I’d expect it to be mediocre quality, not an outright scam. Legitimate businesses don’t randomly decide to run a scam, so the fact that Mont Blanc did it here makes me strongly suspect we’re just not seeing how they do it elsewhere. Maybe you like their products, but are you familiar enough with the competition to know that you shouldn’t be getting more or paying less?
Absolutely do. My wife and I regularly attend pen shows, own many different brands of pens not just monte blanc pens, in fact monte blanc are the minority in our collection.
In the fountain pen world Monte Blanc is like Rolex or Tag is to the watch world. One od the foundational brands of the genre.
My personal favorites are waterman just because during highschool this was my favorite tool to write. The one I had at that time was expensive for me at that time ;)
They make very nice pens, a few others to check out besides Waterman and Monte Blanc would be Sailor, Pilot, Carolina pen company, Kweco, I'm sure I'm missing lots...
