Ryan, PSI recently brought out a number of new styles of higher end pens, including the Tycoon, in what some believe (myself included) was an effort to compete with Berea and CSUSA for more of the middle and higher end market. If you went back a year or two, CSUSA seemed to be the American distributor offering most of the better quality kits, with Berea (who sells direct, as well as through other folks like Arizona Silhouette, Bear Tooth Woods, and Woodcraft) offering good mid-level (think bling factor- amount of rhodium and gold plating, plain styling vs embossed plated accents on finials, clips, centerbands, etc.). Before bringing out the new styles, PSI was viewed by many as the "economy providor" of pens- an inexpensive source used by many especially as they were just getting started. Hope this doesn't come across as snobbish, but it seems like a lot of folks would "move up" from PSI poducts to Berea or CSUSA kits when they started selling more pens and concerns about the quality and durabilty of what they were selling took on more importance- few want to deal with a returned pen because the plating degraded or the mechanism got rough or jammed. While PSI clearly has some better offerings now compared to previously, I'd still go with the Jr Gent. In addition to having a longer history of providing higher end products, one of the benefits of the Jr Gent vII is that it uses the same tubes, drill bits, and bushings as the Jr Statesman vII and the Jr Gent Retro. It also uses the same drill bits as the Jr Emperor, and even though the tubes are slightly different lengths on the Jr Emperor, in a pinch you can use Jr vII tubes and just trim them down the small amount (or just leave the cap a little longer- doesn't affect the functionality). Also, the bushings called for in the cap of the Jr Emperor are only a few thousandths larger than the Jr vII, so you can use those in a pinch and just leave the blank a smidge proud of the bushings if you've not started using a micrometer to check your diameters yet. So all that said, the Jr Gent would be my recommendation based on the history of quality and the versatility of the accessories (bits, bushings, tubes) for allowing you to add additional kits into your lineup.
