My Ink Collection: 1091 Bottles and 47 Litres of Ink (2019)
A year and a half ago I wrote about my then collection of 637 Bottles and 33.47 Litres of Ink and now, moving into 2019 and after cracking 1,000 thanks to my recent purchase of all 100 Sailor Ink Studio inks (from Pen Classics) I thought was a good time to give an update to the collection.
What has changed
Since mid 2017 to the beginning of end of 2018 the main difference is Sailor. Sailor as gone up a lot; in fact it has almost tripled (105 ⇨ 302). Robert Oster has climbed a decent amount (81 ⇨ 139) as well as Diamine (84 ⇨ 114) and Noodler’s (92 ⇨ 116). Montblanc hasn't moved much but Krishna has gone from 0 ⇨ 29 and Colorverse from 0 ⇨ 18! Overall the number of bottles has gone up 70% but the amount of ink as a fluid (which was 33.47L and is now 47.6L) has only gone up 42.2% This represents a lot more smaller bottles being bought due in part because of Krishna’s 20ml but mainly Sailor’s Ink Studio which are all 20ml bottles. Colorverse is another newcomer I’ve jumped with just over half of which are small 15ml bottles.
There are now 12 new brands to the collection, which is surprisingly few, (from 41 to 53) 10 of these are Asian inks, one is Nick Stewart (which is made by Diamine) and, I believe, Kaweco.
The Collection
You can see all the inks on on my Fountain Pen Companion page. I’m actually starting to run out of space! I don’t particularly like using the bottom shelves or the top of the cabinet for Oster and Bungubox inks plus getting access half the inks of Sailor, Montblanc, or Diamine means pulling out half the shelf (not to mention the mess that is the shelf 2nd from the bottom and 2nd from the left)! The very definition of a first world problem, I understand.
All inks (minus those in the post)
Unlike last time I have not grouped all the single bottle brands into one “Miscellaneous” grouping. I wanted to show everything.
I am also conservatively counting all Sailor Store Exclusives as under the Sailor branding here and not under the store branding (contrary to what I’m doing with Nick Stewart, or Akkerman SBRE Brown which are made by Diamine). I’m doing this to get a better birds eye picture of the collection. If I did split up all the Sailor brands (which I do outside of this) the “Sailor” would split into 37 brands (most with only one or two inks) which would just look unwieldy in the already long list.
| Brand | No. of Bottles |
|---|---|
| Sailor | 302 |
| Robert Oster | 139 |
| Noodler’s | 116 |
| Diamine | 114 |
| Montblanc | 53 |
| Krishna | 29 |
| KWZ | 29 |
| Pelikan | 26 |
| Organics Studio | 22 |
| J. Herbin | 19 |
| Colorverse | 18 |
| Private Reserve | 16 |
| Rohrer & Klingner | 16 |
| Blackstone | 15 |
| Stationary TAG | 15 |
| Pilot | 14 |
| Lamy | 13 |
| Parker | 10 |
| Bookbinders | 9 |
| De Atramentis | 9 |
| Monteverde | 9 |
| Caran d’Ache | 8 |
| Akkerman | 7 |
| Carpink | 7 |
| OMAS | 7 |
| Graf von Faber-Castell | 6 |
| L’Artisan Pastellier | 6 |
| Franklin-Christoph | 5 |
| Papier Plume | 4 |
| Toucan | 4 |
| Van Dieman’s | 4 |
| Visconti | 4 |
| Aurora | 3 |
| Louis Vuitton | 3 |
| Platinum | 3 |
| Sheaffer | 3 |
| Ancient Song | 2 |
| Camlin | 2 |
| Hero | 2 |
| Ink Institute | 2 |
| Waterman | 2 |
| 3-Oysters | 1 |
| Anata Brand | 1 |
| Chesterfield | 1 |
| Cross | 1 |
| Diplomat | 1 |
| Dream Ink | 1 |
| Hakase | 1 |
| Kaweco | 1 |
| Montegrappa | 1 |
| Nick Stewart | 1 |
| PenBBS | 1 |
| Wancher | 1 |
The Colours
I've not been buying blues as much so percentage of blue inks has gone down. Including all blues (excluding purples and teals) then blues still account for over 30% which is only slightly down from mid 2017 (so other blues I’ve still been buying!). I’ve changed up the colour names a little from last year so it is, unfortunately, not a like-for-like comparison. Browns being that high is a surprise to me but it does include orange browns which I love and green browns which I have a soft spot for notwithstanding that it is the worlds ugliest colour…
The colour names, I should say, are rough. I haven’t scientifically colour coded these at all. A few of these might be in the wrong category. They are close enough for me, however.
The little white sliver is the 0.1% for Noodler’s Whiteness of the Whale!
| Colours | Percentage of Collection | No. of Bottles |
|---|---|---|
| Blue | 15.7% | 158 |
| Brown, Dark Brown, Green Brown, Orange Brown, Pink Brown, Purple Brown, Red Brown, Yellow Brown | 12.5% | 126 |
| Green, Dark Green, Light Green, Yellow Green | 10.8% | 109 |
| Blue Black/Dark Blue/Dark Teal | 10.2% | 103 |
| Purple, Dark Purple, Lavender, Light Purple, | 9.1% | 92 |
| Red/Dark Red/Light Red/Maroon | 7.4% | 74 |
| Orange, Dark Orange, | 5.4% | 54 |
| Light Blue/Turquoise/Light Teal | 5.3% | 53 |
| Pink/Pink Orange | 4.3% | 43 |
| Black | 3.7% | 37 |
| Teal | 3.6% | 36 |
| Grey, Blue Grey, Taupe, Purple Grey, Pink Grey, Green Grey | 3.2% | 32 |
| Burgundy | 3.2% | 32 |
| Yellow/Dark Yellow | 2.3% | 23 |
| Dark Pink/Magenta | 1.7% | 17 |
| Blue Purple | 1.6% | 16 |
| White | 0.1% | 1 |
The Numbers
| Statistics | ||
|---|---|---|
| Inks | 1091 | 100% of the collection |
| Duplicates | 82 | 7.5% of the collection |
| Discontinued Inks | 115 | 10.5% of the collection |
| Sailor Tall Bottles | 60 | 5.5% of the collection |
| Samples | 56 | |
| Brands | 53 | |
| Total Millilitre | 46993.5ML | |
| Total Litre | 47L/12.42gal | |
| Average Millilitre | 43.1ml/1.46fl oz (down from 52.54ml) |
The Shelves
I probably should have dusted more! 😮
These shelves get messed up pretty quickly as when I need an ink I tend not to put it back in the correct spot. There are also some messier shelves than others and some emptier shelves. I try to keep them grouped by region a little. Japanese inks are together, US inks are together, European inks are together (Italian on their own) and non-Japanese Asian inks are together. I’m running out of space to keep these looking clean and well organised though.
Onwards and upwards?
I don’t want to say I’ll slow down now (because predictions like that are foolish) but I suspect I might (least committed phrase ever!). I’m eager to get more Chinese inks, Taccia inks and to continue to dive into Sailor. Will still grab limited editions of Montblanc when they pop up and same with some other brands.
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I've listed all my inks and all my pens in their respective pages. Please let me know which inks you'd like to review next via the comments, Twitter, Instagram, or contact me directly.
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I was not compensated for this review and everything here is my own honest opinion. There are no affiliate links in this review. Some inks were given to me for review purposes.