How much more would you pay for an archival dye ink vs. what you use today?

[ThrillaMozilla]

For something that's pretty good and has accurate colors, double or maybe triple for something that's really good. In my experience, third-party inks are not particularly fade-resistant under real conditions. My current best practice is a a combination of three brands, including OEM photo black and possibly OEM magenta. The others fall short.

The problem is the startup cost, and the cost of trying many inks to see which are good.

 

[Grandad35]

This thread from a few years ago discusses the same subject.

If memory serves, discussions at that time with Joe from Alotofthings (formerly resellers of Formulabs ink) indicated:

• Most bulk ink was sold to people who didn't care about longevity, and price was critical for those customers.
• There were some customers who cared about longevity, but the potential volume for long-life inks was low.
• At least some of the OEM inks were made at the same plants on the same equipment as the bulk ink, so they obviously knew how to improve the longevity of bulk inks.

Other comments:

• I have had many prints hanging in my house behind glass out of direct sunlight for up to 10 years using Formulabs and IS inks with no noticeable fading or color shifts. However, prints on the same paper with the same ink showed severe fading after only a few months when hung without glass in my daughter's house with an air ionizer (lots of ozone). How the prints are displayed/stored plays a very large factor in longevity - maybe as important as the ink. If you sell your prints, have no control of how and where they are displayed.
  
• From what I understand, most people who sell their prints commercially charge enough that the cost of OEM ink isn't considered to be onerous. Since the competition also uses OEM ink, there is no competitive pricing disadvantage. Any potential savings gained from using non-OEM inks is not large enough for these people to take a chance on bulk inks when their reputation is at stake.
  
• There seems to be almost universal agreement that pigment inks give better longevity than dye inks. I'm not that familiar with the large inkjet market, but isn't that why the high end printers use pigment ink? If you are selling your prints, using dye based inks will put you at a perceptual disadvantage, even if the longevity of your dye ink prints is as good as pigment ink prints.
• This would seem to limit the market for long life dye based inks to a small percentage of the current bulk ink market. @mikling - what percentage of your current ink sales are for 8-10 color ink sets vs 3-6 color?