Is It A Moleskine?

[dcwaites]

Is this notebook a real Moleskine? I found it in a newsagent and was able to get it for AU$2.90 (about US$2.20). It is a sewn 20 sheet, 40 leaf, 80 page Kraft-covered cahier. There is a simple pocket in the back cover.

The paper is cream/beige, and after trying it with a number of pens and inks, it seems to be quite well behaved with inks.

The pages are a narrow A5, being A5 in length, but almost 1 1/2 centimetres narrower.

The notebook I got was plain, unlined, but I was able to print a guide sheet to A5 and then trim the long sides to fit.

So far, the inks I have tried it on are —

Platinum Pigment Blue, Noodler’s Black, Diamine Sapphire, Diamine Majestic Blue, PR DC SS Blue, Noodler’s Kung Te-Cheng and Noodler’s Heart of Darkness. All seemed to dry reasonably quickly, with almost no bleed-through except for the tiniest bit of spotting. Most inks show a small degree of spreading.

At first I thought that it was a fake Moleskine, as all that said it was Moleskine was an indented stamp on the back cover saying ‘Moleskine ®’, and how easy would it be to fake that. However, what made me think it might be genuine was the quality of sewing holding it all together. But, when I checked in my local Officeworks, they had the same chairs, in packs of 3, but at 2 1/2 times the price.

Overall, I am very impressed, with both the quality and the price. I will certainly be going back to get some more.

 

[Zeeppo]

If it is a fake they have got the stamp right on. I happen to have a matching notebook like this one. The stitching appears correct and the paper looks correct.

 

I have come across two fake moleskines. One the paper was white and lines were wrong. It was also missing the name. It just said it was a moleskine on the shrink wrap. The other the name was printed, not stamped, and the lines were too dark and not spaced correctly.

 

If my experience is any indication the forgers apparently do not put this much effort into their efforts.

[ethernautrix]

I bought a package of three from an office supplies store in San Francisco some years ago. I have seen these sold thus (packages of three) on official Moleskine carousels.

[bogiesan]

Standard molie cahier. You can get them at the official molie store (this is the USA site, there's probably one for your market area) ;

 

https://store.moleskine.com/usa/en-us/Notebooks/Journals/C3