I haven't seen this ink reviewed here so I ordered some in order to try it out. Noodler's Victoria Mint is part of the UK Eternal Series. My first impressions aren't that great. It seems like a poor approximation of Legal Lapis. The color is almost identical to Legal Lapis but the flow is less and doesn't write as smoothly.

Legal Lapis (left) Victoria Mint (right)
Click to view attachment




I will post some more impressions as I use this ink over the next couple of weeks.

Click to view attachment

Looking at the scan on a laptop and it's hard for me to figure out if it is blue with green or green with blue...then I reread that you called it teal! perfect naming of the color.


Kurt



edited by moderator to remove repeat of large photo
Ann Finley

How does it behave in terms of start-up? My experience with the UK Eternal inks (Mata Hari Cordial and Empire Red in particular) is that they clog up fairly quickly. I know this is a revised color for the Victoria Mint and I'm interested if the ink flow has improved.

Mine is more green what I see in your sample.
As for flow... Forget it. Maybe we should talk about lack of flow. It clogged immediately one of my most reliable pens - a Lamy safari.
Unless I have a pen with a hose for an inking system I will not try this in any of my "regular" pens.

Here's my comparison scan:



You can see bigger versions here.

In short, I'd call Victoria's Royal Mint a blue green (where blue is the adjective), and Legal Lapis a green blue. They are distinct hues to me; of these two inks, I strongly favor the Legal Lapis, and my husband strongly favors the Royal Mint.

rattybad1: no one else has mentioned whether they used the old or the new. I have only tried the new. I've not used it long-term (I dipped my pen for the above sample, thus leading to the arterial ink spray seen in the Legal Lapis sample), but it feels like a nice-flowing ink. This is in contrast to a couple of the others I've tried that wrote very dry.

A good review of an ink that I don't want to get, at last!. Very peculiar color, but the name id pretty accurate. Thanks for sharing.

Interesting color, might give it a try. Thanks.

I wonder how it's different from Swisher's Verdun (whose flow is excellent, though nib creep is severe). Verdun (my bottle, at least) is a bluish green also, but it's undoubtedly a green, not a teal.

Deirdre, how would the colour compare to PR Blue Suede or Noodler's Dostoevesky (both of which are blue green variants to my eye)?

PR Blue Suede is most similar to Squeteague. Offhand, I can't recall how it fares against Dostoevesky.

I've been planning a blue-green comparison scan with:

PR Blue Suede
Noodler's Dostoevesky
Noodler's Victoria's Royal Mint
Noodler's Legal Lapis
Noodler's Blue Green
Noodler's Squeteague

In a little pie so they can all be seen together.

(anyone know of an online n-slice pie pdf generator?)

Same experience with Highland's Heather. Might as well have put mud in my pens...

The colour, as it appears in both scans (from Deirdre and gravitas), reminds me of R&K Verdigris -- which can also appear like Legal Lapis in certain pens.

Thanks for the scans and review.

I have only tried in my Lamy 2000. The flow is not horrible, but not great. It skips on some strokes and puts out too much ink on other parts of the stroke. With most other inks flow is usually pretty generous in the Lamy 2000 in my experience.