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Part of Where do the hidden costs in a fountain pen budget come from?
How to keep a fountain pen purchase log and disclose gifts
How to log fountain pen purchases: date every price you paid, keep gifts and loaners out of your total, photograph honestly and disclose free items clearly.
People share pictures of their desks constantly and almost never say what anything cost, which is why newcomers arrive with wildly wrong expectations about fountain pen costs. This page gives no price list, because prices move; it shows how to keep your own purchase log. How to record those numbers, and how to disclose what you did not pay for, is a small discipline: documenting a setup properly means photographing it, pricing it, dating it, and saying where anything came from that you did not pay for. This page covers all four.
What to take away
- Date every price. A price without a date is not information.
- Photograph the whole setup once, then the parts, and keep the file names meaningful.
- Record what you paid, not what the item lists for now.
- If something was gifted or sent free, say so plainly wherever you show it.
Plan the documentation like a small project
Plan the record before you start shooting, the way an archival digitization project does. The FADGI project planning guidelines define the activities involved in planning and managing a digitization process, from describing the material to storing the files, and the same order keeps a cost record from turning into a folder of loose screenshots.
Plan Your Documentation Project
- Decide what you are documenting
- Set the order of items
- Choose image quality level
- Pick where files will live
- Avoid unlabeled photo folders
What to record for each item
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Item and variant | Nib width and ink color change the whole story |
| What you paid | The list price now is a different number |
| Date and place bought | Prices and availability both move |
| Shipping, tax and duty | Often a quarter of the real total |
| Condition and source | New, secondhand, gift or sample |
Any record works as long as one line holds one item: a spreadsheet in Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel with one column per field, a page in a paper notebook, or a note in an app you already use. What matters is that the date and the price you paid sit together, so a later reader can see what the number meant at the time.
A finished line runs in one fixed order: the date you paid, the item and variant, what you paid, where you bought it, and anything that arrived on top — shipping, sales tax, duty. Write the variant out in full, because that column is where the real detail lives: a Pilot Metropolitan with a fine nib, a bottle of Iroshizuku ink, a Rhodia notebook in A5. The same pen can carry a different figure from one year to the next, which is why the date goes first.
The disclosure rule
If you show a setup publicly and something in it was provided free, say so. This is not a courtesy; it is the law for endorsements.
The rule sits in the Federal Trade Commission's Endorsement Guides, the regulation at 16 CFR Part 255, and the FTC's disclosures guidance explains what it asks for in practice: when you endorse a product on social media, make any material connection to the brand obvious. It sets out when and how to make that disclosure clearly, for a personal blog as much as for a sponsored channel.
A short, plain line does the job. Put it where people see it, not at the end of a caption, and do not rely on a hashtag alone.
A line like this does the job: "The ink in this post was sent to me free of charge; I bought the pen myself."
The same applies to a discount code, a loaner returned after a review, or a pen bought at a trade rate. Handle each one in the record the same way: note the code and what you actually paid, log a loaner as not owned and keep it out of your total, and mark a trade-rate pen with the discounted figure you paid. If knowing how you got the item would change how readers judge your opinion, tell them.
Photographing prices honestly
Shoot the whole setup first, then each item beside a ruler or a coin for scale. Keep the same background and light for everything so nothing looks more expensive than it is. Do not photograph only the good pen. A picture of the two abandoned purchases is more useful to a reader than a picture of the successful one.
Avoid the two habits that make cost pictures useless. Do not stage a setup you do not actually write with, and do not crop out the cheap pad you use every day in favor of the expensive one you keep for occasions. The point of the picture is what the writing really costs.
The photographic technique itself — lighting, backgrounds, and close work on a nib — is covered in photographing fountain pens. What you shoot is the evidence for the line in the record, so take the picture and fill the fields in the same sitting.
Costs the purchase price leaves out
A record that stops at the pen is the record that misleads. The same field list should carry:
- The converter or cartridge that made the pen write in the first place.
- Shipping, sales tax, and any import duty that came with the parcel.
- Ink, counted each time you replace it rather than once at the start.
- The small consumables around the pena spare converter, a syringe for flushing, a nib adjustment.
The categories that sit outside the purchase price are set out in detail in costs and hidden expenses.
Common questions
Should I publish what my setup cost?
How do I price something I was given?
Does the disclosure rule apply to a personal blog?
What file naming should I use?
YYYY-MM-DD_pen-nib_ink-in-use.jpg. Sorting by name then sorts by time, which is the only ordering you will actually want later.
