Review: The Superior Labor Pen Roll

Carrying my fountain pens around in the small Franklin-Christoph pen cases that come with the pen when you purchase it, was great when I was only carrying two pens at a time with me to work. Not so much when ten pens are involved.

Then I found the Superior Labor and I knew that it’s leather goodness was going to be mine.

As you can see per below, it fits up to ten pens. Or six pens and a pocket notebook, but since I don’t use pocket notebooks on a regular basis, I just fill the big pocket with more pens. I’ve had this pen roll for a couple months now, because I really wanted to get a feel for it before I reviewed it. There’s really only one con to this pen roll.

Unless you only want to take three pens with you, you’re going to put two pens in each pocket, and that means that occasionally those pens will scratch each other. So if you don’t want small scratches to form on the barrel of your expensive pens, than I would suggest buying a pen case with individual pen pockets.

But if you’re like me and don’t really care about small scratches, because most of your pens aren’t expensive, than you’ll love this pen roll.

It’s thick sturdy leather, and when if first arrives, it’s also very stiff. With use overtime it will lose that unwieldy stiffness and soften up a bit, so that it will start to roll more easily. It’s also not as heavy as I was expecting. Probably the heaviest part of this pen roll is the buckle, which you can tell isn’t hollow. And that’s an attention to detail that I can appreciate.

You can pick from three different colored leather when you’re purchasing this pen roll. One is lighter than this one and is a sandy color, the other is darker than this one, and it resembles dark chocolate. The one I chose is called “light brown”.

The tail on this pen case is pretty long, When the case is empty, you can wrap the tail around it twice, which I like. If you tuck the tail back into itself, that solves the issue. It’s really up to you if you want to cut the excess off or not.

I carry a lot inside my work handbag with me at any given moment, so I needed something that could house a lot of my pens, without also taking up too much space. It also needed to be durable.

This pen roll has all those characteristics.

My handbag is pretty big, so it does sometimes kinda gets lost in there on occasion, and the leather is this really nice quality that doesn’t show scratch marks very much. Or I should say, the scratch marks don’t turn paler than the leather, so it blends in and you can’t really tell it’s there.

Since this is a Japanese brand, it’s actually very hard to find a retailer that sells it in the United States. Luckily I found one online. Yes, ONE. Baum-Kuchen.net.  (wonderpens.ca, also sells it online from Toronto Canada, but the shipping cost is so expensive, that I don’t really count it as an option)

I’ll be honest, at $110 + shipping, it is on the expensive side. But, I’ve noticed that most pen cases are. Sure, the giant book ones are around $64, but they’re giant, and heavy, and take up a lot of space. So . . . I have one of those too, but I don’t take it to work with me. It does hold the rest of my pens that aren’t currently inked though.

For me, it was about maximizing the space in my handbag. Which this pen roll has helped me to achieve.

Thank You For Reading!