Ink Giveaway

February 24, 2024

13 hours ago, AmandaW said:

Me too. I've given away pens and inks without thinking of anything coming in return, but unexpected it often does. Swings and roundabouts.

Australia had a pass around box for a while that one could put whole bottles, samples, pen parts and pens into and send it onto the next person who wanted it. @A Smug Dill started it. Fizzled out after a few years, probably cos it got too heavy. I got some treats from it, and made sure I sent it on with more than I kept. Pretty sure everyone did... no one wanted to look greedy.

We have something like that in our local pen club. The guy who currently runs the mailing list brings it to meetings and people can take what they want. I forgot about it last month -- I meant to being the rather nice Conklin box that was used to pack a pen I ordered from Speerbob a while back -- he used it as extra protection for the Sheaffer Star Wars Pop R2-D2 pen, which came in a blister pack, and he taped the converter I got from him to the blister pack.

It's a pretty nice box, but I don't have any Conklin pens -- and it's also pretty large as those things go (guessing about 9-1/2" long by roughly 3-1/2" wide by maybe an inch and a quarter or so high when closed).

If I give it away locally, I don't have to deal with stuff like shipping, which is why I asked Carguy if he had a club near where he lives.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

February 24, 2024

53 minutes ago, inkstainedruth said:

We have something like that in our local pen club. The guy who currently runs the mailing list brings it to meetings and people can take what they want. I forgot about it last month -- I meant to being the rather nice Conklin box that was used to pack a pen I ordered from Speerbob a while back -- he used it as extra protection for the Sheaffer Star Wars Pop R2-D2 pen, which came in a blister pack, and he taped the converter I got from him to the blister pack.

It's a pretty nice box, but I don't have any Conklin pens -- and it's also pretty large as those things go (guessing about 9-1/2" long by roughly 3-1/2" wide by maybe an inch and a quarter or so high when closed).

If I give it away locally, I don't have to deal with stuff like shipping, which is why I asked Carguy if he had a club near where he lives.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

If I never answered, I apologize. We do NOT have a club nearby, but I sure wish we did. The Triangle and SE Pen Collectors are just too far from Charleston. The Lone Star pen club and Dromgoole’s are two of a very few things I miss about my hometown of Houston.

February 24, 2024

On 2/7/2024 at 4:17 AM, Carguy said:

So, I have been trying to declutter a bit and I have 30+ bottles of ink that I would like to giveaway to someone. The drawback is that these are all bottles that I bought new, used and experimented with and then put away. They were all bought around 2007-2012. I don’t know if ink ever expires, but they have been kept in good condition in my home so I think they should be good to use. All are Diamine inks, with a couple that are newer bottles of Colorverse.

Any suggestions on HOW I should give these away? I intend to pay for postage to the recipient(s) but I honestly don’t want to be tasked with mailing to 5-10 different people. Finally, I’d like them to go to someone who is either starting out in our hobby or who can’t afford to buy a bunch of ink. Hopefully, those conditions won’t be too hard to achieve.

i would welcome ANY thoughts on how to best achieve this.

Thanks,

Mike

So, the way I look at it - we are a limited and dying breed...i always share some of my older pens and inks with young'uns. Hopefully this helps spread the joy and converts more to enjoy fountain pens ...

-School Groups?

-Pen clubs?

February 28, 2024

I think it is great that so many people give away their unwanted inks. Perhaps I'm not so blessed. Where I come from, garage sales (or virtual garage sales) are the norm. Here, if you can afford to give something away, great. But if you can't, one is not expected to feel shame and there is no love lost between neighbors. Here, we share homemade bread or homemade caramel corn and that is considered generous. YMMV, of course. I hope you count your blessings.

I am content to give away my unwanted inks but I can't afford shipping it out. There is no club or group within a 3-4 hour drive that actually gets together. I've only ever met one other FP user "in the wild". Most people I meet are intrigued when they see me using one but they refuse to even try my FP when I offer them the chance, much less accept my offer that they can have a Jinhao that I used to carry precisely for the purpose of sparking someone else's interest in the hobby. I literally can't give them away. Perhaps some day but not yet. C'est la vie.

As for Dill: You've pegged me wrong. Plain and simple. You saw your own fear in my words. Perhaps that is a reasonable response, considering your experience, but you've still pegged me wrong.

I think the pass-around box is a great idea but there are pros and cons to everything. I think the pass-around and my central repository of samples ideas are great complements to each other.

March 1, 2024

This is now done from my end. Managed to send off most of the inks I just don’t use anymore.

April 3, 2024

Used ink feels like wearing someone else's undies. (This is a joke.)

April 30, 2024

I'm super new at fountain pens and would love unloved bottles/ink samples.

Just putting it out there into the ether haha.

June 26, 2024

On 2/6/2024 at 6:17 PM, Carguy said:

So, I have been trying to declutter a bit and I have 30+ bottles of ink that I would like to giveaway to someone. The drawback is that these are all bottles that I bought new, used and experimented with and then put away. They were all bought around 2007-2012. I don’t know if ink ever expires, but they have been kept in good condition in my home so I think they should be good to use. All are Diamine inks, with a couple that are newer bottles of Colorverse.

Any suggestions on HOW I should give these away? I intend to pay for postage to the recipient(s) but I honestly don’t want to be tasked with mailing to 5-10 different people. Finally, I’d like them to go to someone who is either starting out in our hobby or who can’t afford to buy a bunch of ink. Hopefully, those conditions won’t be too hard to achieve.

i would welcome ANY thoughts on how to best achieve this.

Thanks,

Mike

I'm disabled and very low income, coming back to FPs after exposure during childhood (graphic designer/ink-line artist parent) plus graphic design college electives a couple decades ago. I'm an avid journaller and write almost completely everything with my budget FPs (EF/F platinum preppies, pilot penmanship, pilot metropolitan F I tuned to an UEF, Jinhao 80 F, Hongdian Forest EF, Noodler's flex). I have a few bottles of ink I've gathered over the years: Lamy turquoise, Waterman audacious red, levenger cocoa, and montblanc oyster grey... my splurge last month was $22 on a trio of Diamine 15 ml oxblood, oxford blue, and green-black, though there was leakage and the labels were damaged.

If you have any of these Diamine inks remaining, please let me know. I've started repurposing inkjet CYMK ink and fiber reactive/silk dyes for mixing my own inks (using minute percentages of mild succinate co-surfactant, germall plus/euxyl pe 9010/silverion2400 biocides, plus propanediol as solubilizer/humectant/anti-foam/flow aid agent) to give myself access to the colors I long for online (Diamine Sargasso Sea, Writer's Blood, Ancient Copper, Autumn Oak and many many other Diamine colors, several Sailor Manyo/Shikiori, Iroshizuki colors, particularly Teranishi Guitar Orchestra Orange just at this moment).

Not that you still have them, but I'd happily scrape together funds I could to buy/ship as many as I could of what you have left, if any. 🙂

Elsewise, this is a lovely idea and I hope they found a good home!

Autumn in PNW (USA)

On 2/6/2024 at 6:17 PM, Carguy said:

So, I have been trying to declutter a bit and I have 30+ bottles of ink that I would like to giveaway to someone. The drawback is that these are all bottles that I bought new, used and experimented with and then put away. They were all bought around 2007-2012. I don’t know if ink ever expires, but they have been kept in good condition in my home so I think they should be good to use. All are Diamine inks, with a couple that are newer bottles of Colorverse.

Any suggestions on HOW I should give these away? I intend to pay for postage to the recipient(s) but I honestly don’t want to be tasked with mailing to 5-10 different people. Finally, I’d like them to go to someone who is either starting out in our hobby or who can’t afford to buy a bunch of ink. Hopefully, those conditions won’t be too hard to achieve.

i would welcome ANY thoughts on how to best achieve this.

Thanks,

Mike