The Secret of the Red Moleskine : A Short Rant

The Red Moleskine journals are sold at Barnes and Noble. If no one has ever placed one side by side with a regular black Mole, I'll fill you in on a few things.

The large Red Moles that I have been buying have been filled with 192 pages, versus a "regular" black Mole 240. Yup - you heard it right. Less pages. Did they cost the same? I'm not 100% sure, because one, I never buy Moles at full price, and two, I bought them so long ago I can't remember what I paid for them.

The last time I bought Red Moles, they only had two left and the books appeared to be soiled beneath the wrapper. I got the B&N salesperson to knock 20% off in addition to my 10% membership discount, and a 15% coupon that I received in the mail. (Hence not knowing what I paid.)

I liked the 192 page Red Moles because I could fill them quicker and there was more of a sense of accomplishment. Black Moles take me forever to fill.

There were several other slight differences between the red and the black:

The red cover has slight more texture to it than the black.

The Modo & Modo name is missing from the inside cover, though it still says www.moleskine.com.

The inside covers are much more yellow than cream in the red.

The paper itself was never quite the same shade in the red as in the black. Again, more yellow.

The ruling in the red is more pronounced than in the black, and that always kind of drove me nuts. I like lighter ruling.

The paper quality? About the same. Smooth one minute, scratchy the next. Bleeding with a fountain pen one minute, fine the next.

So that's only part of the secret. Wanna know the other part?

I was at B&N the other day, and I picked up a Red Mole and saw...are you ready? They now have 240 pages. Pffffffft. I put it down because I figured, why bother? If the features are "less than" the black, I'll just buy the black. Right? Though with my current pile of non-Mole journals, it's probably going to be a while before I buy any more Moleskines anyway.