Platinum Soft Core Colored Pencils with Tin Case, Pack of 72

I am very impressed with this set of pencils. They are an excellent value for the price! I have many high-end brands such as Prismacolor, Polychromos, and Luminance. Every brand has its own personality. The Platinum pencils are more similar to Polychromos than Prismacolor. There is no waxy build-up at all. There is very little dust (they don't crumble away like some other cheaper brands). They sharpen to a beautiful point and keep their point for a long time, especially if you work in light layers, which I highly recommend for this pencil.The best way to work with these is to slowly build soft layers. You can layer and layer and layer and layer, unlike other pencils that max out really fast and then you have to press hard or use solvent if you want to add any more layers. I get a very rich result with the technique of gradual, light layering, without using any burnishing or solvents. This is so much easier on my hand, because I don't ever have to press hard. It just takes some patience.The colors are fabulous for coloring books, with a full range of skin tones (light, medium, and dark); a silver and gold that are not scratchy; LOTS of pinks and purples; a huge array of greens for all those leaves; NOT too many grays; and a decent black. There are no repeated colors in this set. They may look similar if applied lightly, but you will see the difference if you apply more layers. I get the best results on a slightly textured paper, such as the paper used in Amazon-printed coloring books.I love the beautiful white color and colored ends. They have the look and feel of a high-end pencil, like Tombow. They don't have numbers or names. I just labelled mine with a Sharpie from 1-72, right in-between the label and the colored end, and then swatched them, so keeping track of the colors is not problem.Incredible deal. Amazing pencil. In spite of the low price, I don't consider these a lesser-then, budget pencil. I have them in a nice case and will be using them and loving them as much as my more expensive pencils.

I received my set of these a few days ago, despite there being no color chart, color names or numbers on the pencils. Those things are a minor annoyance to me and there is a simple way to work around it which I will get to later in my review. These pencils have a soft core, very similar to Prismas, Marco Raffines are not as soft. I do like to work with a pencil with a round barrel, which these have and so do Prismas, these colored pencils lay down very well, blend well and sharpen without any problems with an electric or hand sharpener. I wish they had a set with more colors but I guess that 72 colors is a decent sized set and I am spoiled by having a set of 150 Prismas. I will say that the Prismas have been collecting dust for a few months, I have been using Marco Raffines and testing a lot of popular kids or craft colored pencil sets to use as fillers when I need different shades of a color for a project. When I opened the Platinums I decided to arrange them in a way that suited the way I prefer to have my colors sorted. Once I had the order set and the pencils back in the box and in order, I numbered each pencil 1 thru 72 with a permanent fine line marker, smack dab after the PLATINUM imprint and before the colored top, and went on to color a swatch of each color pencil next to the corresponding number, eventually I will probably add a name for each color, but at least with the pencils numbered I can keep track of which ones I have used in each project. By the way, I've noticed that there have been some comments that there are duplicate colors, there are no duplicates, if you look at the set, the painted color tips may be the same color for several pencils, but they are all different shades of that color family. Happy drawing and coloring!

I am literally kicking myself for not ordering these earlier, like sox months ago!! Instead of ordering these I went ahead and ordered every other set of low cost generic sets and reached a point of frustration where I just went ahead and ordered a set of a 72ct set of Koh I Noor polycolor pencils. I was going to add on a set of 36 Faber Castell studio polychromos, but I saw this set and remembered all of the excellent reviews I have read on many many adult coloring Facebook groups. So I ordered both and I am literally in pencil love with these two sets!! When I finish this review I am ordering a set for my sister. There are two other sets on Amazon that I like, but honestly, they fall short when compared to Platinum. I whittled a bit off the end of each barrel and numbered then created a color swatch sheet. Just gorgeous!! When compared side by side, the performance and pigment are an EXACT match! In fact, the reds and pinks are more vibrant than the Koh-I-Noor. The Koh-I-Noor has a cream yellow while the Platinum set has two flesh tones that are amazing! If you're on the fence hit the buy now button, don't deprive yourself of the best set available for the price. My tin did come with a tiny dent like a few other reviews have stated, but not a single broken lead. I only had one pencil not sharpen well, stuck it in the AZ sun for 20 minutes, no longer an issue. These are compatible with all of my other sets, have too many and will be the set i pull first in the future.