La Couronne du Comte clearance/closeout sales

[A Smug Dill]

Oh, and North African Violet is gone too. That caught my eye because I have, and rather like, NAV, Kiowa Pecan, and Golden Brown, but I already have spare bottles of the last two from early 2013, whereas I have no second bottle of NAV.

 

The sole bottle of Venvstas ink (in some sort of blue) was sold earlier today.

 

The two sheenier colourways (out of four listed) of Pelikan Twist fountain pens are also gone now, but was probably sold closer to 24 hours ago.

 

Ah, and now I see some more ‘hidden’ items have been added…

[Licue]

2 hours ago, DvdRiet said:

By the way, those Lovi cards of wooden animals to put together are really super cute! I've sent a few to pens pals (there's a postcard format printed on the back) and I have the little dragonfly myself. He sits next to the potted plants I have on top of a small filing cabinet that I have in my office. 

They look really cute indeed 🙂  

 

I'm pretty tempted to buy a few inks, but unfortunately the one I want the most is sold out, and I don't think I can justify adding this order on top of the other orders I already have in mind... 😩

[A Smug Dill]

2 hours ago, DvdRiet said:

By the way, those Lovi cards of wooden animals to put together are really super cute!

 

Yeah, I bought three small ones — the dragonfly, the swallow, and the sea turtle — for our friends' three kids, and an owl for my wife (although it was a toss-up between that and the penguin, which looks a little more eye-catching for being bicolour, but seems to be structurally a little more simple).

 

45 minutes ago, DvdRiet said:

I thought I only saw one or two and then suddenly when I popped back after ordering the Super5 stuff, there were loads of them.

 

The Noodler's inks aren't listed together as a cluster on the Specials page.

 

[lascosas]

I placed 2 orders yesterday with a total of 26 different items (and sorry Smug Dill, that included your El Lawrence).  I just received notice that DHL has received both orders and they will be delivered to San Francisco next Wednesday. 

[lascosas]

I placed my two orders yesterday six hours apart, yet the order numbers were consecutive.

[A Smug Dill]

45 minutes ago, lascosas said:

I placed my two orders yesterday six hours apart, yet the order numbers were consecutive.

 

I think the €50 minimum per order is making it a little trickier for those who would have jumped onto the cheap bottle of ink or that discounted ‘school pen’; and, in the meantime, people like you and me are seriously cutting down the candidate items for inclusion by the time they're ready to bite the bullet.

 

I placed two orders yesterday, and they also had consecutive order numbers, but I didn't leave six hours between them.

 

Anyway, against my better judgment I just placed another order. I saw that I was mistaken earlier about Noodler's Ink North African Violet being sold out; but I ended up not getting it, and instead picked some Noodler's inks I haven't tried, as well as some I think I will forward to friends, who may be deterred from ordering those inks themselves because of the €50 order minimum and the shipping charges involved.

 

Edit:

Hmmm, interesting. It appears some of the content on the Specials page is cached. For example, even though a Noodler's Ink product is no longer available (because I bought the only bottle a few minutes ago), it's still showing ‘In stock’ and the web shop application with present an ‘Add to Cart’ button for it; but if I just look at Noodler's ink products, without going through the Specials page, I can see they're out of stock even in the index/list returned from the query. Fortunately, even if one were to click ‘Add to Cart’ on the Specials page for something that is not actually available any more, the system will then throw an appropriate error message, and stop the user in his/her tracks.

 

Edited May 20, 2022 by A Smug Dill

[A Smug Dill]

Benu products recently added.

 

Also, it seems a handful more bottles of Noodler’s inks have been found from the recesses of the store’s warehouse, and now added to the list.

 

[lascosas]

Yep, I got two Benus a couple of hours ago, and since then lots of Brause nib holders and nibs have appeared.  This is like a daily Easter egg hunt!  This order number was 14 higher than my last order maybe 30 hours ago. 

[A Smug Dill]

20 minutes ago, lascosas said:

and since then lots of Brause nib holders and nibs have appeared. 

 

Haha, dammit, I bought some Brause nib holders as padding so as to make the €50 minimum on one of my orders a couple of days ago, before they were discounted. I’m glad I didn’t wait, though; I see the purple version of the Caran d’Ache Fixpencil 2mm pencil lead holder, which I prefer to the ochre version, has since sold out.

 

[lascosas]

Yep, I also got that this morning.

[DvdRiet]

@A Smug Dill, how are you seeing how many of a particular item are available?

[mke]

13 hours ago, DvdRiet said:

how are you seeing how many of a particular item are available

IIRC, if you place more than the available stock in your basket, the system tells you.

[DvdRiet]

29 minutes ago, mke said:

IIRC, if you place more than the available stock in your basket, the system tells you.

yes, I did see that it does work that way, thanks! I was hoping to figure out what was going on with an item I ordered day before yesterday and couldn’t get because they said they didn’t have it after all, but I still see it listed. It will let me order one but not two, so it’s obviously the last one, but it’s less than the €50 minimum to order and I can’t call the shop for help before someone else snags it (assuming it is indeed available and there was a mixup before) because it’s the weekend… 😟

[DvdRiet]

Oh, and I just got the newsletter announcing the sale in this morning. So, eagle-eyed @A Smug Dill got us in a full two days before the official start! 😁

[lascosas]

My two orders placed Thursday arrived today in San Francisco.  Four days.

[A Smug Dill]

I see somebody has been busy just now snapping up all the Krishna inks; and, since their unit prices are so low are there were so few bottles left, they probably bought a couple of the Diplomat Magnum pens, and either the Benu Sceptre or the Fine Writing International Kuroshio pen, just to reach the €50 minimum for the order.

[jayKellner]

I've looked for something interesting and not so much stuff left....

[lascosas]

 smug Dill...

Guilty on all charges!

[Licue]

1 hour ago, jayKellner said:

I've looked for something interesting and not so much stuff left....

A lot of the stuff I would have been interested in is gone already, but on the other hand they recently added a few other things that I might want 🤷🏼‍♀️

 

I find this bit-by-bit clearance kinda ..difficult tbh.

 

 

[A Smug Dill]

12 hours ago, Licue said:

I find this bit-by-bit clearance kinda ..difficult tbh.

 

I know what you mean. It's difficult if you're trying to put together a single order to ‘score’ some good bargains but only exactly what you want, or have at least been interested in for a while waiting for the right price, without being able to see every clearance product at once and also have everything available for your to select at once.

 

Coupled with the newly stipulated €50 minimum value per order (excluding shipping) before you can even take a cart through to checkout, it also frustrates those who would otherwise ‘snipe’ remaining stock (of maybe just one unit of) individual products with separate orders as soon as they pop up, if picking the orders up later from the store free of delivery charges would be a viable option to them.

 

But I can also understand the multiple ‘reasons’ why the clearance sale is being executed the way it is; and, inasmuch as I don't think that is what LCdC was aiming for, it has certainly ‘encouraged’ keen bargain-hunters to be more penny-wise but pound-foolish, and snap up stuff they wouldn't otherwise buy but now doubly motivated by both the level of discounting and their need to hit €50 to secure the main targeted items that are what they really wanted. Hell, I used to do that kind of thing to reach the (much higher) free international shipping threshold with every order.

 

I also have lots of experience with picking up discounted products from clearance tables in bricks-and-mortar retail stores; and one'd reasonably expect that the manager will just add to those piles ad hoc, instead of planning it all out upfront, and laying everything out at once so the ‘early bird’ that catches the release of the products could score big, and other shoppers left with just the scraps and dregs from which to select. Not releasing everything at once isn't a good way to sustain interest and ongoing attention from shoppers, and incentivise them to drop in and take another other look every day or two.