Gobsmacked By The Cost Of This Ink Poll

07/30/2013

(Insert colorful language.) $40 per bottle for the new Caran d’Ache fountain pen ink? (Insert more colorful language.) Will you pay or pass?

Posted in Ink | Tagged Caran d'Ache fountain pen ink, expensive ink, fountain pen ink, ink cost poll |

12 comments

Iroshizuku is pushing the edge of affordability for me. Only the fabulous behavior of their ink induces me to pay extra.

Caran d’Ache apparently went for exclusivity and snob appeal on a level exceeding even MB’s branding. Wow! Perfume begins to look affordable compared to ink at these prices.

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by Beth Treadway Author (@BethAuthor) 07/30/2013 at 2:06 pm

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- 😀 Ink is a lot more fun than perfume but the bottles certainly look comparable these days. So silly since ink shouldn’t be exposed to light on a steady basis. Interesting that CdA has been unable to ship the new line at least to US distributors. Wonder what’s up with that?
  
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  by inkophile 07/30/2013 at 2:14 pm
  
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Perfume doesn’t shade and feathers, even on great paper. 😉

I keep having problems with Private Reserve and Noodlers; Diamine and J. Herbin have great palettes, but lack the punch I get with Iroshizuku. That being said the Pilot ink is almost to the price point where you don’t want to write unnecessarily. And that’s wrong in so many ways. So unless they’re adding gold dust, or something that will make me a brilliant writer, no Caran ink in my future.

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by Macaddicted 07/30/2013 at 5:55 pm

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- Perfume doesn’t come in enough colors either. 😛
  
  PR has been problematic for me, too. Noodler’s has so many colors that even when one doesn’t work well for me, I can’t condemn the whole line. Besides, Nathan offers one of my favorite inks, Black Swan in Australian Roses. Several more are on my list of favorites including Kiowa Pecan, Purple Martin, and Golden Brown. Does that make me a fan?
  
  Much as I enjoy Iroshizuku, the cost has resulted in sparing use of it. Consequently, other inks have overtaken my rotation and received more frequent mention on Inkophile. Funny how that has worked out.
  
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  by inkophile 07/30/2013 at 7:00 pm
  
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It looks to be close to the price of the current inks. If the bottle is 50 ml (looks like that from the pictures on Brian Goulet’s blog), that works out to $0.80/ml. The current bottles are 30 ml and go for about $23 (web search; can’t find the MSRP anywhere), which is $0.77/ml.

I’m more upset about losing interesting colors like Storm for what looks like a range of snoozo candy-colored hues. And the ludicrous new bottle design is the product of some terminally smartphoned ilscripterate who has never knocked over a bottle of ink on his or her desk.

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by Joseph 07/31/2013 at 7:04 am

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- Indeed, the new bottle does contain 50 ml of ink. The release has been delayed “indefinitely”, so we won’t see it in the US for awhile yet.
  
  I agree that the new colors, called Chromatics, appear less nuanced than the Colors of the Earth line. What set those apart from the abundance of saturated colors offered by other ink makers, is now lost. FP users are anything but “follow the leader” types so CdA has sacrificed its edge over other brands. Silly corporate suits. 😦
  
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  by inkophile 07/31/2013 at 9:33 am
  
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$50 a bottle here in Oz so $1 per ml – too rich for me.

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by justdaveyb 08/01/2013 at 1:51 am

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- Ouch! You can purchase three 90 ml bottles of Noodler’s here for $37.50 or $0.21 per ml. Sounds like a bargain to me since I can live without the fancy bottle. My inks live in their boxes to protect them from light anyway. Me thinks CdA blew it on this one.
  
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  by inkophile 08/01/2013 at 2:22 am
  
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  - They see themselves as a premium brand. I had a look at the colours and they were nothing out of ordinary. I stocked up on some of old cda colours before stock ran out.
    
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    by justdaveyb 08/01/2013 at 5:22 am
    
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At that price, I’ll stick with private reserve. They can keep their ink….

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by Wendy Van Camp 08/04/2013 at 7:10 pm

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If it were beautifully-colored, had flawless flow and was impervious to water? Yes.

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by aprilsatelier 08/07/2013 at 6:59 am

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Yeah, I love ink, but there’s no way I’m paying that much for a bottle. I live mostly off of samples, but I don’t know that anyone is going to offer samples of this stuff. They’d have to price them pretty high to be cost-effective.

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by Mike 08/07/2013 at 6:24 pm

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