Private Reserve Buttercup Review (And Election Week Giveaway)

[caleb]

Private Reserve Buttercup Review

(And Election Week Giveaway)

 

Note: this review is also available on my personal reviews site with more pictures and better formatting. If you'd like to take a look, click here. The giveaway is also only available through that site. Click here for more details.

 

 

Yellow just happens to be my favorite color. However, it is also notoriously hard to read under light, and therefore is not often used for pen ink; although, given that yellow is my favorite color, I had to try it out. So, I decided to pick up a bottle of Private Reserve Buttercup, and I was certainly not disappointed.

The ink itself comes in the standard Private Reserve 2.2 ounce (66 mL) bottle. A lot of people don’t love the bottle because it’s not very ornate—It’s a simply a glass cylinder with two stickers on it to denote color. However, the shape of the bottle does happen to allow for it to have an extremely wide mouth. This is both a positive and a negative as the large opening allows for any pen to fill, however, the large top also allows for a lot of ink to gather inside the cap and spill down the sides while opening. Because of this, I’d recommend keeping the bottle on top of something while you’re opening it so that nothing spills out onto fabric. All in all, the shape is simple, and effective. It does not want to stand out, but it gets the job done just fine.

Buttercups are beautiful flowers—they are bright, yellow, almost cheerful in nature, and extremely (if not overly) abundant. And at least for me, the ink makes me feel the same way. The color is extremely saturated and very deep. It also shades extremely well. (Although, the light shade of the color obscures these effects a great deal.) The ink runs a tiny bit on the dry side, but it flows well, and it is also quite easy to clean and does not stain. However, It also has decently low water resistance—the ink begins to run even after one drop of water and will fade entirely under continued exposure.

On quality papers, the ink dries in about 20 to 30 seconds; it also does not feather or bleed through or ghost at all. However, on poorer quality papers, the result is quite different. It dries immediately, but, it feathers quite a bit and bleeds all the way through the paper.

All in all, I think that this ink is well worth it for the color alone. It is intensely saturated and looks really nice in demonstrator pens (I have it in my ECO). It also looks very nice inside of the bottle. (As the bottle is pure glass, the ink looks like a sort of very beautiful amber color.) The ink goes from lighter yellow to a more saturated and legible yellow in broad nibs. (I tried it in my broad Pelikan M200 and the ink was a fantastic color and was quite easy to read.

I enjoyed this ink quite a bit, and I recommend it to anyone looking for a yellow color.

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I will also be giving one of the four election-day ink colors away at the end of the week. If you would like to enter, please subscribe and you will receive the link to sign up.

[visvamitra]

Nice review of uninspiring color

[OPG4711]

Great review, but so hard on the eyes to read and write with. This ink is one of a handful that sits on my shelf gathering dust - and the others are yellows and oranges too. What was I thinking?