I’ve recently realized that I’ve been blogging about notebooks so long that I’m stuck in the past when I think about prices. The inflation kicked off by COVID and the Ukraine war, and sustained perhaps by some opportunistic corporate greed, has resulted in a lot of price increases for various consumer products over the last few years. Notebooks are included.

I haven’t tracked notebooks prices methodically, but I do remember the standard pocket size Moleskines going from about $10 when I first bought them in the late ’90s/early 2000s, to $12 and then to $15, in the time I’ve been blogging. But then I stopped buying new ones and was only getting old stock on eBay for several years, so I wasn’t paying that much attention to their suggested retail prices. I was shocked to see that a “classic” pocket size Moleskine now has a list price of $19.95. The pocket size sketchbook is back, and both it and the pocket watercolor album are $23.95. This isn’t wildly out of the range of prices for similarly size sketchbooks with high quality paper, but as much as I love the Moleskine sketchbook paper for writing and drawing with gel ink pens, it’s not really comparable to the papers in sketchbooks from, say, Stillman and Birn or Hahnemuhle or other brands that approach that pricing. Limited edition pocket size Moleskines are $25 and up. (And of course larger sizes have even higher prices.)

What about other brands?

When I reviewed a Rhodia Webnotebook in 2009, the suggested retail price was $15. The price is now $17.95. That increase seems relatively modest.

I’m pretty sure the original Field Notes Kraft 3-pack was $9.95 for quite a while, but those are now $12.95.

When I first reviewed the Hobonichi Techo in 2014, it was priced at about $24 (2500 yen). This one could be affected by fluctuating exchange rates as well as inflation, but it’s definitely a lot more expensive now, as $42 was the Jet Pens list price for the 2024 model.

Paperblanks mini size notebooks are now $15.95-$16.95, which seems to be the same as what they were in 2019 (see my review of the Paperblanks Nova Stella Solis). But they were $11.95 in 2013, when I reviewed the Paperblanks Old Leather notebook.

It would be interesting to track the pricing of Filofax organizers over the years. When they were first introduced, they were a premium product, made of beautiful leathers, and they were priced in line with their role as a status symbol. But over time they became more mass-market, using cheaper materials and going for more mass appeal. Their pocket size organizers now start at around $40 and go up to $200+ for special editions or fancy leathers. I wish I had a record of how much I paid for mine, the earliest of which were bought in the 1990s when they were still made in England using good quality leathers. I’m sure those specs would be impossible to offer now for anything near what I paid.

But there are some notebooks that may not have been affected by inflation. When I bought a bunch of Bindewerk linen covered notebooks a few years ago, I felt splurge-y paying $19-20 for them. That now seems like a bargain compared to a Moleskine! And in fact the price on the OrangeArt online store actually seems to have gone down, from $19.00 to $18.50 for the pocket size.

I haven’t tracked the pricing of Travelers Notebooks or other popular notebook brands. Has anyone else kept track of prices changes for their favorite notebooks over the last few years? Let us know in the comments! I’m still trying to get my head around the new normal…