Platinum Curidas Retractable Fountain Pen

05/21/20 Check Price Video

The Platinum Curidas is a retractable fountain pen that looks to be related to the Platinum Preppy. It was first announced in 2020 with limited details.

The Curidas is a retractable fountain pen, similar to the Pilot Vanishing Point or Lamy Dialog 3. Like those pens it has a clip near the writing tip, so it can be placed in a pouch or pocket nib-size up. The Curidas has a steel nib and a removable steel clip. The clip can be removed with an included plastic tool which helps you slide it off the body.

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The final pricing of this pen is not yet known, but early models are selling on marketplaces like Rakuten for about $60. This is a high price for a fully plastic pen, and it’s more than the price of Platinum’s PTL-5000 gold nib pen. The MSRP does seem to be 7000 JPY, so the $60 price is on target, but it should fall a bit over time.

The name “Curidas” is a neologism which combines the English word “curiosity” and the Japanese word “kuridasu,” which means to let out. This is the word used for the knock action of a pen — letting out the tip.

One interesting thing about the pen is how long the top button is. This give the pen a rather odd look and certainly limited the “cool factor” relatively to something like the sleek Dialog 3 or a standard capped fountain pen. One reason the push action is so long is that Curidas has a shutter that opens and closes to keep the nib from drying out. This action is an added complication

The Curidas will work with Platinum’s cartridges, the Platinum converter 500, or the Converter 700. The converters are sold separately.

The pen is has a plastic exterior, which looks quite like that of the new Prefounte pen, but there is metal hardware on the inside. This should ensure that the mechanism for pushing the nib in and out works for the life of the pen. There is a rather large spring inside, similar in size to that on the Twsbi Go, that is doing the retracting work.

Like the Pilot Vanishing Point, the nib unit (from the nib and feed all the way back to the button) are completely removable from the pen’s body. This can be done by twisting a tab on the inside of the pen. This would be useful for cleaning the nib or replacing the converter.

Platinum Curidas Feed Crack

It’s been reported that some number of Curidas pens have had their feed crack. The crack will be visible if you extend the nib, turn the pen over, and look at the black plastic part under the nib. If you see a thin vertical line it’s a crack. This can cause ink to drip or spit and make the writing inconsistent.

If this happens you need to talk to your original vendor about it as replacement nibs and replacement feeds are not currently available for purchase.

This also means that you cannot take advantage of the modular nib system as you can’t currently purchase replacement nibs.

Platinum Curidas Review

The Curidas, while highly awaited, has fallen flat with many early users, Unsharpen.com staff included. We purchased a fine nib Curidas, via Japan-based Platinum seller in February and have been using it for over 2 months now.

The Curidas is large, as was expected, and reasonably well built. It’s hard to justify the price tag ($80) when the pen is fully plastic, but the mechanism inside is complex enough that you can start to understand why the pen costs what it does. The plastic components used in the pen are on the same level of the $10 Prefounte, which was released at the end of 2019.

One of the most curious features of the pen is its extremely long button, which as to be pressed to extend the nib. The throw of this button is awkwardly long and it looks rather strange in person. The nib looks like Platinum’s other steel nibs, but it’s rather undersized, something that’s not problem with the Lamy Dialog 3 which is similarly sized.

The steel nib that the Curidas uses might look like a modular nib that could be slid of and placed on a Preppy, Plaisir, or Prefounte, but it’s not. The new nib is actually a bit smaller so, disappointingly, you can’t swap one for another. This is a pretty major downside, but the Curidas was not a good writer at all.

Replacement nibs aren’t yet available, but hopefully they will be shortly.

The Curidas, as it arrived, would barely write at all. The fine nib was extremely dry, to the point of not being usable. Some tweaking of the nib increased flow slightly, but never enough to match the excellent writing of Platinum’s Preppy in a fine. Given that the Preppy is a $3 pen, which was beyond disappointing. Even after the nib work was performed the nib would dry out and have serious trouble starting between uses.

The dry writing of the fine nib does not seem to be an isolated incident and other people online have reported problems and had to return their pens. Many people online who have purchases the medium nib seem to be happier with the pen. The extra fine started shipping after the first batch so we’re still awaiting news on that.

The nib, possibly due to the tweaking to get it to be barely able to write, began to spit ink when the button was pressed and the nib returned to the body. While annoying it seemed like a necessarily evil to get the pen to be usable.

Overall the Curidas is an interesting pen, but not one I can yet recommend. The hopes is that Platinum will improve on the manufacturing and individual resellers will do what they can to sell working units an avoid situations like this one.