The Cost of OEM Cartridges

OK but what’s you point, because the ink costs just about the same all over the world, that’s why so many of us choose to use good 3rd party inks, and another point is by not using OEM ink there has to be some trade-off..

Well, I just looked it up, and a bubble has recently burst. Today silver is "only" US $5.71/g. Using the ink prices as Peter D quoted, on a per-milliliter basis that's only 3.6 times cheaper than silver, and ink is mostly water. I don't know how much that printer wastes (I suspect not a lot, fortunately), but if you take the waste and purging into account, the price must be comparable with silver.

The ink is also only 25.7 times cheaper than gold. I don't know what the dye content is, but if you discount the water and other solvents, the dye must surely be quite comparable in price to gold. I know with my HP, the waste is horrendous. If you also take that into account, the dye must surely be at least as expensive as gold on a volume basis.

If that isn't a case for refilling, I don't know what is. And although the OEM dye is more durable than third-party dye, it's nowhere near as durable as gold or silver.

Have I mentioned this before? If so, we're going in circles.

The Hat said:

OK but what’s you point, because the ink costs just about the same all over the world, that’s why so many of us choose to use good 3rd party inks, and another point is by not using OEM ink there has to be some trade-off..

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Good points, I should have elaborated.
Serious interest in photography in New Zealand is driven to a large extent by club activity and the nationwide competitions that they organise. A significant part of this is print driven (for good technical reasons that I won't go into here). A significant proportion of the members of these clubs find that they cannot afford to enter prints for critique sessions and therefore they are being restricted to entering projected images only.
As I've pointed out elsewhere on this forum the cost of quality ink jet printers in my country is very high (for example a Cano Pro-100 is 5.4X more expensive that say from Adorama in the USA). Although the price difference in this case is exaggerated when compared with say a comparable pigment printer( at 2X) the principle is much the same ie. the combined cost of quality inkjet printers and OEM inks is prohibitive for many talented photographers in NZ particularly the young married ones. Resorting to the use of minilabs offering largely snapshot printing quality doesn't cut it for critique and competition standard of work.
This is where refilling comes in as it enables enthusiasts a chance to present prints of their work for assessment by their peers at a reasonable cost.
This forum enables me as an enthusiast to offer an affordable printing service prints to my amateur friends so that they can advance their passion. For that privilege I'm forever grateful to the other contributors for sharing their knowledge with newbees such as myself.

"The trade off" question: The Canon Pro-100 dye printer is my first quality inkjet printer other than four cartridge office type printers. When I purchased it I was influenced by the claim that Chromalife 100+ inks offered a greatly extended life for correctly stored prints made on Canon paper. When considering refill inks I thought that if even 1/4 of that life of 100 years was achievable with refill inks then the complete package was worth considering. Maybe I was naïve thinking about it in this way but it seemed reasonable at the time given the serious print head blockage problems a friend of mine had with relatively low volume use of a bulk ink system with an Epsom pigment printer.
I understand now that the print head blocking issues may well be equally common to both dye and pigment printers but at the time there seemed to an argument in favour of dye printers on this point particularly where infrequent use was a factor.

peter D said:

The cost of OEM cartridges for the Pixma Pro-100 in New Zealand is prohibitive at US$24.00 inc tax per cartridge (or US$158.50 a set online discounted).
For doing very small print runs what with head cleaning wasting ink during start up it would probably be less expensive to coat the paper with silver leaf if there is such a thing. Each cartridge contains about 15 ml of ink and assuming same density as water the ink weighs about 1/2 an ounce. Half an ounce of silver was priced at US$8.53 on the Comex today. Bit of a head spin to do the maths considering much of the ink is just a carrier but you can see that the silver coat would probably cost less. Maybe gold leaf is a better equivalent.

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For the record you can get gold, silver, copper or even pigmented foils printed as an image on appropriate substrate. Although given the price of gold, even at today`s discounted prices, you would probably prefer the imitation gold or silver foils - much more economical. (I used to work in the commercial printing world in a former life, and have some knowledge of these things.)

@peter D

The whole principal of using 3rd party inks is to find the best combination that will give you what you need and want out of your prints, that road can be L o n g or short depending on how adventurous you want to get.

I have just looked today the retail price of printers here and the Pro 100 is €558.73 while the Pro 10 is €649.59 and the Pro 1 €799.99 the Photo Platinum paper A3+ (10 Sheets) €27.77. (Plus delivery)

So you can see by these prices that you’re not the only one been screwed by the high prices and cry every time you see the very low discounted prices that they pay in the US.

The answer to producing good quality prints that are guaranteed to have longevity is to use pigment inks with no trade off, and you can still avail of good 3rd party pigment inks at a fraction of the cost of OEM’s.

Now the last issue you have trouble with is this problem of Clogged heads well the Canon pigment Pro printers don’t suffer from that nasty habit and can be left for many weeks unused (Not ideal) without having to pull you hair out to print something..

The cost of OEM cartridges for the Pixma Pro-100 in New Zealand is prohibitive at US$24.00 inc tax per cartridge (or US$158.50 a set online discounted).
For doing very small print runs what with head cleaning wasting ink during start up it would probably be less expensive to coat the paper with silver leaf if there is such a thing. Each cartridge contains about 15 ml of ink and assuming same density as water the ink weighs about 1/2 an ounce. Half an ounce of silver was priced at US$8.53 on the Comex today. Bit of a head spin to do the maths considering much of the ink is just a carrier but you can see that the silver coat would probably cost less. Maybe gold leaf is a better equivalent.

But buying gold or silver does not subsidize the cost of a printer. It is only by knowing the profit coming down the road from selling ink cartridges that they can sell these miracles for as little as they do, especially consumer level office type ones.

peter D said:

Good points, I should have elaborated.
...
"The trade off" question: The Canon Pro-100 dye printer is my first quality inkjet printer other than four cartridge office type printers. When I purchased it I was influenced by the claim that Chromalife 100+ inks offered a greatly extended life for correctly stored prints made on Canon paper. When considering refill inks I thought that if even 1/4 of that life of 100 years was achievable with refill inks then the complete package was worth considering. Maybe I was naïve thinking about it in this way but it seemed reasonable at the time given the serious print head blockage problems a friend of mine had with relatively low volume use of a bulk ink system with an Epsom pigment printer.
I understand now that the print head blocking issues may well be equally common to both dye and pigment printers but at the time there seemed to an argument in favour of dye printers on this point particularly where infrequent use was a factor.

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Never had a PRO-100, a PRO-9000 or other 8 cartridges "PRO" dye printers, but am very pleased with the prints from "ordinary" 5 and 6 cartridges Canons.
I use now the 5 cartridge A3 IX6550 and the 6 cartridge (added grey) MG8250, both with 525/526 cartridges (there is no 6 carts A3 with this type, only for the 550/551 but for these ones you have to use 3th party refillable ARC carts).
These printers are cheaper to buy and refill and - as you say - even with 3th party ink the prints will live long enough for most purposes.

PS: seldom or none blocked heads with Canon pigment and dye printers (if you treat them well).