How Much To Stockpile Of Your Favorites?

[sirgilbert357]

Heh, I see some names I recognize on that website!

[dragorsi]

oh my secret ploy worked XD i like the site, use the forum and the inks and pens part a lot. happy when someone joins, the more the merrier

[A Smug Dill]

So, the question is: how many bottles of your favorite inks do you stockpile? In the case of Smoky Quartz, I have a reasonable fear it will get discontinued and I'll never be able to get more.

 

 

17 bottles of Pelikan Edelstein Smoky Quartz ink are now in transit to me from the Netherlands by DHL Express. I know who to blame (when my wife questions my decision)!

[silverlifter]

 

 

17 bottles of Pelikan Edelstein Smoky Quartz ink are now in transit to me...

 

The old adage, "never quarrel with a man that buys ink by the barrel" immediately springs to mind.

[A Smug Dill]

The old adage, "never quarrel with a man that buys ink by the barrel" immediately springs to mind.

Haha, actually I never heard that one before!

 

At less than one-third of the Australian RRP(?) for the ink per bottle — including shipping (and GST-neither-collected-nor-paid) — I just couldn't resist.

 

If Sailor souboku was available for retail by the barrel (or in one-litre or larger bottles) I'd probably order one from Japan. But there is something to be said for buying ink in 60ml-or-smaller bottles that can be readily packaged up as gifts.

 

Not that it would prevent some fellow forum members and/or Parker(?) fans here from continually looking for opportunities to pick fights with me openly (as opposed to just putting me on ignore) even though it's clear they can neither win the arguments nor change my views.

[bemon]

I usually order a replacement bottle as I'm nearing the end of my in use bottle, if you can call that a stockpile. So just one. But I do have two bottles of my favorite ink in stock- Sailor Shikiori Yonaga. Only because those small bottles get used up fast, and and they can be hard to come by at my local store.

 

Yonaga is already $20 CAD + tax for just 20 ml. If I have to order it online then I usually get nailed for shipping and end up paying $30 for 20 ml of ink.

[A Smug Dill]

My stockpile of inks

Product	Spare bottles
Pelikan Edelstein Smoky Quartz	17 x 50ml (in transit)
Hero 234 carbon black	4 x 56ml
Hero 232 iron-gall blue-black	3 x 60ml
Rohrer & Klingner Alt-Goldgrün	2 x 50ml
Rohrer & Klingner Aubergine	2 x 50ml
Sailor Shikiori rikyucha	2 x 50ml
Sailor Shikiori yamadori	2 x 50ml
Sailor souboku	2 x 50ml
Noodler's Golden Brown	1 x 88ml
Noodler's Green Marine	1 x 88ml
Noodler's Kiowa Pecan	1 x 88ml
Lamy Crystal Ink Benitoite	2 x 30ml
Pilot Iroshizuku ku-jaku	1 x 50ml
Pilot Iroshizuku yama-budo	1 x 50ml
Platinum Carbon Black	1 x 50ml#
Sailor kiwaguro	1 x 50ml
Sailor seiboku	1 x 50ml
Sailor Shikiori chushu	1 x 50ml
Sailor Shikiori miruai	1 x 50ml
Sailor Shikiori nioisumire	1 x 50ml
Sailor Shikiori okuyama	1 x 50ml
Sailor Shikiori shigure	1 x 50ml
Sailor Shikiori souten	1 x 50ml
Sailor Shikiori tokiwamatsu	1 x 50ml
Sailor Shikiori yodaki	2 x 20ml
Sailor Shikiori yonaga	2 x 20ml
De Atramentis Hyacinth (scented) blue	1 x 35ml
Herbin Bleu Nuit	1 x 30ml
Herbin Perle Noire	1 x 30ml
Sailor STORiA Magic Purple	1 x 30ml
Colorverse Dark Energy	1 x 15ml
Colorverse Vortex Motion	1 x 15ml
Pilot Iroshizuku asa-gao	1 x 15ml

# salvaged from a new 60ml bottle that arrived with a broken lid

 

A question arises in my mind for the stockpilers, How many 50ml bottles did you empty in 2018?

None in 2018, zilch in 2019, and not likely any in 2020.

 

The highest number of bottles I have acquired of an ink (without having first depleted any bottles of it) is four. That ink was Sailor souboku ink,

Obviously that record has been broken, more than once, since I wrote that. I ordered four bottles of Hero 232 (which all arrived eventually), eight bottles of Hero 234 (of which only five arrived, and as far as I can see, only five were ever sent even though I was never informed by the seller that my order was only partially fulfilled), and ten bottles of Hero 202 (none of which was ever dispatched), all on the same day from two separate sellers. Not that I tried any of those inks before that, and not that I expect to have much practical use for them; but since I wanted to try them, and the shipping charges far outweigh the price of a bottle (US$0.44–3.82), when I found sellers that offered (at least) one shipping method that has fixed charges for up to ten or so bottles, I didn't hesitate to risk "wasting" the equivalent of the shipping charges (that would apply if I had to put another order in later for a replacement bottle, even assuming there is no increase in such; COVID-19 certainly shook all that up) on more bottles upfront. I also naively thought multiple bottles would force the seller to send the parcel rather better packaged than just tossing a single bottle in its thin retail cardboard box into a flimsy, unpadded shipping bag typical of vendors based in China.

 

I did try Pelikan Edelstein Smoky Quartz recently, and found myself sufficiently "in like" with it, before ordering the 17 bottles (with "free" shipping to Australia!) when they're offered more cheaply than, say, KWZ Ink. Among the brands of inks that I normally use, only Diamine and Rohrer & Klingner would cost me less per millilitre. Noodler's Ink is only cheap in the US, in the same way Pilot Iroshizuku and Sailor Jentle inks are cheap to get in Japan; that pricing has little relevance in the outside world.

 

All of the above should have taught me not to stockpile the inks that I thought I was going to love and use all the time.

Obviously not.

 

From my experience buying several bottles of the very same ink needs to be justified rather well.

I can see only two particular reasons:

1) the ink is a LE,

or/and

2) you use this ring almost exclusively so you appreciate the feeling of a resonable deposit of this ink.

... hard to come by at my local store.

 

Yonaga is already $20 CAD + tax for just 20 ml. If I have to order it online then I usually get nailed for shipping...

I almost can't remember the last time I bought ink locally, when with very few exceptions I can usually order inks and pens online from overseas retailers and end up paying half of local stockists' asking prices for foreign products. The terms (including the cost to me) and conditions of shipping therefore always play a large part in my decision-making; a lot of the surplus bottles listed above were bought so as to pad the total value of some order to reach the eligibility threshold for free shipping.

 

Then, of course, I'm also suspectible to hype and FUD, and thus I ended up with so many 50ml bottles of Sailor Shikiori (né Sailor Jentle Shikisai) inks. I can't believe I actually paid a local retailer its asking price for a bottle of yamadori, and frankly that ink didn't turn out impressing me all that much.

[inkstainedruth]

I can see having 2 or 3 of bottles of Smoky Quartz -- it's a lovely color (I don't tend to like browns that are red leaning and much prefer the sepia toned ones) But 17? Yikes!

Like I said early on, most of the time one backup bottle is enough with the exception of vintage inks because they're not often easy to find (and might not be in good condtion -- as my experience last year with some vintage Sanford Pen-It Blue-Black showed me only too well).

In most cases, one or two bottles of X ink in Y color is sufficient, particularly for IG inks (which tend to be only one per color).

I do tend to get samples whenever possible because if I end up hating the color/behavior I'm only out a few dollars. And if I DO like the color I have a ready to go vial for travel purposes. There are some inks I've tried recently that I like well enough to get full bottles of (Robert Oster Grey Seas and Carbon Fire) but I still have some ink left of both in the sample vials (they were ordered from VanNess, which tends to do larger volume samples than some other places.

As for the question of box vs. no box? I prefer boxes whenever possible because they stack more neatly and also protect the ink in the bottle from light better. The latter especially because I'm not the most neat/organized person out there and a lot of bottles are in the living room instead of in the boxes on my shelves where they belong.... (I had to laugh at a thing a friend shared on FB of a series of an owl moving its head all around (including upside down!) and the caption was something like "Now where did I put that -- it was JUST HERE!" And I said "Yup, that's me except for the head upside down part -- I'm exceptionally bad at 'My pen was JUST HERE! And I haven't moved or gotten up for the past hour....'"

I'm also bad about buying more inks when I have other samples I haven't tried (some of which are 6 years old at this point... ).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[A Smug Dill]

Some day Pelikan Edelstein Smoky Quartz and Rohrer & Klingner Aubergine will be considered vintage inks, too.

[Arkanabar]

To the OP: Yes, ink should last for years, especially if you keep it away from oxygen, sunlight, and houseplants, which are covered with symbiotic bacteria, yeasts, and archaea, which they apparently shed nonstop.

One of the rules for the Seven Essentials is that they have to be fairly easy to acquire, so LE inks are right out. If I wind up with an LE ink, I just use it, generally.

I have no duplicate bottles. Like some others, I also don't use a lot of ink, and in truth, the only color I'd be at all anxious about not having is black, and right now I have a bottle each of Bad Black Moccasin (at least 60ml remain, and I dilute it 1:1), Heart of Darkness (an untouched 4.5oz Boston round that I expect to dilute, probably around 2:1 or 3:1), MB Mystery Black (over 50ml remain), Quink Permanent Black with Solv-X (over 50ml remain), and a gold plastic tipping bottle of MontBlanc-Simplo Black with SuperCleaner SC21 (probably around 40-50ml remaining).

My wife buys me ink a lot faster than I use it. But all the ink I have fits into a shoebox. The only bottles I've kept in boxes are Noodler's, which do not add significantly to space usage.

[WaskiSquirrel]

I stockpiled several bottles of Sailor Jentle Epinard when it came back on the market several years ago. But now I'm to the point that if an ink runs out, it runs out. There are other inks out there, and I have more ink than I'll ever use up anyway.

[ridiculopathy]

I panicked and bought an extra bottle of Sailor Jentle Sky High when it was discontinued...THE FIRST TIME (~2014). Now it’s being discontinued again, and I’m still nowhere near finishing the original bottle!

 

Therefore, my version of “stockpiling” these days is buying the standard size bottle of ink. Also, there are a lot more ink manufacturers, so finding dupes is not that difficult.

[Uncial]

I don't really understand obsessive ink hoarding. By 'obsessive' I mean the people that post on Twitter and the like about the fifty bottles of Pen & Message Denim Blue they bought before the limits came in. I will confess that there is a kind of FOMO when you start seeing posts like that and it might tempt me to buy one bottle just to see what all the fuss is about, but having done that a couple of times I must confess that I've felt a bit stung by what feels like clever marketing through influencers.

 

I may still be guilty of hoarding if buying two (or a maximum of three) bottles of a particular colour from the same brand counts. To be honest though, I don't do it any longer. There are so many great inks out there today that my pen will never run dry of interest and some of the inks I've bought more than one bottle of in the past I look back on now and ponder why I did it.

[sakshi__reddy]

I bought one extra bottle of Sailor Rikyu Cha once I realised how much I loved it. I finished my first bottle earlier this year, so I feel justified in doing that. I'd love to get another bottle, but the current prices are a deal breaker. I would much rather look for a way to get Cigar once I am close to running out of this bottle.

 

Aside from that, I have one back up each of Kin Mokusei and Sailor Old Burgundy. I haven't found any satisfactory dupes for either of these, and they are almost always inked. OB is really hard to get, and Kin Mokusei was being discontinued in the big bottle, so I went ahead and got doubles.

 

All said and done, I don't think I use any other inks frequently enough to have even one full bottle, let alone more. Going forward, I am considering just getting samples when I want some "novelty".

[antarmukhee]

I don't stock ink. They are readily available when needed. I have just 4 bottles - 4 different colours.

 

[Karmachanic]

The way things are going I'm thinking it might be wise to make a modest cache of favoured inks.

[bemon]

 

 

I almost can't remember the last time I bought ink locally, when with very few exceptions I can usually order inks and pens online from overseas retailers and end up paying half of local stockists' asking prices for foreign products. The terms (including the cost to me) and conditions of shipping therefore always play a large part in my decision-making; a lot of the surplus bottles listed above were bought so as to pad the total value of some order to reach the eligibility threshold for free shipping.

 

Then, of course, I'm also suspectible to hype and FUD, and thus I ended up with so many 50ml bottles of Sailor Shikiori (né Sailor Jentle Shikisai) inks. I can't believe I actually paid a local retailer its asking price for a bottle of yamadori, and frankly that ink didn't turn out impressing me all that much.

 

I do 99% of my shopping online, but sometimes like to browse "the ink wall" at my local store. Or sometimes I happen to be in the area and if Wonderpens website says they have a bottle of Yonaga I grab one to add to my collection.

 

I really wish Sailor would sell that ink in a larger bottle.

[A Smug Dill]

On 7/9/2020 at 3:19 AM, A Smug Dill said:

I almost can't remember the last time I bought ink locally, when with very few exceptions I can usually order inks and pens online from overseas retailers and end up paying half of local stockists' asking prices for foreign products.

 

If ordering from a Australian retailer interstate still counts as buying locally, then I bought eight bottles of Robert Oster Sydney Lavender, eight bottles of Herbin Cacao de Brésil, and seven bottles of Jacques Herbin Noir Abyssal — all listed at A$5 per bottle — and a smaller number of bottles of Jacques Herbin Gris de Houle and Robert Oster Yellow Sunset, too, locally since March this year in the name of stockpiling. No, I'm not even convinced that any of them made the list of my favourite inks; but I trust they are more than good enough inks (maybe except Robert Oster Yellow Sunset) that'd I'd be happy to put to general use, instead of consuming my absolute favourite blacks, grey, taupe, and purple-grey inks at every turn.

[Ergative]

What I great discussion! I just read through all of it.

 

I don't stockpile ink, simply because we are now living in what seems to be a Golden Age of Inks. Every time I blink there's a new company on the market (Robert Oster a few years ago, Vinta recently) or a new ink line from old companies (Diamine sheening line). I don't ever worry that, even if something I like is discontinued, I'll find something else that I like just as much.

[A Smug Dill]

1 hour ago, Ergative said:

I don't ever worry that, even if something I like is discontinued, I'll find something else that I like just as much.

 

It is my character flaw to dwell unduly and unproductively on my mistakes; and lost petty opportunities to score bargains as a retail consumer for something I like well enough feel like mistakes, for which I'm prone to castigate myself, far more severely than for wasting money on something I ultimately do not end up using but perhaps throw out in as-new condition with the trash.

 

So, for me it isn't a case of worrying that I won't find something else that I like just as much or better; it's not finding that something at the same perceived bargain price I could've bought the product that is being used as a the yardstick for liking, when it was offered at a significant discount for ”a limited time only” and/or a small allocation (or remaining pile) of stock.

 

Furthermore, even though my aesthetic assessment of something is not likely to increase as a result of it becoming rarer and/or more sought after in time, and I'm not apt to look for opportunities to sell what I have remaining and profit from it (on paper, anyway), I'm nevertheless apt to “like” owning something, more than before, if it is sought after and demand outstrips supply. It's almost a value-add in itself, if ownership makes me feel either lucky or astute… even when deep down I know I'm just wasting money.