'best' Way Of Dealing With One's Purchasing 'mistakes'?

[mariom]

Whoo HOO! And Mario is a wonderful CRV pen pal.

 

Now you're making me blush Amberlea....

[A Smug Dill]

@amberleadavis Thanks again.

 

I'd be happy to take the Penman off your hands and pay shipping to Melbourne if you're happy to pack and send.

Sure thing. I'll send you a private message to organise.

[ErrantSmudge]

If I lived in Australia I would totally take that bottle of Montblanc Ruby off your hands, if for no other reason than the bottle.

[Timotheus]

Isn't there some kind of Art Academy in your city you can make happy with a whole range of nicely colored inks?

[A Smug Dill]

If I lived in Australia I would totally take that bottle of Montblanc Ruby off your hands, if for no other reason than the bottle.

It's now gone to a better place.

 

Isn't there some kind of Art Academy in your city you can make happy with a whole range of nicely colored inks?

Not that I know of. In a fashion, it's just not how things are done here. Most organisations are happy to take monetary donations, but any physical item related to the organisation's charter or practice that requires someone taking time to inspect and then deciding how to get it to people who could find utility from it, the stance is generally "thanks but no".

Edited September 6, 2019 by A Smug Dill

[inkstainedruth]

Many non-profits here in the US are the same way -- if it's a food donation, it has to be sealed up (which we found when we tried to donate open sacks of flour rather then drive them the 20 hours home from Mississippi -- and one time when the people from the charity came to pick up stuff other people donated and my husband asked if they could use vanilla, one guy declined on the grounds that they'd had a cook working cooking meals for the homeless shelter that was an alcoholic and he would have just drunk it himself... ). And even "hard" goods often have to be considered in terms of depreciation (for tax purposes).

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

[A Smug Dill]

I thank Mario for putting his hand up, and I'm glad the ink bottles have arrived safely and been picked up on the weekend. Mario has generously overpaid me when reimbursing my postage costs, so what I intend to do is use the difference to cover the cost of postage, packing material and containers for two or three small-scale ink sample giveaways in his honour that will be open to FPN community members in Australia.

[ParramattaPaul]

It's only a 10 hour drive to Melbourne and the pen show is organised by pen enthusiasts.

 

What do you have to lose?

 

And there are pen people like me who would appreciate new blood.

There is that.

 

And, it would be an opportunity to overnight in Canberra and pay a visit to the AWM.

[A Smug Dill]

Moving on...

Create and sell themed ink-sample packs? There's always people searching for the perfect blue-black, or an office-friendly green, or just the right shade of brown.

People might be more willing to pay Australian shipping prices for a set of a dozen inks than for one or two part-used bottles.

I actually created such packs and sent them to like-minded fountain pen users at my cost (of ink, vials, packaging and postage) in the past, because they're the type of hobbyist that I believe will buy whole retail bottles (not from me, of course!) once they identify colours they like and want to use in actual writing applications;
_...‹snip›...
That, to me, is a good use of surplus volume of inks that I actually like and value,

I've now put together the first giveaway set of samples, being the more colourful seven of nine iron-gall inks I have. (I left out the two blue-blacks, which are probably less interesting but also cheaper to just jump into the deep end and buy in retail bottles than the seven.)

Does anyone have any suggestions from where I can buy empty international standard cartridges by the hundreds economically? That's one idea I may be prepared to entertain, in terms of inks I like (as opposed to my purchasing 'mistakes'), as far as offering samples go.
_...‹snip›...
Roughly 0.7ml of an ink ought to give a user enough of an idea whether they like the colour enough to source more.
_...‹snip›...
(Of course, that means they aren't exactly convenient for aficionados of Japanese 'Big Three' fountain pen brands like myself. I'll have to think about how to deal with that part. I don't particularly want or intend to leave them out in the cold, if I'm going to offer ink samples to spread awareness and share user experience.)

Preserving enough of the ink for later actual 'use' or application, on the other hand, would be relatively tricky and impractical (but doable if you have a glue gun, and find keeping 0.3–0.4ml of it a worthwhile exercise).

I settled on a far less limiting solution: 1.5ml centrifuge tubes, which is also far less work for me to use and seal than (international standard) ink cartridges that originally came filled with commercially available ink. I'll also include a 1ml syringe with a plastic 12.5mm 14-Gauge blunt tip needle with each set, as a fit-for-purpose means to extracting the ink from the tubes and transferring it into an empty cartridge or converter with a mouth of whatever bore, and even eyedropper pens and some piston-fillers.

They'll all fit inside lightweight corrugated cardboard mailers of nominally 16mm depth externally, which allows the packages to be sent as large letters (at least as far as Australia Post is concerned). I've even successfully sent a surplus Platinum Balance pen completely with converter to someone in the UK that way, and I wasn't being sneaky; different staff at my local post office told me twice — once when I showed them the contents while checking for the most suitable postage method, and once after the package was sealed with tape — to send it as a letter. This substantially reduces postage costs, and make it viable to send the ink samples to recipients outside Australia as well, provided that the local postal regulations in their respective countries are prepared to accept and handle containers of liquid in the mail.

The centrifuge tubes are inherently resealable wth the lids they come with, and the narrow plastic hinge connecting lid to tube on each one should last at least two or three uses. Since the point is not inherently to maximise potential for reuse and repurposing, I don't need to use the physically larger 1.8ml sample vials with screw-caps and O-rings (which conveniently happen to fit such pens as the Platinum Preppy).

How's that for a well thought out solution?

I thank Mario for putting his hand up, and I'm glad the ink bottles have arrived safely and been picked up on the weekend. Mario has generously overpaid me when reimbursing my postage costs, so what I intend to do is use the difference to cover the cost of postage, packing material and containers for two or three small-scale ink sample giveaways in his honour that will be open to FPN community members in Australia.

At this point what Mario has overpaid me will cover postage costs for three or four such ink sample sets (depending on whether the recipients are in Australia or overseas). I'll contribute the ink, containers, syringes, packing materials and effort.

• The first set is iron-gall inks.
• The second set will probably be pigment inks.
• The third set will probably be Kobe INK Story and Sailor Kujukuri Coast inks, that cannot be bought in retail bottles smaller than 50ml (and the Kujukuri Coast inks are difficult to get outside of Japan to boot).
• If there's going to be a fourth set, it'll probably be monster sheeners. I just ordered some Colorverse inks, but don't expect them to arrive until maybe mid-December.

Let's see how that works out, and gauge what level of interest is out there for free ink samples. If they prove to be well received, than I hope it becomes a format that more Aussies will use to send each other samples to play with on a non-commercial basis, given it's relatively more difficult (and expensive) to get certain inks here.

[TSherbs]

Moving on...

 

 

I've now put together the first giveaway set of samples, being the more colourful seven of nine iron-gall inks....

Jeri Ryan uses fountain pens?

[A Smug Dill]

...‹snip›... send it as a letter. This substantially reduces postage costs, and make it viable to send the ink samples to recipients outside Australia as well, provided that the local postal regulations in their respective countries are prepared to accept and handle containers of liquid in the mail.

I've looked into postal regulations in some more detail. Fitting absorbent material between the sealed liquid container and the corrugated cardboard mailer box, without making the article thicker (and at risk of being rejected for letter post service) was a bit of a challenge. For the iron-gall ink samples giveaway, I made a simple seven-pocket holder from a piece of 1.2mm-thick felt, but I'm not sure whether that's considered sufficient material to soak up a maximum of 7*0.75ml=5.25ml of ink in the event all seven centrifuge tubes fail/leak. Next time, though, I'll probably go for something less labour-intensive, such as unrolling supermarket-grade cotton balls to use as lining material held in place with cling wrap.

 

 

That rectangular space marked out by the strips of polystyrene can only fit seven 1.5ml centrifuge tubes side by side, assuming they all have the same upright orientation. However, if the inclusion of a syringe for the transfer of ink from the tubes is not required, I supposed I could fit a maximum of ten centrifuge tubes into one of the 180x100x16mm mailer boxes I use:

 

 

and probably still jam in a 0.5ml plastic pipette that can be used to deposit ink inside an international standard converter. All that, plus sealing tape and a CN22 customs declaration form, will probably scrape in at just under 50g.

 

Hopefully someone else here from Australia is going to find this information useful, at least as a starting point, if they're looking for the cheapest way to send (or trade) ink samples.

Edited November 9, 2019 by A Smug Dill