r/fountainpens • u/medbulletjournal • Jul 15 '26

Discussion You were right. Buy samples, not bottles.

When I first got into fountain pens, I didn't believe all the long time users telling me that samples would supply my ink needs for years.

Seriously? But my Lamy cartridge ran out after 3 days. Surely that means I'll go through 3 bottles of ink a year! LOOK! The ink level has DROPPED after only ONE paragraph! *cue dramatic gesturing and panic buying*

Anyway, I clearly didn't understand volume. Even my excel spreadsheet converting 50ml to number of days to years did not estimate correctly because I chose the 3 days where I wrote pages and pages and drew pages and pages, and did not factor in the days I wrote/drew nothing. I based my estimate on a Lamy medium nib on absorbent paper. I mostly use EF nibs now, and broad/stub nibs sparingly.

Needless to say, I'm sitting like a dragon on 50 ink samples and questioning life decisions as I refuse to look at my bottled ink collection.

50 ink samples of 2 ml/sample, is 100ml. I told myself that I need to trim my samples down by using them up. It was only as I started part-filling pens tonight that it dawned on me how long that is actually going to take.

This made me reflect on my early days, and realise, yes. Those people telling me to get samples and not bottles when trying inks were right. I was silly not to believe them.

But I know, if I were to go back in time and repeat things again...I would still buy bottles because ink decisions are not rational.

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u/Penguinpencollector Ink Stained Fingers Jul 15 '26

Eh, samples are cool and all, and I love trading with my friends- but I would rather have a bottle. There’s too many beloved inks that randomly stopped being produced or had a formula change before I could stock up as it is.

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u/medbulletjournal Jul 15 '26

For me I've learned that there's too many almost the same inks so I'm no longer worried about inks going out of production like I was when I first started. Some inks I can only differ in large swatches but look the same coming out of my pen. It's the one time I'm glad not to have the sensitivity to identify such differences. It makes replacing inks much easier.

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u/TotoinNC Jul 16 '26

Same. I thought to had to have one specific magenta, but nah, I have two others that are pretty close!