Tanmit 240 Gel Pens Set

First let me say this set is a tremendous value. If you just want to get as many pens as possible you are in the right place. Second, they perform adequately. At first I Had to do a lot of "shaking down" on most of the pens but once they flow they seem ok. Some, however, remain scratchy and skippy, but in light of the quantity I am not dissatisfied by overall performance. Third, and this is my bad for not reading the description carefully, the pens range from fine to somewhat broad ("medium"). If I had my way all pens would be .8-1.0. No stars off for this' as I said, my bad. Now. I really really hate reviewers who give bad reviews based on petty or arbitrary complaints that Have nothing or little to do with quality or performance but in this case I experienced several related frustrations. First, there is no writing whatsoever on the pens, such as might indicate, for example, whether the tip is fine, medium or bold. I intend to draw lines with these pens till I figure it out and label them. I shouldn't have to. It is very irritating to me to pick up a pen and Have to experiment each time to find out whether the pen is an undesirable (to me) fine point. I shouldn't have to. Second, the absence of any number or color name on the barrels make it impossible to make a color chart unless the pens are also labeled by me for this. I shouldn't have to. So each time I use a pen I will have to experiment with it to see what color it is (no set of pens or pencils has complete consistency between barrel color and output). As I will note later in a different context, four of the barrels with opaque cap clips showing colors that are clearly pastels contain ink that is not only neon, it is fluorescent. Now for my big gripe. I spent at least four hours yesterday trying to separate these pens into the various categories and numbers the package declared, and I am no more certain than I was five minutes after opening the package. Of course it was easy to find 28 glitter, because if you look carefully those are the pens with faint specks on the barrels and/or cap clips. Also, all of those have translucent cap clips and ends. Easy peasy. Next, finding the six rainbow pens is also easy, as the barrels contain multi-color ink. These top clips and barrel bottoms are also transparent. Mostly, but not completely, the various groups of pens are packaged together, which was true for me of the glitter and rainbow pens. But then things began to get ugly. I found fifteen pens with barrels that were solid color clearly pastel clips and barrel ends. There were then a couple of lightish reddish ones I could not decide on to make sixteen. But there was a white pen packaged next to the identified pastels so I supposed that might be number 16. Then I scribbled down samples of them. Four of the pens identified as pastel produced ink that was clearly neon. Two others were arguably neon but not so glaringly. Does this mean they are neon? Who knows. I was able to isolate the for "regular" pens only because the were left standing after I removed the pens I think are the metallics. The regular pens Have solid, opaque pen cclips and barrel bottoms. But if they did not show up as surrounding pens were removed it would be impossible to tell which they are because at least in my case I Had left over another 22 or 24 pens that also Had opaque clips and barrel caps with no distinguishing features. For those who struggle, I here point out that the "regular" pens are red, black, blue and green. I identified what I thought were 19 of the 20 metallics. These pens have ALMOST opaque clips and barrel ends (maybe not gold and silver, by hey, those are easy). This trait is hard to screen for but against a strong light it can be helpful. I scratched out samples of the 19 pens I found that 18 looked like other metallic pens I have had or do have and one just looked grey. Probably my mistake. But oddly, I would later find that when I held the paper at various angles three of them shone. One, definitely silver, one, sort of silver, and one, an obvious (to me) metallic green. But this trait is apparently an anomaly, not useful to determining which pens are metallic. So I never did find all of those. That is interesting given the lack of o\any other pens with the slightly translucent clip and barrel end trait. I simply have to conclude that he 18 indentified metallics are all there are. And this is not for lack of trying, believe me. As to the "fluorescents," at first I did not know how to distinguish them from the neon. Then I got the bright idea of replacing the heat lamp in my bathroom with a black light that I happened to Have. Of course I dropped the $15 heat lamp and broke it. But some things then became not clear, but less clear. In my long hours of searching I had discovered that colors I had identified as fluorescent "shimmered" EXACTLY like the 28 identified glitter pens. In some case the colors were even exactly the same as those of the glitter pens! They couldn't be glitter pens, I reasoned, because the clips and barrels did not glitter. After all, it couldn't be possible that some barrels had the wrong innards, no could it? After solating the shimmering but not neon-colored pens that I thought were fluorescent I had six colors left. I Had also found 9 neon colors that did not shimmer so I put them in the "neon" pile. Then I held the whole color chart under the black light and found that eight on my 9 "neon" choices fluoresced. As did my six "shimmering" chosen as fluorescent, but not the 9 other shimmering (non-glitter) pens. Also, five of my "definite pastels" flouresced. What to do. I threw it all into a pile, except for the 24 unidentified pens (well, actually most of them were unidentified at this point). All had opaque and non-pastel barrel ends and clips, just like the "regular" pens. Two slightly flouresced. Two Had a little bit of shine. I don't know what dyeware is. Apparently no one else does either, because I put out this question on Amazon and no one answered it. I dragged a wet paintbrush over the 24 colors. Nine of the colors blended somewhat in their centers (i.e. the ink did not maintain the stroke integrity. 7 did not run or blend, but the dye seems to Have somehow weakened, such that they became somewhat pastel. These did not Have pastel barrels, though. Anyway, by now I hope you get my point and understand my gripe. Except as to the 28 glitter pens, the six rainbow, the four regular and maybe 18 of the metallics it is i possible to tell from an examination of the pen whether the pen will produce shimmers, pastels, neons, fluorescents, dyeware (whatever that is) and so on. It also cannot be determined from examining any pen whether it has a fine, medium or bold point. And there is never any guarantee with any set that the color on the clip matches the ink, so without being able to make a color chart i don't know this either, in advance of experimenting with any number of pens each time I am looking for a particular color or effect. So for the most part, as far as I am concerned these pens Have very little usefulness to me without further tedious testing and labeling. Although the pens are a bargain, in terms of my hours spent trying to meaningfully sort them and writing this review, they are no bargain to me. It may be true that all such large sets Have these same traits and problems. This is my first and last. I deem them suitable only for someone who cares only generally what comes out of the pens, such as a six or seven year old.