..printer ink.
No seriously, I have been thinking about this for some time. By volume printer ink is one of the most expensive liquids known to man. It’s so expensive that supermarkets have even taken to putting security tags on the cartridges it sells to reduce theft. It’s more expensive than alcohol and most top-shelf perfumes per volume.
Long gone are the days where you would take your USB sticks to a print centre to print copies of your resume (CV) or dissertation. Nowadays most people want to print from the comfort of their own home using their inkjet printer. And they apparently are prepared to pay to do so.
Buying a new or replacement printer generally involves weighing up the cost of the ink. Most manufacturers will sell you a printer at cost or even a loss knowing that they will make the money back on the ink. With third-party ink sellers trying to steal market share they’ll try every trick in the book to make sure that you buy their ink using firmware updates that ensure that third-party ink is not recognised, or makes it appear to run-out sooner, to selling you ink subscriptions that automatically send you ink when you are getting low, at a premium of course.
Considering that we are talking millilitres here not litres it’s amazing that you are paying a small fortune for such a small quantity of liquid, yet somehow the home printing industry has mastered the art of making liquid gold.