the more comfortable pens to use for long writing sessions that I have in my collection, so I’m really starting to see the appeal of the Estie! I’ve already written pages and pages with it, and have had no problems with hand cramps or uncomfortableness. 

I also like the unique Estie spring mechanism in the cap when you close it, which I assume helps keep the nib from drying out. So far I’ve had no problems with that, or with hard starts, so it must be working!

The nib writes as expected for a JoWo nib: nice and smooth. My JoWo experience so far is mostly limited to TWSBI Ecos, so it’s nice with this pen getting to try a bit of a larger nib size, with the #6 nib. I also love the cute little Emoti engraving on the nib: It’s such a cute touch!

I struggled to decide exactly what shade of brown ink to put in this pen: should I go lighter like the pen body, or darker like the cap band and section? In the end the ink I chose probably matches the gold hardware better, and I don’t hate it! I chose Diamine Golden Brown, and I’m really enjoying this combination, especially as I feel like this is a brown ink I haven’t used that much yet. 

Overall, I’m so delighted with this pen. It’s a wonderful combination of classic, cute and a little bit quirky, and I’m so glad to have it as my first Esterbrook Estie! An Estie has been a grail pen of mine for a while, and so I’m so glad to have finally added one to my collection. I’m already seeing why people love these so much! 

So what do you think of this Esterbrook collaboration pen? Do you have any Esterbrook Esties? What’s your favourite Estie colourway?