Most Commonly Available Type Of Cartridge?

[3nding]

What has been, in your experience, the most commonly available/easiest to find type of cartridge out there? Is it the Standard International Long Cartridge or something else? If you go to a place that is somewhat remote (not Antarctica of course, but say somewhere outside big population centers) what do you expect to find? I know that here the easiest to get your hands on are probably Pilot cartridges if you don't go to a boutique that is specialised in fountain pens.

[flipper_gv]

Standard short.

Lamy and Pilot are pretty common too.

[Randal6393]

Converter with bottled ink.

[Miaxina]

There's nothing related to fountain pens that I can commonly find in Sri Lanka

[ManofKent]

Over here (well, my bit of over here ) Parker cartridges, followed by short international, followed by long international. Pilot aren't commonly available.

[praxim]

I'll check on the net.

[sandy101]

In the UK Parker are pretty much ubiquitous. International shorts are commonly found in most shops too. Royal Blue and Black ink are easy to find. Anything more colourful, or esoteric usually requires the internet.

[Oggie]

I am (im)patiently waiting for the Colte 10-color set (international short cartridges) to be restocked on Jet Pens. Looks like a fun set to try.

[Youssou]

In the Netherlands, international short would be the easiest to find - my not that large local supermarket even has them. Beyond that, Parker and Lamy shouldn't be too hard to find either, bookstores with a couple of pens have those too. They might, if you're lucky, also have a bottle of Parker. As for the ease of getting those, the demise of V&D two years ago still hurts. If you want more than standard/Parker/Lamy you would need to go to a specialised pen shop.

[Mercian]

In the town nearest to me, I can buy retailer-branded Short International cartridges; Parker cartridges; Waterman Short cartridges; LAMY T-10 cartridges, and (during the run up to Britain's traditional end-of-year festival of consumption at least); also the tiny ones made by (iirc) Cross.

 

If I drive over to the nearest large town, I can also buy Waterman Long Cartridges.

 

I do not recall seeing Sheaffer cartridges in a B&M store near here in the last decade.

The Artists' Supplies store in the nearest big town may carry them, but I've never looked for them, because I don't have any Sheaffer pens. I do know that that store used to carry Pelikan & Cross bottled inks as well as bottled inks from Parker, Waterman, and LAMY.

 

If I were to wish to buy cartridges made e.g. by Aurora or a Japanese manufacturer (or even Diamine), I would have to look for online retailers.

 

Also, on an Off-topic note, I am surprised that no-one has yet replied to this question with '9x19 Parabellum', '.22LR', or '.45ACP'...

Edited March 27, 2017 by Mercian

[ksm]

In Poland, International Short cartridges are easiest to find. They are available even in some supermarkets and in school supplies/stationery shops.

Parker cartridges are available in some stationary shops.

Lamy, Sheaffer and Japanese cartridges are available in specialised fountain pen shops.

Edited March 27, 2017 by ksm

[grainweevil]

In the UK Parker are pretty much ubiquitous. International shorts are commonly found in most shops too. Royal Blue and Black ink are easy to find. Anything more colourful, or esoteric usually requires the internet.

 

Even our local supermarket has standard Parker; any colour you like as long as it's Washable Blue.

[Chrissy]

International short sized cartridges are available everywhere.

[tinta]

I have recently discovered the cartridge option for fountain pens, which I find most convenient.

For well over 60 years I exclusively used ink in bottles. Heck, I remember having to drag around my own bottles of ink for dip-pens, then later on for my fountain pens. There were no carts available then.

Most European pen manufacturers have international short cartridges made for them. A few also have international longs.

Ink maker Diamine has a wide assortment of colours in international shorts. I am just going through Diamine's five assorted colour packs.

Enjoy the cartridge option.

[3nding]

Funnily enough, when I look around where I live I don't seem to find too many international short cartridges for some reason. When I look at stationnary stores I can find Pilot, Lamy, Zebra (are they international short?) and sometimes, though very rarely, Parker. Even on Amazon Canada, say I type Waterman Black Cartridges, the only ones available through Prime are International Long. The short ones, you have to wait a couple weeks to get... Blame North America I guess.

 

Also, very interesting reading all the options available in your respective country. Europe seems a lot easier on fountain pen enthusiasts.

Edited April 2, 2017 by 3nding

[Mercian]

I was in my local WHSmith store today (in a small town), and had to come back here to point out that I was wrong in my earlier post in this thread; they do stock Sheaffer cartridges.

 

If you want ink in cartridges, you can choose from:

Cross cartridges;

LAMY cartridges;

Parker long cartridges;

Sheaffer cartridges;

Waterman cartridges;

WHSmith-branded Short International cartridges.

 

Colour choices are limited, but the range of brands on offer is fairly good for a town whose poulation is only around 15,000 people.

 

The situation is less good if you want to buy ink in a bottle; you can buy Parker Quink in Washable Blue, or Parker Quink in Black.

At the start of December bottles of Quink Blue-Black usually appear too, but they only seem to get one stock of those in per year.

[3nding]

I found yesterday that the University were I go actually stocks J. Herbin and Sheaffer Cartridges (they also have Lamy and Pilot which I already knew), but they only sell them at the art building that is off campus all the way downtown which might as well be at the other end of the world.

 

I thought they would know that art students are not the only ones who enjoy fine writing instruments.

 

Otherwise, I have every cartridge probably known to mankind about a 20 minutes walk from were I live, so not too bad.