402 photos were taken for this overview and I had to adjust nearly every ink swatch and writing sample so this overview has probably taken the most hours to produce of anything on here. I would like to state the the full-page photos (like the one immediately bellow) are not quite as accurate nor are they as high a quality photo as that of the individual photos of each ink. While I will be using the full page photos for commentary I recommend looking at the individual photos of inks you are interested in. Also, photos of sheen have not been edited for ink colour accuracy (so only use the individual swatch photos for that). Swatched have been done for each ink on 52gsm Ivory (white) Tomoe River paper and 80gsm White Rhodia paper.

Curiously each ink comes with a sticker, the purpose of which is to stick on and wrap around a converter (which you can see in the third picture on Sailor’s landing page for the inks). Obviously this means I need 100 Sailor Pens, right? 88 to go I guess…

Number patterns and colours

Each ink is represented by a 3 digit number ranging from 023 to 973. There are of course 899 numbers missing from a linear range of numbers and this is presumably due to that the 100 were subjectively chosen (of the 999 presumably available numbers) and that there is certainly a pattern involved in the numbering.

While I’m not completely sure what the first number actually represents (or any with complete specificity) in effect it generally represents saturation and dye content. I do not believe it represents sheen or darkness but depending on the colour being represented, a higher saturation of dye content in the ink will often translate to a darker ink with higher sheen. An exception for this seems to be the “0” number range which only accounts for three inks all of which are somewhat black (so are naturally have to be highly saturated with dye).

As for the first digit there are:

Three “0”s

Twelve “1”s (these are easily the palest)

Eleve “2”s

Seven “3”s

Fourteen “4”s

Seven “5”s

Ten “6”s

Sixteen “7”s

Eight “8”s (I can’t help but imagine the eight “8”s was deliberate!)

Twelve “9”s (each iteration from “1”s have consistently become less pale and more saturated in colour

As for the second digit, “0” and “1” aren’t used at all and neither is “9”. The following is my own interpretation of the patterns (which do seem to become a little arbitrary towards the latter pages): “2” seems to represent blacks and grey-is colours (of various base colours); “3” seems to be reds, pinks and magentas as well as magenta leaning purples; “4” is consistently blues; “6” is greens and teals; “7” is oranges, yellow or orange browns, and yellows; and 8 is only used for 680 and 683 which are dark browns that approach brown from a redder base.

Some of these numbers are more consistent than others for example #40, #41, and #43 (where # represents different first digits) are consistently a more neutral blue, a slightly teal leaning blue and a slightly purple leaning blue, respectively. #64 is consistently a teal to some degree, #60 is a neutral green, and #67 is a yellow green of some sort. #30 is consistently redder in colour than #31 but each instance of each of these two colours has some variation in it; they aren’t just more saturated; for example 531 has noticeably more blue in it than other iterations of the #31 colour and 530 is noticeably more orange than other iterations of the #30 colour.

As for the third digit, I’m not entirely sure what this is. I’m not sure what the pattern is here but as mentioned above with #40, #41, and #43 there are consistencies and there is certainly a vague pattern. ##0 might represent a neutral version of that general colour as #30 seems to mostly represent a more neutral red like colour, #40 seems to mostly represent a more neutral blue like colour and #60 does represent a mostly neutral green colour. But while ##3 represents a purple leaning blue in #43 in #73 they seem to vary quite a lot. I’d definitely be interested in hearing if anyone has any theories for the third digit.

So how many of each colour? This obviously is a little subjective where you put what but this is what I came up with:

Black/Grey - 6

Blue - 14

Light Blue - 6

Dark Blue - 3

Teal - 8

Green - 11

Light Green - 3

Dark Green - 1

Yellow - 3

Brown - 7

Orange - 3

Red - 4

Deep red - 3

Pink - 7

Magenta - 2

Purple - 7

Light Purple - 3

Dark Purple - 5

Dual-colour - 4

That’s 23 “blue” inks out of 100 and that’s not counting teals or purples that lean blue. There are a few greens but overall this is heavily dominated by blues (which is fine by me as I love blue!) and they are all different at least.

Tomoe River 52gsm Ivory (white) paper