Starting back in 2022, we knew we needed a simple way to have a lot of self-inking stamps made. And it would be nice if we didn't go broke doing it.
As mentioned on the stamp design page, we found our best option to be rubberstamps.net.
Rubberstamps.net has a reasonably easy to use web site for ordering stamps, very fast order turnaround (ships next business day, usually arrives within a week), and their customer service is quick to respond to any questions. So that was where to get stamps sorted. Now, how about the cost? |
Rubberstamps.net sells a variety of self-inking rubber stamps in sizes from a 3/4" diameter circle to a 4 9/16" x 2 3/4" rectangle, including both their standard and professional ranges.
These cost between $13 and $80. We found the best value to be the Trodat 4923, which sells for about $20 before tax/shipping. Rubberstamps.net does offer quantity discounts starting at $100, but you have to remember to enter the code "BULK" when you place the order to get the discount. |
Here are the 4923 specs from the rubberstamps.net site:
- Plate size: 1.13 in. by 1.13 in.
- Grey casing
- Choice of five ink colors
- Up to 6 lines of text
- 28 characters/line max.
- Casing up to 65% post-consumer recycled plastic
- Laser-etched at 1000 dpi in eco-friendly 100% renewable resource red rubber
Now, back to the not going broke part. We chose a cost effective stamp and ordered in bulk. What else could we do?
Well, for the first year (2022), nothing. 26 stamps was over $500 even after the bulk discount. Ouch! But by this time we were fully committed and it had to be done. We didn't want to do that every year because it was both expensive and wasteful to toss all the stamps. What to do? Turns out that it's pretty easy dramatically reduce the cost of reusing a stamp. Anytime we wanted to increase the total number of stamps we were in for another $20+, but surely there must be a limit on that. Right? So how did we get the cost down? We simply had new stamp plates made and swapped them into the existing mechanisms. Since we needed a lot of them, it was most cost effective to have big stamp plates engraved and the cut them up. Once again, rubberstamps.net did a great job for us. |
Two 4" x 8" sheets cost about $110, delivered.
42 new plates for less than $3 each. |
A little quality time with scissors, knife, pliers, and Boxcar Press film adhesive one evening made short work of the swap. Handling the old plates was a little messy but lots of people pay to have colored stuff put on the ends of their fingers, right? |
There was one gotcha to this method.
When the ink pads in these Trodat stamps were used, the plate compressed the surface of the pad wherever the plate was inked. Changing out the plates meant that the compressed area of the pad no longer lined up with the printing area of the plate. That left gaps in the new stamped design because the new plate couldn't fully contact the surface of the pad. The good news is that most of the time, all that was necessary was to give the new design time to compress the pad to the same depth as the previous design had. Practically speaking that just meant swapping the pads a few weeks before the cruise to give the springs in the mechanism time push the new plate firmly into the pad. It also helped to stamp the new plate a bunch of times. Sometimes the old pads couldn't be reused. The surface wouldn't compress enough, maybe? This happened mostly with black pads. No idea why. It just meant ordering a few replacement black pads for $6 each. Even when the pad had to be replaced, the total cost of reusing a stamper was still less than half the cost of a new one...and a lot of plastic stayed out of the landfill. |
That's it, stamps done.
Once we had all of the stamps, it was time to figure out how to deploy them on the ship.
We needed some sort of stamping station.
Once we had all of the stamps, it was time to figure out how to deploy them on the ship.
We needed some sort of stamping station.