Montblanc started launching the Meisterstück in 1929, engraving the nibs with the number 4810 — the official height of Mont Blanc peak. Some years later, Montblanc started using numbers XYZ (like this Montblanc 146), with a loose naming convention as follows:
- X ≡ Tier of pen. 1 ➙ top class (Meisterstück), 2 ➙ medium range, 3 ➙ economy
- Y ≡ Filler type. 0 ➙ safety filler; 2 ➙ button filler; 3 or 4 ➙ piston filler
- Z ≡ Nib size, with 9 being the largest
Montblanc’s flagship pen is the Meisterstück 149, launched in 1952. A more common pen for daily use is the The Meisterstück 146 (a.k.a. Le Grand) model. It is a quite thick pen, with 6.85 inches length and 0.5 inches width. It has a piston. The nib is a hand-crafted 14 kt gold nib inlaid with platinum. The body is made from jet-black precious resin.
I bought this 146 as a second-hand pen from a trusted seller some time ago, in a local marketplace here in Indonesia. It was apparently a beginning of a long and interesting exploration with Montblanc fountain pens.
Meisterstück 146 is also known as Meisterstück Le Grand. Besides the standard black fountain pen, we can also find Le Grand in various special editions and limited editions. I myself have collected Le Petit Prince editions of Meisterstück Le Grand (ah, le grand for le petit) to accompany about 300 Le Petit Prince books from my personal library.
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