I have bought a LOT of notebooks on eBay. Mostly, I have bought older Modo e Modo Moleskines to build up my SABLE collection of pocket sketchbook, plain and gridded notebooks. The old Moleskine sketchbooks and squared notebooks are still my favorite notebooks of all time, and I’m glad I stocked up on ones that were better made than today’s models. And if I hadn’t amassed quite a few pocket sketchbooks, I’m not sure what I’d do now that they have been at least temporarily discontinued. (They are still listed on Moleskine’s website, so I wonder if they are assessing demand, or maybe waiting for paper prices to decrease to see if they can ever afford to produce them again.)

In recent months, it has really seemed like the supply of good old-stock Moleskines was drying up, and I started to be less picky about which listings I’d consider purchasing. In a couple of cases, this meant buying lots of multiple items, where other extra notebooks were mixed in with the Moleskines I really wanted. Here’s a few of those random extra notebooks I ended up with:

Xonex Mini Handy notebook

This was a free gift that a seller included with my order, so it arrived as a total surprise. I remember selling quite a few Xonex notebooks when I worked in a bookstore in the early ’90s. Given how yellowed some of the paper is, this notebook probably dates to that era! It reminds me of the softcover notebooks sold today by Shinola, mainly because of the cover texture, but the Xonex lacks a ribbon marker and back pocket.

Designwallas notebook

This was part of a lot of assorted notebooks. The label describes it as a handcrafted journal made of batik paper. The cover is quite pretty and I like that it’s thin and flexible. I had not heard of this brand, but it is an Indian company whose products seem to be listed by a variety of retailers.

Unbranded black notebook

This one, part of the same lot as the batik one above, is a bit of a mystery– it came shrinkwrapped with no branding on the exterior or interior of the product. The faux-lizard texture soft cover is ok, and the pages turned out to be unlined, which I liked. But it’s perfect-bound with quite a lot of glue, so it doesn’t open very flat. There’s nothing about this notebook that makes me want to hunt down more.

Green-Inspired Slipcased Journals

This set of 3 slipcased notebooks was sent to me in error, and the seller didn’t want it back when I notified them of the mistake. The slipcase is sturdy and attractive, and the journals themselves are rather cute. The inside covers are color printed with fun patterns, and the paper is a light green that is easy on the eyes, and seems appropriate since the brand name is Green-Inspired. One of the notebooks has several pages with writing on it– notes to someone from the people she had worked with at a summer internship. They all seemed to really like her and wished her well… but I guess the recipient didn’t feel she had to treasure this memento!

None of these will make it into my “to be used” stash, but it’s still kind of fun to have some unusual and unexpected extra notebooks to write about! Eventually I’ll donate them or give them away.