Yes, those that I have also are "made in China".



I've ordered these from the German Amazon website. The experience I've had with them is generally good, but they have one major deficiency. When new, they're very inky. They leave slurs on the paper. After some days of typing this goes away however and then you have really nice, full black letters.

There are also alternative ribbons offered under the Pelikan brand that are made from Nylon (I have exactly no idea if this is a valid English term). These don't leave slurs, but aren't nearly as inky; the imprint left by these is more greyish than black.

I assume that every remaining commercial seller of ribbons produces them in China. It's sad in a way, but still better as if there weren't any ribbons available anymore. I've read about trying to manufacture them oneself, but Mr. Polt claims in his "Typewriter Revolution" that this is based on re-inking existing ribbons and produces results of inferior quality. I've not tried myself, though.

sirius wrote:

I assume that every remaining commercial seller of ribbons produces them in China

They are not all made in China. Fine Line, Porelon, General Ribbon Corp, and Baco are some of the US manufacturers. NuKote is a US company as well, though I don't know if where they make them. I think Kores is an international company headquartered in Austria, but I also don't know where they make it. There are others, those are just some examples.

I have two Smith-Corona Skyriters: one is 10 CPI (Pica), and the other is 12 CPI (Elite).

I wondered which ribbon made my typewriter look the best, and got a cotton ribbon, a silk ribbon, and a nylon ribbon.

The heavily-inked cotton ribbon was not just black, but BLACK. It looked really good in he Pica machine, but was too inky for the Elite machine.  Too many filled-in a's and e's.

The silk (Kores-brand) ribbon was Black, and looked great in both the Pica and Elite machines. No filled-in letters.  The print was a bit uneven, but the ribbon was brand-new, and rhat might have something to do with it.

The easy-to-get nylon ribbon was not black.  It was more like dark grey.  Nevertheless, the output was even and readable. 
But I can't un-see how pale the nylon print looked when placed next to silk or cotton. :-(

As the results are now, I *lust* for the silk ribbon, even though its about twice as expensive.

I may need to do more testing by typing 3 or 4 pages full of #'s and @'s to see if the ribbons will look better once the excess ink is pulled out.

-- Ardie

Just a heads up:

The Pelikan Seide ribbon I have here is VERY wet/oily. The KMP ribbon seemed very dry in comparison.

Personally I prefer the KMP ribbon, the Pelikan leaves ink residue all over the place on the ribbon guider etc. Wonder if it’ll get better soon, or if it’ll take forever.

The 'dry' one from KMP is equally black as the Pelikan...

Tomorrow I'll post a picture of a page where I've written on with both ribbons.