Just take my money, Massdrop

HAVE you ever found yourself on the internet, browsing through countless sites with clickbait titles, watching endless hours of Youtube and deciding your life was one big hamster wheel? Me too. It was on one of these jaunts that I discovered a website which sells a ton of stuff that you might want, for possibly cheaper than you could get them elsewhere.

This website, Massdrop, is an oasis of fine design in a desert of cheap and nasty goods.

But first: how did I end up writing a column? I am in possession of the world's most unkempt room, and am by extension, a scatterbrain (but you know what they say about geniuses and messy desks). Once I discovered some shirts that I had bought months ago hiding under a pile of unopened letters. And vice versa. Yeesh.

All this accumulation of stuff might finally be good for something. Gearhead will be a monthly column bringing you the latest in tech or everyday accessories, a young man's column for young men. You're welcome to drop me an email if you have in mind a piece of technology you'd like me to cover, or you know, leave me to my devices to bring you even weirder stuff.

Back to my discovery. Massdrop is a startup that runs on the idea of community bulk buying, or what the owners call "community-driven commerce".

In a flea market in Thailand, you pick a truckload of stuff from the bemused aunty's stall, dump it in a basket and say in that classy Singaporean whine: "Eh auntie, cheaper leh?"

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Massdrop is the online version of that, albeit with no slipper being wielded at you because you were too cheap to pay. The website is divided into themes, called "communities".

The products truly run the gamut, from audiophile-grade headphones, to writing kit like fountain pens and inkwells, and to truly esoteric things like lock-picking kits and atmospheric data collectors. Now you know where to go if you lock yourself out of the house, or when our air takes on the quality of pea soup during certain times of the year.

Users can create polls to gauge the interest in a product, and if there is sufficient demand, the company sources the item in question, puts it online, and people can start the buying process. The process is simple. You choose an item, pop in your credit card details and you're done. If more people buy that product, the price goes down. Say for a pair of shoes originally priced at US$80, if 20 people commit to buying it, the price drops to US$60, and everyone benefits. They ship globally save for some countries, and shipping rates are reasonable but as always, remember to do your homework as they may not always offer the best prices.

On the site, the "Writing" community has all sorts of paraphernalia like inkwells, bound-paper notebooks, and my favourite of all, fountain pens. I am fairly partial to a smooth-writing pen. Fellow lefties unite, with our struggles against paper smudges and writing instruments dominating our lives to the bitter end.

I bought a handmade fountain pen called The Bard, made by Allegory in Chicago. They specialise in hand-made goods like leather-bound notebooks and pens, which possess quirky names like The Troubadour and The Dignitary. As of this writing, my pen is US$130 on Allegory's website, but through the power of Massdrop, I got mine for a mere US$85.74, including shipping, a good 30 per cent off.

And what a beauty it is. Mine arrived in nondescript packaging, but the item was sufficiently protected. Properly weighted, with smooth, polished wood, it was a feast for the eyes. Allegory proudly states that they "create products with amazing stories that last a lifetime", and it's definitely not hyperbole.

My pen is crafted out of two types of wood, ancient Kauri and Midnight Sinker Cypress. They are both types of preserved wood, found in peat bogs or in river silt. The ancient Kauri wood is particularly interesting. 50,000 years old, it was preserved in a bog in what is modern Northern New Zealand today. The company excavates the wood, brings it to their factory in Chicago and makes pens out of it.

The pen writes beautifully and smoothly. I chose a medium nib, because if we lefties write with fine nibs, all we do is puncture the paper at regular intervals. We might as well be writing in Braille.

All this has made me revisit at the art of writing. Years of texting and short messaging has left me bereft of proper writing technique and penmanship, which I intend to reclaim with renewed vigour. Writing is an art lost to time, but one we must never allow to falter. I already have three more pens on order, and I'll post pictures of them on Twitter.

Massdrop, you've made me a changed man, if a broke one.