The Pocket-Sized Pen You’ll Never Leave the House Without

Shop $71, amazon.com

Welcome to the Esquire Endorsement. Heavily researched. Thoroughly vetted. These picks are the best way to spend your hard-earned cash.

I want you to temporarily forget about all the superlatives that get thrown at pens and stationery. I’ve had everything from a Montblanc Meisterstück to a Parker Jotter, really iconic pens, pens that I would put up against other pens on pure merit. Even my Lamy Safari could stand against other pens on its smooth writing, and that ergonomic triangular grip.

But I would never put any of that burden on a Kaweco Sport. My love for this pen—which is best as the brass model shown—is more sentimental than anything. The heft of the brass, the patina it acquires, and its pocket size make this a pen that sticks with you. When I’m packing for a trip or on autopilot walking out the door, this is the pen that gets stuck in a notebook or wedged into a passport case. It gets tossed into a jeans pocket or in my car’s cup holder.

So, don’t expect me to tell you that a Kaweco Brass Sport is a good value or the best pen you can buy under $100. Don’t expect me to write five hundred words on the nib or tell you that this is absolutely the pen you need in your life. What I want to say is this: This pen is a no-scholarship walk-on in a world obsessed with flashy five-stars. It’s ready to jump in when you reach for it; it doesn’t care if you beat it up; and more than anything, it makes itself hard to get rid of. That’s why I love it.

I’d also like to apologize. The pen you’re seeing in this story is brand-new and untouched. My original Kaweco Brass Sport had the patina that is such a reason to get this pen, but I passed it down to my nephew. He’s 14 and likes to sketch, so for Christmas he got a stack of Corto Maltese books and my Kaweco. Heartwarming, sure, but the fact that I needed to buy a brand-new pen is actually the reason I ended up writing this story.

The reason, which I told the little man after a few midmorning drinks on Christmas, to go for brass over the much more affordable plastic Kaweco Classic is twofold. First, it’s the patina. On the low end of the fountain pen world, there are bright plastics; on the high end, there are gorgeous lacquered finishes. None of them, in my mind, reach the beauty of a patinaed brass—which makes the pen uniquely yours. The second reason is heft. It’s a small pen that when done in plastic is too light to be truly comfortable. The brass is heavy, and it puts pressure on the page without you needing to, so every stroke is comfortable and consistent.

Shop $71, amazon.com

The size of the pen is also the reason I reach for it so often. It’s about five inches when opened and the cap is posted on the back, so it’s around standard size. The magic is that when it’s closed and screwed, it’s only about four inches. That’s why I reach for it when I’m in a packing fugue state. There’s always space in a Dopp kit, book, or travel wallet. You can get a clip for it easily from Kaweco or a third-party maker, but I think that’s beside the point. This isn’t a pen that sits in my breast pocket. It’s usually in a jeans pocket—which also requires a callout for the fact that it leaks far less than any other pen I own.

The only downside here is that the travel size of a Kaweco Sport means it has a travel-size ink cartridge. If I’m gone for more than a week or doing a trip to somewhere I know my journal will find particularly inspiring (Paris, Naples, and anywhere on the coast), I need to pack more ink. But I’m chronically forgetful. I almost always forget extra ink, so I have to find a local stationery store and grab a few Kaweco cartridges. The silver lining is that there’s always a store, and I’ve found that the people who run them are generally the most helpful locals in whatever country you happen to be in.

Shop $71, amazon.com

The durability is what underwrites everything else about the brass version of a Kaweco Sport. As you might assume from a full brass body, this pen is just about bulletproof. My original pen, which now belongs to my nephew, had fallen out of pockets, been left at bars, been lost at the bottom of my college backpack for weeks on end—everything short of being run over by a car. No matter what, most times it would write on the first try. If not, all it took was a quick dip in a glass of water, and it was going.

This also covers the quality-control problem you might hear about in regard to Kaweco. I would say take Reddit posts with a grain of salt—and personally, I’ve never had an issue with the standard Kaweco nib. But I told my nephew to not be afraid of tuning it to his liking (and showed him a great Doodlebud video on the subject), because a nib is replaceable. He can even swap it out for a premium Kaweco nib once he gets a summer job. The thing is, the pen itself is never going to become unusable. Like I said, it’s a walk-on; it’s a sixth man. It’s scrappy, never dies, and is ready for whatever abuse you want to hurl its way. It won’t complain; it won’t die on you. It’s a great pen to tool around with so you can learn what you really value in a pen. And once you’ve moved on to the bigger and better, like I have, you’ll always hold on to it for those days when you need something to just toss in a pocket.

Shop $71, amazon.com

Photographs by Florence Sullivan