Cheap Ink Cartridges

[bob_hayden]

Yiren Ink Cartridges

 

These are now available on eBay for $1.44 US, shipping included, in your choice of black or blue. Out of the box, they look and perform very much like Jinhao and Hero cartridges, but without any hassles. Not mentioned in the eBay liisting,though, is that unlike most cartridges from Asia these are not standard international. Instead they look made for the Yiren Safari clone, and may work with Parker or Lamy pens and compatibles. I tried them in the Yiren and Hero Safari clones where they worked very well. Time will tell if they get cranky. The black is like many other generic blacks -- not as black as I would like. The blue is very middle of the road -- more saturated than classic schoolroom blues of decades past, but not supersaturated. It's a bit darker than the other blues from Asia. So far I prefer these to the similarly priced Hero inks for their 359 pens.

[bob_hayden]

25 x Standard Sized Universal Fountain Pen Ink Cartridge Refills Blue/Black 4cm

That's the listing title on eBay for the cartridges I just received from England. Said listing shows two colors on offer, blue and black, and the cartridges come bulk packed in poly bags of 25. The bags are sealed with staples and a cardboard top with a hole for hanging them on a display rack. I had long been jealous of the low prices for good quality generic cartridges in Europe and thought this might be my chance to partake of that. The price per cartridge was a bit over ten US of A cents per cartridge -- about the same as majus, who also sells European ink cartridges on eBay (in many colors). The only cheaper option is Thornton. (See above for reviews of those two.)

 

Imagine my surprise when the cartridges arrived and turned out to have been made in China! It is a strange world when a product can be manufactured in China, shipped to England, and then shipped to the US in individual orders and still sell for a very competitive price! The cartridges themselves were short international (not the somewhat longer sort common from China) but like most Chinese cartridges these had a substantial plug in the flat end rather than being all one piece. This somewhat reduces their ink capacity. I wondered if they would prove to be rebadged Hero, Jinhao or Yiren cartridges. Alas, they were not as good as those brands. Instead they appeared to be from the same source as the batch I reviewed above (#54) that sold under the listing title

 

Fountain Pen ink 30PCS 5ml 2.7 mm interface Mixed color Ink Refill Cartridg

 

Which is to say that they were made from a harder and clearer plastic than most cartridges, were hard to pierce, and once pierced, immediately fell out and made a mess. With that earlier batch I was able to find pens with a sleeve surrounding the cartridge that would (just) keep the cartridge in place. This time I don't want to bother. If you are feeling more patient, the blue is very nice, wet, darker than Yiren blue above, with some nice shading. The black is not particularly wet and is quite pale.

[bob_hayden]

Here we are awaiting the arrival of another winter snow storm so it is still too early to be ordering ink. However, I do see some developments on eBay,

 

Cartridges like those in posts 54 and 62 above appear to be available in a wider variety of packaging and from a wider variety of sellers. I say "appear" because I have not actually tried any of these. It's way too cold to ship ink from China, and my expectations would be too low to justify spending even a dollar or two to check these out.

 

And one eBay seller appears to be selling the Jinhao cartridges for $4.15 per jar of 80. In this case I say "appears" because the photos show the jars while the text suggests you get one cartridge. $4.15 is way too much for one cartridge, but a very low price for 80. If you are interested, read the review of the Jinhao cartridges earlier in this thread, and confirm with the seller just what you will be getting. The price works out to about 5 cents US per cartridge which is cheaper than even Thornton, and the supply of Thornton inks us drying up. Next cheapest is majus at about 10 cents. If half that, these Jinhaos would be a bargain.

[bob_hayden]

I saw an eBay USA listing with this title:

 

12Pcs Color ink + 4Pcs Fountain Pen EF F M Nib School student office stationery

 

You get four different pens, and 12 ink cartridges in 12 colors, all for $3.55, which made it seem a bargain I could not resist. I was expecting pens like the 77 cent ones I reviewed here

 

https://www.fountainpennetwork.com/forum/topic/332160-best-fountain-pens-under-1-us/

 

and junk cartridges like I reviewed in #54 of this thread but things turned out the other way round. The pens are marginal. (The pens are reviewed in the thread linked above.) but the inks are fine.

 

The cartridges do indeed look like those junk cartridges, but they seem to be made for the Hero 359 pens rather than for pens taking standard international cartridges. In addition, I had only minor difficulties puncturing them, and no difficulties with them falling out. The brand name for both the inks and the pens is CHREN, I think these are a real find. The Hero 359 became a big hit in China, but is less attractive in the US because it takes an odd cartridge that is similar, but not identical, to the Lamy cartridges for the Safari pen the Hero copies. The popularity of the 359 pen in China led to those 359 cartridges being more available there than standard internationals, but not so in the US, where they are hard to find and come in only blue, black and blue-black. This assortment adds ten new colors to the mix, and even if you buy these pen-and-ink combinations and throw away the pens the cartridges are not too expensive. Here are comments on the individual colors followed by a scan. The packaging supplied no names for the ink colors so I gave them my own names.

 

Pink is marginally light -- lighter than the scan shows on my monitor. It might be a strain to read a long letter written with this ink, but that is true of most pink ink.

 

Turquoise is light and bright but quite legible. I like it.

 

Blue looks like many a classic washable blue -- serviceable but unexciting.

 

Black looks very much like Herbin Perle Noire to me.

 

Orange is even lighter than the pink (and lighter than the scan suggests on my hardware). I would classify it as highlighter ink.

 

Purple is a bit on the red side and fine by me.

 

Red looks pretty pale in the pen I tried it in, but that pen has a very fine nib. It might be interesting to see how this looks with a broader nib, but, as I use red ink for marking up manuscripts with a very fine nib, it's a bit too pale for my use.

 

Brown is a bit grey.

 

Yellow I can read in the scan but on the page I see only a faint, illegible yellow mist.

 

Light Green is legible but a bit too light to read comfortably for very long.

 

Dark Green is dark only in comparison to the color I called "Light Green" but it is more saturated than the scan suggests -- a very pure Crayola green.

 

Magenta is a quite pink purple.

 

I liked all the colors except the ones that were too light. The cartridges seem to be slightly off spec. They do not fit in the barrel of a Jinhao 990, and my Wing Sung 401 could not puncture either green cartridge. The seller offers what appear to be the same cartridges without the pens for about !.50 a dozen, or packages of all blue or all black. It might be rash to assume these really are the same, but I have ordered some to find out.

 

 

 

http://statland.org/PenPix/CHRENinks.jpg

[bob_hayden]

This is a follow-up on the CHREN inks reviewed above and some related inks. First, the inks already reviewed. As you can see from the scan, these were tested about three weeks ago. Since then there have been no leaks and only a few isolated problems. The red, and even more so, the black, developed some flow problems. I just tried all the colors, most of which had been sitting for three weeks, and otherwise all started immediately -- a very good performance in my book. Some of the lighter colors got a bit more saturated: turquoise, blue, orange, and light green. This really mattered in the last two cases as those colors are now quite legible.

 

The first batch of inks came as a package with four pens. That package came in two flavors and i have since ordered and received the second. The pens are different but seem to be rearrangements of the parts and prints in the initial batch. The packaging carried the CHREN name and the cartridges came in the same 12 colors and looked identical. I was content to assume they are the same. At the same time I ordered four packages of ink cartridges only, which again appeared to be the same. In the meantime, the packages with four pens have disappeared from eBay.

 

I also ordered some ink cartridges that appeared to be the same from another vendor. These looked the same, and came in the same 12 colors except that I got two black and no blue. However, the cartridges arrived in a bubble pack that had obviously been opened. It carried the AIHAO brand name. I did a partial test to see if they were the same as the CHREN cartridges by trying some of the more interesting colors. I tried the somewhat orangey but legible pink, and the unusual light green and magenta. These all matched the colors I got today for the original inks, leading me to suspect the lighter tones I saw three weeks ago were due to either residual water in the pen from cleaning, or flow that had not fully established itself. The new orange was also more legible.than the first batch was initially -- abut the same as it was after three weeks. Lastly I tried the red in a wet Parker Reflex where I had much better luck than in the previous pen. The red was a bit on the pink side but very bright and legible.

 

The original seller also offers packages of eight all black cartridges. I ordered one package of those to try. The cartridges looked the same as the others but the packaging showed a manufacturer with "Yiren" as part of its name. I do not know if that word is generic in Chinese, like "general", "national" or "corporation" in English, in which case the cartridges could have been made by anyone, or specific like "Chevrolet", "Avis" or "Microsoft" in the US, in which case the cartridges probably came from the company that makes the Yiren pens -- though they might have outsourced them to India!-) Because of the flow problems I had earlier with black, I put one of these "Yiren" cartridges into a wet Parker Reflex. That wrote very wet -- for a few lines. Then more flow problems. Some time ago I got some cartridges sold under the Yiren name on eBay that I was pretty happy with so I dug out one of those. It seemed to work fine, and I would recommend those over any of the black inks discussed here -- except that a quick check of eBay showed no listing for them. At th4e moment I would look elsewhere for black ink.

 

The color inks are very nice and very cheap -- about 10 cents US per cartridges -- only Thornton is cheaper. These fit the Hero 359 and many of the recent pens from Hero, Wing Sung, and Yiren, for which there have not previously been many color options.

[bob_hayden]

I got another assorted dozen from a listing with this title:

 

12X Fountain Pen Ink Cartridges Assorted Color Replaceable Fountain Pen Ink sac

They seemed to be in their original packaging which was unlike any of the previous inks but clearly labeled AIHAO. I tried four colors and the inks seem tp match the earlier inks in color and are OK so far except that I noticed a lot of bleed through on the same sheet of paper on which the CHREN cartridges were fine. Checking some more, I found bleed through with the previous lot of AIHAO cartridges, and with the all-black cartridges that came from the same seller as the CHRENs but had "Yiren" in the manufacturer's name. So, I would have to recommend the CHREN cartridges over any of the others. My source has discontinued all the cartridges and pens I bought from them but if you can believe the photos you can still get the CHREN cartridges (and many more) under the title

 

8 12Pcs Black Blue Color ink Cartridges Refill Universal design Fountain pen ink

They are in the first photo.

[bob_hayden]

It appears majus is now doing business as fountainpeninkcarts. 100% feedback. Good prices on cartridges in short international, Waterman, and Lamy form factors.

[rockydoggy]

Thanks for the reminder about majus, from whom I've ordered several times over the last few years.

A solid, reliable vendor.

[bob_hayden]

I recently found an eBay seller offering Jinhao cartridges in bulk at a very attractive price under the heading

 

30pcs Jinhao Universal Black Blue Fountain Pen Ink Sac Cartridges 2.6mm Refills

 

I had a couple of posts about Jinhao cartridges earlier in the thread and David was more impressed (but the link to his review that I posted is dead this morning). These should be compatible with standard international cartridges though they are longer and this may be an issue in some pens.

[Gloucesterman]

It appears majus is now doing business as fountainpeninkcarts. 100% feedback. Good prices on cartridges in short international, Waterman, and Lamy form factors.

Clicking the included link yielded the following message:

• The User ID you entered was not found. Please check the User ID and try again.
• Note: you can look up a member's eBay User ID if you know that member's email address.

[bob_hayden]

Yeah, he keeps changing his eBay name and the listing titles. Try searching eBay for "fountain pen ink cartridges," look for a photo like the one below, click on that link, and then on "See other items."

 

[Bibliophage]

I think he's magus7777 now - https://www.ebay.com/sch/majus7777/m.html

 

I've bought the jars of 100 Jinhao for about $5 from snakewang2005 (I have NO idea about that name) One bottle of black, one bottle of blue.

[bob_hayden]

Yes, that's the name on the photo I posted. I've found the photos he uses to be more stable than his user name so that's why I posted the photo instead of a link but who knows how long either will last. Despite all these changes I have never found him hard to find if I search for "fountain pen ink cartridges".

 

That's a terrific price per cartridge for the Jinhaos. How are you liking them?

[Bibliophage]

They're the normal Jinhao cartridges. They work fine. I can't give you a precis on their quality, because I'm not using them at the moment - I'm trying to use up some decades old ink I'm also partial to 'writes like a nail' pens, due to the constant weird surfaces upon which I write.

 

There's another seller with the 'cans' of cartridges as well, for about $6.50, as I recall. They have a Jinhao seal on the top, to show that it hasn't been opened. It's just paper, though.

[bob_hayden]

Another cheap option, especially if you do not want to order in quantity, are the various folks on eBay selling Chinese cartridges at about 80 cents US for ten. That puts them below everything else in such small quantities. I took a flyer on an order of these but won't quote details because that vendor is no longer selling them anyway. No brand is specified. A key fact is that the cartridges come in your choice of black, blue, blue-black, or red -- exactly the same choices as the Hero 23x bottled inks. As is customary in China, the vendor did not specify what pens these might fit, but in fact they seem to be for the Hero 359 and compatibles (which probably covers most inexpensive recent pens from China). The barrel of the cartridges is the medium length style, with a large plug in the closed end, as used by Hero, Jinhao, and some other Chinese sources. Finally, the description mentions gall and tiny particles. The 23x blue-black is reputed to be an iron gall ink and the black a nanoparticle ink. I ordered black and it does look like a pigmented ink. So, I am guessing I got Hero ink, which is nice really because Hero ink cartridges for the 359 have been fairly hard to find in the US. Unfortunately, the item descriptions are pretty vague. If you would actually like the Hero ink, try to find a seller offering these four colors.

[bob_hayden]

Back in posts #64-66 I discussed some Chinese inks that came in packages of 12 assorted color cartridges for about $0.10 each. That is a very good price -- particularly for multiple colors. Majus currently gets 0.14 except if you buy blue (only) short internationals in quantities of 100. Thornton has shorts for 0.10 but only in pink, black, and orange. (I can recommend their pink.) You can also get Jinhao cartridges very cheaply if you like black, blue, or blue-black. The cartridges at hand are from Lishui City Hongzhi Stationeries Co. LTD and carry the Starry River brand name. Like the other multicolor 12 packs they fit the Hero 359 and compatible pens. They are available in the US of A on eBay from several vendors. It seems to be a fluctuating situation so I will post the photo nearly all the sellers use.

 

 

They are made of reasonably pliable plastic. It takes some force to insert them in a pen but I was successful every time. The closed end seems a little fatter than usual even for this form factor, and several pens did not have room for this. As you can see, I tried them in some Parkers that did have room, and so far have not seen the leaking common with Chinese cartridges in Parker pens.

 

http://statland.org/PenPix/StarryR.pngMost of them worked well. Favorites were the apparent blue-black which was the only one to show a little shading, and the very blue blue that reminded me of Private Reserve American Blue. The light, bright blue looks turquoise on some papers in some lighting. Pink is quite legible in the scan but a bit light to be read in real life. The yellow is totally illegible and behaves very badly. One red cartridge was fine while I would have to call the other defective. It had all kinds if issues. It was very hard to get flowing and then it bled and feathered badly. I liked that the green was a bit more legible than Always Greener and had much less bleedthrough but still was too pale for even a letter to a friend.

[A Smug Dill]

Ink cartridges, especially of unclear provenance, are not my bag, but you can check out Nemosine's offer.

[bob_hayden]

Thanks, there are some great buys there on both bottles and cartridges. The cartridges, however, also seem to be of unclear provenance.

[Bibliophage]

Thanks, there are some great buys there on both bottles and cartridges. The cartridges, however, also seem to be of unclear provenance.

The bottles are of unclear provenance as well - so what does it matter if you just want basic blue, black, green, etc?

[A Smug Dill]

The bottles are of unclear provenance as well - so what does it matter if you just want basic blue, black, green, etc?

 

 

The origin and characteristics of inks matter to me, even when I just want a "basic black" or "basic blue" ink to put in my pens; but then, I personally don't use ink cartridges, and "cheap" (at the recommended price or a discounted price) is not a quality for which I'd look at an ink favourably.

 

Aside: I strongly believe that the bottled ink being sold by Nemosine at the moment are made by Diamine, on the basis that they are stated as made in the United Kingdom and have the colours of Prussian Blue, Imperial Blue and Imperial Purple in presumably the same range. However, even if they are indeed Diamine inks, it isn't cheaper for me to buy from Nemosine now at the discounted price. Cult Pens sells 80ml bottles of those Diamine inks for £4.92 (ex VAT) ≈ US$6.40 any day of the week, and sometimes at 10% off that price; and Cult Pens's international delivery charges are more reasonable, not to mention it's easy enough to make its free shipping threshold of £70 for an order, even when I'm bargain-hunting for cheap and discounted items under £10 each.