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Who Is A Ball Collector?


Nyanzilla

Collector or non-collector?  

24 members have voted

  1. 1. Are you collecting the tiny balls from Pelikan cartridges?

    • Yes, of course.
      0
    • I used to when I was a kid.
    • No, I ain't crazy.
    • Yes, but nobody must know. ^^"


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Everyone knows those tiny plastic balls inside the Pelikan ink cartridges. And for what reason ever many people like to take them out and collect them. So did I. :blush:

What about you?

post-114545-0-43461000-1511177722_thumb.jpg

Edited by Nyanzilla

"On the internet nobody knows you're a cat." =^.^=

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Nope. I don't feel the need to collect balls out of cartridges. I sometimes keep cartridges, including their balls, for refilling. That's about as far as it goes.

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Slowly backs away from Nyzilla... just kidding. Im not a cartridge guy so this isnt something I ever got into.

PELIKAN - Too many birds in the flock to count. My pen chest has proven to be a most fertile breeding ground.

fpn_1508261203__fpn_logo_300x150.jpg

THE PELIKAN'S PERCH - A growing reference site for all things Pelikan

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I used to when I went to school, it was briefly "a thing". Have one cart in the pen, and the back filled with a few of these balls..

 

I have taken out some balls out of these carts recently and keep them in one place, if need be to add them to carts or converters where ink flow is problematic. Haven't tested it yet wether it works, had no need so far.

 

I looked around whether I could buy a batch, but no luck. Do you know if there's a place where to buy them?

 

And what cartridge is that big honkin ball from? Seems to be twice the size of all the other ones!

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The things one can learn....luckily I had an empty long Pelikan cartridge....and by golly, it has a ball in it!!!!

Do the short ones too?

I seldom use cartridges, and have a supply of empties to refill with bottle ink but never paid any attention to them.

In reference to P. T. Barnum; to advise for free is foolish, ........busybodies are ill liked by both factions.

 

 

The cheapest lessons are from those who learned expensive lessons. Ignorance is best for learning expensive lessons.

 

 

 

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And what cartridge is that big honkin ball from? Seems to be twice the size of all the other ones!

 

That was in a cartridge for my printer, if I remember well.

"On the internet nobody knows you're a cat." =^.^=

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Nope. I don't feel the need to collect balls out of cartridges. I sometimes keep cartridges, including their balls, for refilling. That's about as far as it goes.

 

Same here, but I suppose if you collect the balls they won't find their way into the oceans.

 

Andy

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No, all my birds are piston fillers.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

"It's very nice, but frankly, when I signed that list for a P-51, what I had in mind was a fountain pen."

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That was in a cartridge for my printer, if I remember well.

Oh wow I never knew printer cartridges have balls!!!

 

Btw, at school one of my classmates told me that her mum & girlfriends used to collect these balls and it was very en vogue (1980s? thereabouts) to put them in pens as described above, eg a Pelikano: one cart feeds the pen whilst instead of the 2nd cart you'd put some of the balls in to rattle. That's how we had the idea and the for a while did the same!

Edited by Olya
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I don't own a Pelikan (yet), but I do collect those balls to use in converters and cartridges that don't have them (to help agitate the ink so they don't stick to the back). I prefer the metal ones from Pilot though because they're heavier and work better with "thicker" inks.

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Same here, but I suppose if you collect the balls they won't find their way into the oceans.

 

Andy

 

:) Maybe you also watched Blue Planet 2 last week? -_-

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No, all my birds are piston fillers.

Ruth Morrisson aka inkstainedruth

Mine too.

Brad

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind" - Rudyard Kipling
"None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try." - Mark Twain

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Why ruin a perfectly good reusable cartridge?

Edited by chromantic

It's hard work to tell which is Old Harry when everybody's got boots on.

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Why would ruin a perfectly good, refillable cartridge?

If you are using mainly cartridges and do not want to use (more) ink bottles...

 

As a child I used to toss the cartridges away when emptied without a second thought (I may have opened one once, out of curiosity). Ink bottles are a rarity here, while you can buy blue and black cartridges at an average of 20 a on almost any stationery shop (Inoxcrom generally). I know that in the UK and Germany can be found even for less. Cheap colour cartridges are also way more common than bottles. Now I keep some cartridges for refilling, specially the long and propietary ones, but as I have a sufficient number of converters, not much need really.

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Collected ten or more of them to seal refilled cartridges.

But found it easier to refill them when necessary.

 

And re-sealed cartridges cannot keep ink long enough.

Sometimes leak, sometimes allow ink evaporate.

 

Now, I'm simply keeping empty cartridges.

Mostly, international standard, some "long", a few Parker type.

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I used to when I went to school, it was briefly "a thing". Have one cart in the pen, and the back filled with a few of these balls..

 

I have taken out some balls out of these carts recently and keep them in one place, if need be to add them to carts or converters where ink flow is problematic. Haven't tested it yet wether it works, had no need so far.

 

I looked around whether I could buy a batch, but no luck. Do you know if there's a place where to buy them?

 

And what cartridge is that big honkin ball from? Seems to be twice the size of all the other ones!

I did this too in school. I had about 50 of them in a little bottle. I sometimes popped cartridges just to take them. But then I threw them in college.

I even found a green one.

..and I have a relative who used to do this too, not anymore though. I think is a school habbit, because I got it from the same guy who I first saw using a fountain pen, and I thought to myself: fountain pens are so cool, so I started using fountain pens too. He's a drug addict now...lol

Edited by Waltz For Zizi
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Oh, yes, it was a school thing in the 1980s! I had several Pelikan cartridge pens then, I wrote a lot and accordingly I had lots of empty cartridges. It was fun somehow, to get the tiny balls out, wash the ink off and collect them in a glass jar.

I also had a (very cheap) demonstrator pen. As it needed cartridges as well, I was able to fill the rear end with those little balls. Looked quite nice.

 

Sometimes we also got bigger balls: There were some brands of ink erasers (eraser on one side, pen to write over the erased spot on the other) that had two rather large balls in the middle. When we had finished an eraser, we snapped it and looked what was in there. Sometimes you got dull pieces of plasic, but sometimes there were large clear balls inside. I think one of the brands with balls was Jolly, then and now a very well known Austrian supplier of writing instruments and arts material for children and schools.

 

I don´t remember whether that glass jar with tiny balls ist still somewhere around. I might have thrown them out one day. But maybe it still sits somwhere in the attic, waiting to be rediscovered...

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