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THE GIVEAWAY OFFER I'm giving away two separate Sailor Shikiori ink sampler sets, consisting of 0.7-0.75ml samples supplied in resealable 1.5ml centrifuge tubes. The specific inks included in each set are: Set SS01: souten, shigure, miruai, yonaga, okuyama, rikyucha, kinmokusei Set SS02: yamadori, chushu, tokiwamatsu, shimoyo, yodaki, doyou, nioisumire Each set will be packaged in a small cardboard mailer with sufficient protection (along the lines of this here), and include either a 0.5ml plastic pipette, or a 1ml syringe with a plastic blunt-tip 14-gauge needle, for easy transfer of the inks into any converter, empty cartridge, or eyedropper pen barrel. WHO PAYS FOR POSTAGE? I'll pay for postage and send the package by untracked, unregistered letter mail. (Australia Post regards a postal article of that size, shape and weight as a large letter, full stop. My other options are to send it in that format by registered mail, or pack it in a larger box so that the article measures more than 20mm in total thickness.) DEADLINE FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST 13 February 2020, 3:00AM Australian Eastern Daylight Time HOW TO ENTER Post your expression of interest in this thread, noting for which specific set(s) you want to be considered. You may list more than one set, in descending order of preference. ELIGIBILITY TO ENTER This giveaway is open to all FPN members, subject to: Customs and postal service regulations of the recipient's country, if outside of Australia, allow properly declared, non-hazardous liquid in sealed containers to enter and be delivered by international mail as (large) letters from Australia; andthe address provided by the recipient is one to which (large) letters can be delivered by the incumbent postal service.That means, for example, Yemen is excluded; and Australia Post Parcel Locker and Parcel Collect addresses may not be used as the delivery address, because Australia Post will not deliver letters to such addresses as a rule. Whether letters addressed to a Parcel Locker will be automatically redirected, behind the scenes and at Australia Post's discretion, to the registered user's residential address on file is irrelevant. SELECTION METHOD I will select recipients randomly in principle. For each ink sampler set in this giveaway, I will group expressions of interest posted here by the stated entry deadline thus: Entrants who have never been allocated any of my giveaway ink sampler setsEntrants who have received a ink sampler set from me before, but have not already been allocated a different ink sampler set in this giveawayEntrants who have already been allocated another ink sampler set in this giveawayand then: If Group 1 is not empty, I will randomly select a member of that group as the recipient for the set (thus putting him or her in Group 3 for everything else in this giveaway).If Group 1 is empty, I will randomly select a member of Group 2 if it is not empty.If both Group 1 and Group 2 are empty, I will randomly select a member of Group 3 if it is not empty.If all three groups are empty, i.e. nobody wants that ink sampler set, then that particular ink sampler set is permanently withdrawn.SPECIAL NOTE In spite of some misinformation you may have seen online, none of these Sailor ink colours have been discontinued from either production or sale, in either 2019 or 2020. All of them continue to be quite widely available, for ordering from well-known retailers in Australia, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, UK and USA that will ship worldwide. (The same cannot be said about, say, Sailor Kujukuri Coast inks.) The per-millilitre price may not work out to be cheap, even though they're only sold in 20ml bottles and thus the bottle price isn't high, so I understand someone may want to be really sure about these inks ticking their boxes before committing to acquiring full bottles of particular colours.

THE GIVEAWAY OFFER I'm giving away three separate Pilot Iroshizuku ink sampler sets, consisting of 0.7-0.75ml samples supplied in resealable 1.5ml centrifuge tubes. The specific inks included in each set are: Set PI01: tsutsuji, momiji, yu-yake, ku-jaku, kon-peki, ama-iro, kiri-same, yama-guri Set PI02: tsukushi, yama-budo, kosumosu, shin-ryoku, tsuki-yo, tsuyu-kusa, ajisai, take-sumi Set PI03: fuyu-gaki, ina-ho, chiku-rin, syo-ro, fuyu-syogun, asa-gao, murasaki-shikibu, shin-kai Each set will be packaged in a small cardboard mailer with sufficient protection (along the lines of this here), and include either a 0.5ml plastic pipette, or a 1ml syringe with a plastic blunt-tip 14-gauge needle, for easy transfer of the inks into any converter, empty cartridge, or eyedropper pen barrel. WHO PAYS FOR POSTAGE? I'll pay for postage and send the package by untracked, unregistered letter mail. (Australia Post regards a postal article of that size, shape and weight as a large letter, full stop. My other options are to send it in that format by registered mail, or pack it in a larger box so that the article measures more than 20mm in total thickness.) DEADLINE FOR EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST 27 December 2019, 3:00AM Australian Eastern Daylight Time HOW TO ENTER Post your expression of interest in this thread, noting for which specific set(s) you want to be considered. You may list more than one set, in descending order of preference. ELIGIBILITY TO ENTER This giveaway is open to all FPN members worldwide, subject to: Customs and postal service regulations of the recipient's country, if outside of Australia, allow properly declared, non-hazardous liquid in sealed containers to enter and be delivered by international mail as (large) letters from Australia; andthe address provided by the recipient is one to which (large) letters can be delivered by the incumbent postal service.That means, for example, Yemen is excluded; and Australia Post Parcel Locker and Parcel Collect addresses may not be used as the delivery address, because Australia Post will not deliver letters to such addresses as a rule. Whether letters addressed to a Parcel Locker will be automatically redirected, behind the scenes and at Australia Post's discretion, to the registered user's residential address on file is irrelevant. SELECTION METHOD I will select recipients randomly in principle. For each ink sampler set in this giveaway, I will group expressions of interest posted here by the stated entry deadline thus: Entrants who have never been allocated any of my giveaway ink sampler setsEntrants who have received a ink sampler set from me before, but have not already been allocated a different ink sampler set in this giveawayEntrants who have already been allocated another ink sampler set in this giveawayand then: If Group 1 is not empty, I will randomly select a member of that group as the recipient for the set (thus putting him or her in Group 3 for everything else in this giveaway).If Group 1 is empty, I will randomly select a member of Group 2 if it is not empty.If both Group 1 and Group 2 are empty, I will randomly select a member of Group 3 if it is not empty.If all three groups are empty, i.e. nobody wants that ink sampler set, then that particular ink sampler set is permanently withdrawn.However, exceptions may be made, such as if N sampler sets are offered, and there are only N entrants each putting down a different first preference, in which case they all get allocated their first preference with no random selection.

I was wondering how many fountain pens are sold every year. I read that the fountain pen industry sells $1 billion of pens. I can't find how many individual pens are sold. Anyone know the average selling price of fountain pens. I could come up with some estimates of number of units sold. For instance, if I assume $200 asp then I get 5,000,000 fountain pens sold worldwide. I would really appreciate some solid sources that have units sold numbers. It could be any year since 2000.

I did a search on the forum and found a US, British and South Korean ink (sample) exchange, but nothing that covers my neck of the woods (well, at least not in the 10 pages of results my search returned). I see pictures and read descriptions of inks pretty much daily. Many of them leave me curious about how they are in the analog world. Unfortunately, many of these inks (e.g. Noodlers) are not available here and I simply don't have the budget to buy every ink I'd like to try. I really can't imagine I'm the only one with this problem, so I'd like to know if there are other folks here that would be interested in swapping ink samples. Myself, I'm interested in both samples to use and samples of real world usage of an ink (as the latter would seriously reduce mail costs, sending a small package abroad is almost as expensive as a 80ml bottle of Diamine here in the Netherlands. I was thinking about maybe creating some kind of template/form that participants can print out and fill in with the ink in question, so you always know what to expect). My (fairly limited) collection of inks consists of: Diamine Emerald Diamine Red Dragon Diamine Royal Blue J. Herbin Eclat de Saphir J. Herbin Orange Indien J. Herbin Poussiere de Lune J. Herbin Rouge Bourgogne Hero 232 Blue-black (iron-gall) Pelikan 4001 Brilliant black Rohrer & Klingner Blu Mare Rohrer & Klingner Helianthus Rohrer & Klingner Magenta Sailor Jentle Blue-black So, anyone interested in something like this?