Why is ink so expensive? Or is it so only in England?

Here, 50ml can cost the best part of US$10 and the cheap stuff is usually US$7. When postage is added, these are significant sums. Worse still, my favourite Italian ink comes in 40ml bottles, but costs the same. That said, even English ink is expensive.

A Diamine bottle costs 5.95 £ (80ml), and you can have 4 bottles for 20£. 320ml should be enough for a year, and 20£ a year is not that expensive IMHO (and I'm a student). It's just 4 or 5 fish & chips.

Be thankful. In Australia if it's not Parker Quink or Sheaffer Skrip ($7-$8 a bottle) it's typically $16-$20 a bottle. And Visconti is even worse, at $25 for 40 mls.

But don't forget that with Noodlers and Diamine you are getting 80 or 90 ml bottles, so the price per ml is quite low. Given that you can get an 80 ml bottle of Diamine for about $11, you are getting a good deal.

Well, IMHO, ink is expensive. I understand that most of the cost are the bottle, box and distribution, but is a luxury item for what you really get. Ink should be aimed for common use, (but is gas, ehem) and making it unaffordable will only play on less FPn users. And if a household has to cut expenses due to the crisis, what goes first?. Luxuries.
25 years back it was much cheaper. And I was a student living on a budget and my own work. Today I think $30 (4. ounces bottle plus shipping) is at least a couple good home made meals for a family of 3.
Maybe producing so many colors raises the cost for the manufacturer, or they have decided ink if for a snobbish minority that will pay for it no matter the price. Producing the ink is not costly, that I know. Why prices have soared in two decades while the use of FP declines is an interesting thing.
As usual, the more common the use, the more reasonable the tag. Lamy and Pelikan /Waterman and Herbin, made in two countries where FP is mandatory at school, keep reasonable prices compared to others, but still, 5 euros for a 30-50ml bottle is not cheap.
I don't buy online anymore if it can be avoided, adding shipping to price tag ends up in pricey totals. If it is an exclusive, too bad. Brick and mortar shops are around the corner and have regular prices. A certain pleasure on going and choosing the color live is added to the ink.
Elassar, 4-5 times fish and chips are not a lot of chips!

In my experience, ink costs between seven and fourteen dollars here in Australia (Quink & Waterman). I can't remember how much the Noodler's was, but that wasn't cheap.

What does Skrip cost in Australia...? I want to buy some...

I know, unfortunately... Since I'm a student, I don't have a lot of money. What I mean is : "I do prefer buy 4 bottle of ink a year rather than having 4 more fish & chips a year" (since I can cook myself a lavish meal for half the price of a takeaway).

But still, I'm not the 40-bottles-of-ink kind of guy, and I just buy ink to use it, just as you put gas in your car. It's by definition not luxury, since I use and need it everyday.

My 0.02$

Expensive compared with what?



Compared to where?



Sorry if my responses seem a little abrupt but I don't believe that ink is expensive and prices in the UK are not necessarily higher than in other countries.

Fountain pen ink costs between £0.07 and £0.27 per ml depending upon the brand**. Not surprisingly, the lowest of these figures (which include VAT, BTW) applies to Diamine, a UK manufactured ink.

I know that postage costs often have to be added but this is not necessarily any more expensive (and often cheaper) than the cost of transporting a person to their nearest shop!

** figures taken from our own prices.

HTH,

Martin

And don't forget what you are paying for. Seems to me that the quality of ink has improved greatly over the last half-century. Many more types and brands are available, with better saturation and suspension than was the norm 50 years ago. In fact, most of today's inks smack more of alchemy than chemistry to me. Always amazed by the quality of today's ink, paper, and pens.

OK, the above is IMHO. All purists, antiquarians, and addicts to a particular brand, FLAME ON.

Yours,
Randal

What's a car without its fuel?

And with petrol prices through the roof, (up to £1.10 in the UK) I don't think we can complain too much about ink

It should be about the same price as Quink - $7-$8 a bottle.

Noodlers is $20 for 90 mls, making it only a little more expensive per ml than Quink or Skrip. Diamine is ~ $17? (I think?) for 80 mls, making it about the same / ml.

Waterman, Private Reserve are typically about $16 for 50 ml bottle, twice the price of Quink/Skrip.

Compare these prices to those in the UK (Diamine online shop, The Writing Desk) they are doing really well there.

Good point, I was thinking along those lines when your post appeared!

By the way, I would be happy if I could find petrol at £1.10 a litre, it is more like £1.18 in these parts

The best price I can find here in flattest Canada is $5.50 for a bottle of Quink, which goes just over $6 with the local version of VAT. Lamy (largish) and Herbin (tiny) cost at least double that, and there's really NOTHING else barring mail order.



...doesn't seem outrageous. Consider in terms of cost per written page, and it's not so bad.

Just bought a bottle of Lamy red 50 ml at £4 ($8) which I thought was ok, last ink before that was a Cartier 60 ml for £7 and a Visconti 40 ml at £10. I have a Cross Century which writes very wet and needs filling twice a day and can go through a bottle of ink in 10 days, so I hear what you are saying as regards the price of ink.

If cost is an issue then its easy to make your own using ink jet refill kits which cost £4.40 at Tesco for 3 X 30 ml black which will dilute to at at least 1000cc. You can also get the colour kit at £8 and blend your own colour from the yellow, blue and red, this makes up to around 500cc.

I add around one drop of a liquid handwash to every 100cc and never had a problem in any of my pens.

When I was in university, 12 years ago, I could buy a bottle of waterman, parker, sheaffer... for the price of two gel refils. Way cheaper than today.

Since I'm only using pelikan black these days, I've considered buying one of the large bottles, but that would be long term consumption, and I'm not sure about the safety of plastic in long term storage, so I think I'd have to get a glass bottle as well.

Juan

That's cheap! It's much better than the price in Montreal or here in Chicago area. The cheapest i can find in either place is about 8, although the Peel Pen shop people once gave me a bottle of Skrip gratis because they thought my son was cute. (which he is, of course!)

Considering that a bottle of Quink cost 50 cents in 1948, if we adjust for inflation, that comes to $4.60.

Today's prices aren't bad when comparing the demand for FPs and bottled ink between 1948 and today.

Is it me or is ink cheap here in the Philippines?
$3 for a bottle of Quink, $5 for a bottle of Waterman blue-black... but then those are the only inks available to me in the bookstore.

I agree. I suspect that one reason why ink seems more expensive now is that there's a wider range of interesting/attractive/appealing inks readily available than before, so that one is tempted to buy a wide variety of the stuff. This wasn't the case when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s - then, ink was just pen fuel; you bought one or two bottles of the stuff in one or two colours and that was that until the bottles were empty.

Simon

Ink is not cheap, but bottled ink is still much cheaper than cartridges! And a bottle of ink goes a long way.

Cheapest are inks that are produced locally: Pelikan, Lamy, Rohrer & Klingner from Germany or Waterman and Quink from France. MB has its luxury pricing with ink, too. Visconti refill bottles from Italy are a bit more expensive, too. Diamine is quite reasonable (good exchange rate!) if I order from the UK. Even with postage this is cheaper than buying it in Germany. Anything else produced in the USA or Asia is quite expensive because of the import costs. The same with any kind of "luxury brands". Ordering online can be cheaper if the total of the order including shipping is cheaper than buying at the local store. One has to do the maths.

And some inks simply are not available locally. One shop is limited to blue and black (Pelikan, Quink, MB) only, the other has at least some Lamy, too. No Waterman any more. Finding blueblack ink became a hard task within the last few years! Not to talk about other colours .... This is a pity because one of my favourite inks is the 1:1 mixture Quink blue and Quink blue black.

I am walking into any stationery store I come across but the assortment of ink decreases from year to year. So I have to order online every now and then.

Also, if prices are really a big issue you can get some of the saturated stuff (such as noodler's) and dilute it

£1.10 ???/ Where do you live...... My local station is £1.16 for patrol and £1.25 for Diesel!! (and thats tesco)

As for my 2p on the ink thing....

I don't think it is expensive for how long it lasts - still cheaper than buyiing throw away pens, which are IMO extortionate unless you get the cheapy cheapy ones that dry up with ink still in the barrel....

I can also understand why ink has got more expensive as FP use declines - its the same as anything the more you make the cheaper it gets, with smaller production lines in different colours the price goes up.

.....and yes by the time you pay to get to the shop and for parking or for busfare you may as well have paid the couple of quid postage. Though I agree its more fun to see it and play with it first

no B&Ms 'round the corner here unless you live in the Med Center (I don't, 35 min drive on a good day). Closest thing is Pelikan ink at a "local" art store (about 15 mins.) Was a delightful $3.95 for some time. Then went up to $5.95. Still not bad but if I happen to be in the med center (about 4X a year) I do buy ink because they price their Noodlers and PR the same as the on-line sellers but without the shipping cost. So 3-4X a year I get to buy ink "on the cheap" - but they don't carry Diamine which is my favorite brand so I'm stuck with on-line ordering.

Given 4.02/gallon for gas, yup, it ends up being a wash if you try to drive in town for your ink.

KCat - in the SE Texas "boonies".

$4 a gallon? crikey I havent paid that for petrol....... for about 10yrs!! Its twice that in the UK (how many litres in a gallon again 3 and something? which would be £4 a gallon which yeah double!)

I'm gonna convert my car to washing up liquid ......... at least it will smell nice too

Thanks for the tip on printer cartridges.... I might experiment with that in a few of me old pens....

Tricky question. Are we talking about relative, historical, or absolute cost. Many factors get involved including demand curves, inflation, legislation, customary & ordinary practices, consumer behavior, etc.........

So far, AIR, it has been part or all of the effect on causing two or three people in the U.S. to go into the ink manufacuring business.

Yeah, relatively speaking, we have it "easy" in the US - but it's all relative when you conside the distances a lot of us (especially in the south and west) have to drive just to do daily errands. Mass transit is not something really feasible here in the Houston area if you live outside "the loop" (which is basically about a 10 mile radius around the town that spreads out a good 35 miles in all directions. (being conservative)

I recall a company we worked with in the UK and their annoyance with us when a package that they were not there to sign for went through Parcel Farce. They complained of having to drive 20 minutes "one way!" to get the package. That was half my hubby's commute at the time. That commute became a 1.25 hr commute due to increased growth. We have since moved to within 10 mins.

There are two pen shops in my town across the intersection from one another, and one had posted the price of its Waterman blue-black in its window. The shop across the street immediately did the same at ten cents a 50ml bottle less for all colors. The first shop then lowered it another fifteen cents, with a free nib tuning with every four bottles. Queues have been forming down the street, and there have been a few fistfights.

It's really getting out of hand.

Fred









Not really.

Actually, the $5.50 is the Staples on-line price. I had to print out the page and wave it at the people in the store, because on the shelf it's priced at $7.96.

Adrian, Callie... I actually don't drive! While walking home (in london) I observed £1.20/l for basic petrol in the local Esso. Ouch indeed!

Thank god ink prices aren't pegged to oil. Although having said that, what kind of solvents are used?

If I lived in London I wouldn't bother with a car either. Unfortunately, it is necessity where I live.

yes me too.

I have quite a few friends in London who dont have a car and dont need one. But here unless you are going to walk the 10miles to the shopping centre its a must.

and the Esso up the road now has diesel on £1.30 a litre

Just last year the average commute in this country for work was over 2hrs round trip.

Here Quink (the only ink I can buy locally) is $8 a bottle plus tax and two decent rollerballs/gel pens are about $3-5 each... seems pretty much on a par to me.

All the rest I mail order or get via internet sales at about $20-25 for a 4.5oz bottle of Noodlers. (I only use Noodlers bulletproof or eternal inks.) So those prices don't seem too out of touch to me.

I was going to say - what year was this?

I did run across a story like that in one of the old newspapers that I was searching online. Two stationary stores, right next to each other, got into a price war over ink or pens or something like that. I'll have to see where I filed that one away. . .

John

It would be nice to go and choose the colour 'live'. Unfortunately, the only shop anywhere near me that sells ink is a small newsagent and they only stock Parker cartridges.

I don't have much choice but to buy online. The Writing Desk's shipping charges seem reasonable to me, especially if you order more than one bottle of ink and, if you order direct from Diamine and spend £10 then UK delivery is free. (no affiliation to either company)

Thank you for this valuable piece of information.

Ink seems pretty inexpensive to me, especially if bought in the bottles and not in cartridges - but only if I buy it online. If I drive to the store to get it or even take the subway, I pay $5-10 for the round trip plus I probably buy much more than ink. I remember going to the pen shop to buy ink and walked out with the ink and a $600 pen! If I had bought the ink online it would have cost me about $8 for shipping and I'd have had to wait for about a week to get the ink, but I would not have bought the pen. I like the pen, but I wouldn't have bought it if I hadn't stopped into the store for the ink and seen it on deep discount.

So ink in itself is not bad, it's the other stuff that I buy along with it

edit for spelling

oh and inkblotpens.co.uk have free delivery to uk and diamine is on offer only £4.50!

Ultimately, all things are related to oil prices. Oil price impacts fuel costs for manufacturing of plastics (or anything else used to package the ink), transfer (cost of fuel for vehicles on the move) and, in the US, the value of the dollar.

So, in a country as big as the US (Your UK is, area-wise, about the same as my entire state, TX) prices are going up on everything. Fortunately, ink is probably low on the list for what is impacted but I have no idea what to expect when next I go to the Med Center. Will the prices have gone up, in general, to cope with our economy? Will my Noodler's still be $12 a bottle, or will it have gone up?

Overally, I think ink is not that expensive when I consider the mental health I get out of using it. Cheaper than Prozac.

Actually, Texas is almost three times as big as the UK (c. 269,000 vs c. 94,000 sq miles)!

Simon

You should check out the online Swisher Pen site for Noodler's ink, if you don't already know about it. I bought a 4.5 oz. eyedropper bottle of the Baystate Blue ink for $15.00, which comes with an eyedropper pen, and their 3 oz. sizes are just $9.75, before shipping and handling. These prices are the least expensive I've foud so far for Noodler's, and they're prompt--I received the ink in less than a week. I believe they likely have fairly good prices on other inks, as well, but I haven't bought any other types there yet.

Thanks, Simon. I just remember when I was a kid having one of those geography classes and seeing a map of the all the British Isles superimposed on our state. Never actually checked the numbers. I figured it was less but was too lazy to look up by how much.

That makes me feel even less guilty about complaining about our gas prices. (don't hurt me, it's just the truth - sniffle)

I don't find ink particularly expensive as I am more than happy to buy direct from Diamine.
The English manufacturing industry is all but dead. Even Burberry have gone East. I expect Jermyn street and Saville Rowe will follow soon the way it's going. That said I was over the moon that Diamine have made ink in England for 150 years or so. Once I knew that I felt I had to make them my staple supplier even if there were better inks and nicer colours to be found. So far I'm more than happy.
Not only do you get 2 bottles with free postage they usually throw in 18 cartridges or assorted colours for good measure.
Power to them...
MD

Diamine is reasonable even for fp lovers in the US. They will ship any order (within reason) for 5 pounds, or $10.00. I recently got eight 80ml bottles, 6 30ml bottles, and 18 free cartriges for a total shipping cost of five pounds. That was more than compensated by the allowance for VAT, which is deducted from the price when shipped out of the EU. Very reasonable prices if you order several bottles.

Most Noodler's inks are $10.00 or less at the most reasonable on-line sellers, for 3 oz -- over 80ml. Again, if you buy several bottles the cost of shipping each becomes much less.

The really expensive inks in the U.S. (Caran d'Ache at nearly $20.00 for a measley 30ml but an attractive, disfunctional bottle, or Visconti for about $15.00 for 40 ml in the unique glass bottle, or Cartier at close to $20.00 for 30ml) are the ones from Europe, other than Shaeffer, Parker, Waterman and Pelikan, which tend to cost somewhat more per ml than the U.S.-made inks.

One advantage Americans have is that there is no VAT. States have sales taxes, but they tend to be much lower than VAT in Europe (6-8%), and it is not charged if there is a mail order from a dealer in a different state. Usually, the savings in sales tax will cover most of the cost of shipping. Therefore, the chepest inks per ml tend to be those made in the US, plus some from China, such as Duke--not a bad ink, by the way. Even so, Diamine, ordered direct, competes very well even with the U.S.-made brands.

This is my source of Diamine and Visconti refill bottles. Usually I order 3-4 bottles at the same time and postage is reasonable.
Found another UK online shop with better prices for Diamine but: shipping within the UK exclusively.
Credit Cards and Paypal should make it possible to do business with the rest of the world - or at least Europe ......

Texas is like Spain and Portugal together (my American Literature professor told me in college to try to compare the sizes of both places), and Spain is pretty big for European standards , only France is a bit bigger, and Russia is much bigger.

I don't think is very expensive, compared to the price of some fountain pens. As a teacher, I write a lot and let my students use fountain pens and we haven't finished a 3oz. bottle of Noodler's this year.

Of course, it helps that Texas has a low sale tax. I am buying some ink tomorrow, I will check the prices.

But I feel that ink is more ecological than cartridges, less plastic used. As the English friends say above, buy from manufacturer and get free shipping, specially if you don't have a shop close. Thank God for the Internet.

Thanks, I haven't come across them before.

Unfortunately, they have sold out of the Diamine inks that I want, but it certainly looks like a site worth checking back on.

This is a somewhat tangential point, but when I was in London last March I was rather dismayed to find no British-made ink in any of the pen stores I visited - for instance, there wasn't a bottle of Diamine ("Made in the UK"), Conway Stewart ("Made in England") or Yard-o-Lead ("hand-crafted in England") to be found in Selfridges (Sheaffer, Parker, Waterman's, Pelikan, Lamy), the overpriced vintage pen shop in the Burlington Arcade (Waterman's only) or the pen shop on Regent Street (where the expression on the face of the employee when I asked if they carried Diamine suggested she had never heard of it; they did have a few bottles of Caran D'Ache, though!). Can these be found in London somewhere? If not, it would seem a bit incongruous, to say the least, that I can walk into Art Brown in NY and find the entire line of each of those companies' inks sitting on shelves (they even let you sample them), but not one bottle in their own capital.

Simon

Another point is, consider something like G2 refills or rollerball refills. Much less ink for much more money

I'm not so sure that fountain pen ink is that expensive, comparatively speaking. How much does the ink in a ballpoint cost--even cheap bics? How much would it cost for 50 mL of "Bic Blue," if we were to buy it by the bottle? In the end, probably not much less than the $7-10 for 50 mL for the less expensive fountain pen inks. In other words, how many cheap bics would you need to buy to get 50 mL of ink?

Then again, 50 mL of ball point ink probably goes farther than 50 mL of fountain pen ink--but certainly doesn't look as nice!

I just paid $9.75 for a bottle of Noodler's, plus $5.25 to ship it. Ink is expensive even here in the USA. There are no stationers around here, so I have to order my ink online.

Here in Singapore, you can get a bottle of Parker Quink for about S$4-5, which is about US$3-4. It's "Made in Indonesia, manufactured under licence & supervision of Parker-Pen Company" though. I have even seen Pelikan inks going for slightly more than US$2 before, the packaging no different from the usual pictures on the internet. Not sure about its manufacturing location though. These can be bought at a usual stationery shop. I don't have the more expensive versions of these inks, so can't really do a side by side comparison. Quite satisfied by my black Quink.

However, Noodler's is expensive, there's only 1 official dealer here. Bought a bottle of Bulletproof Black at S$25, which is about US$17. Not sure about shipping prices if I were to get it online, the final cost might be similar.