Two Fountain Pen Inks Won on Yahoo! Auctions: Ferris Wheel Press Aurorelias & Montblanc × James Purdey & Sons
Ferris Wheel Press Aurorelias 38ml and Montblanc James Purdey & Sons 50ml ink, won on Yahoo! Auctions Japan through Sakura Proxy. Details and how to bid through us.
Two bottles from a recent order, both won on Yahoo! Auctions Japan — and both discontinued, which is exactly why that is where they turned up.
Ferris Wheel Press — Aurorelias (38 ml)
Ferris Wheel Press is a Canadian stationery brand, and Aurorelias was its 2024 limited edition release. It is a deep violet base carrying a pink-and-gold duochrome shimmer — the colour shifts depending on the angle you catch it at, which is exactly the effect the aurora reference is going for.
The bottle deserves its own mention. Ferris Wheel Press bottles are shaped closer to a perfume flacon than a stationery product, with a faceted brass cap, and they are a large part of why the brand took off the way it did. A lot of people buy the first one for the bottle and stay for the ink.
Limited editions like this one sell through quickly at retail. Once they do, Japan's domestic auction market becomes the realistic place to find them.
Montblanc × James Purdey & Sons (50 ml)
This one is a genuine curiosity. Montblanc released it in 2018 as part of a collaboration with James A. Purdey & Sons, the London gunmaker known for bespoke shotguns, and it is a scented ink — the fragrance is single malt whisky.
The scent is strong when you open the bottle and fades from the page within minutes, so it is more of a moment than a permanent feature. The colour is the real draw: a deep orange-brown with pronounced shading, warm enough to read as an autumn tone but dark enough to stay legible for daily notes.
It has been out of production for years now. Japan is a good hunting ground for it, because Montblanc collectors here tend to keep boxes and paperwork in excellent condition.
Why Yahoo! Auctions is hard to reach from abroad
Yahoo! Auctions is Japan's largest online auction platform and easily the deepest source of discontinued stationery in the country. It is also close to inaccessible from outside Japan: you need a Yahoo! JAPAN account, a Japanese payment method, and a Japanese delivery address. The overwhelming majority of sellers will not ship internationally, and many will not respond to messages in English at all.
We bid on your behalf, receive the item at our address in Japan, check it, and forward it to you. Ink is heavy for its size, so we wrap each bottle individually and box it with fill rather than letting bottles move around in a bag.
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Send us the auction link, or just the brand and colour name and we will search for you. Tell us your maximum bid and we will handle the rest — you only pay if we win.