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Monday, April 8, 2013

Solving a Sharpie Mystery

I enjoy using Sharpies for hand drawn patterning. I buy my Sharpies at Costco for about $13.00. This includes 23 colors plus a bonus repeat marker of the color blue. You can buy this on ebay and amazon.com as well. Just search "Sharpie Bonus."

Note that two of the oranges look like they are the same color, but test them on paper and see one is darker than the other. I just label them "L" and "D." I think one of them is Leg Warmer Orange. I don't know what the other one is. It is still a mystery!
 


So what's the difference between that pack and this one? Well this one has two colors the first one doesn't (Almond & Surf), but is missing one of the oranges ("L" or "D"). I don't know which one is missing because I haven't bought this pack yet. There are no bonus repeat colors. The benefit of the first pack is the price. The benefit of this pack shown on the left is the extra colors (minus that one orange). You can buy the color Surf individually, by the way.





So where else can you find the color Almond? You can find it in the Summer Splash version of Sharpies. This can be found on amazon.com. The other 4 colors are just repeat colors that can be found in either 24 pack listed above. I haven't seen this color sold individually.

 
The 3 colors that I buy individually: Lilac, Surf & Aqua. I've found them at Michael's and at a place called Quality Art in Boise, ID. Remember, Surf was a color in the second pack listed above.











If you bought the Sharpies listed above, you'd have 28 colors.

Color 29 Valley Girl Violet can be found in this pack or individually at officedepot.com. Lilac (sold invidually) is also found in this pack. The rest of the colors are the same as the first pack (minus Pink) and the same as the second pack (minus Almond).

I don't know the difference in color beween Valley Girl Violet and purple so I don't know for sure if it is sold in stores with the other individually sold colors.

So far, there are 29 colors. Sharpie's website lists 30 Fine Point colors. It seems to me that Pink Ribbon is the same as Pink. I haven't compared them yet.
 
Let's recap. You can buy the original Sharpies and get 24 colors. Then buy individually: Lilac, Surf, Aqua and Valley Girl Purple. Now you have 29 colors.
 
If Pink Ribbon is different from Pink, you will have 30 colors.
 
It would be nice if Sharpie could just make one pack of all the colors.
 
FYI, except for Almond & Boysenberry (that I know of) I think all colors can be bought individually as well. I still have to research this. Oh, you can buy "Slate Grey" as "Grey" on amazon.com I just found out. Perhaps Boysenberry and Almond are sold under different names too? It is just cheaper buying them in a pack I think. But if you need to replace a color or two, then you can buy them individually instead to save money.
 
There are metallic fine point Sharpies as well: Gold, Silver & Bronze. I don't use these with the other fine point Sharpies. Instead I will use them for background color in patterns or even for outlining.

I have yet to try Neon Sharpies, Sharpie Highlighters, Brush Tip Sharpies or Paint Sharpies. Well, I did try a gold Paint Sharpie, but it was rather similar to the gold Fine Point Sharpie. I'd like to try some other colors to determine if I like this kind of Sharpie or not.