Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

UPDATED: March 23, 2017 It is sad to have to say that these pencils have not lived up to what they should...artist grade colored pencils. As your journey with colored pencils continues you realize what a piece of junk you bought with your hard earned art supply funds. This is because it doesn't take much time with these pencils and you realize that they left the manufacturing plant with a variety of quality control issues that should never have passed inspection. That is, if there is an inspection of these pencils before leaving the plant. Unfortunately, there are MANY quality control issues in their current selling condition. The cores are not centered into the casings (causing sharpening and breakage issues), the pencils are warped, the casings are not glued together well enough (so they split apart and break), they do not glue the core to the casing (thus causing breakage of the core inside when dropped...this is invisible...until you try and sharpen it, only to lose a good section of your pencil). The cores are extremely soft that they cause wax bloom, making it difficult to continue layering as well as simply causing another challenge leaving this foggy veil to contend with. I've heard so many things, everything from: "I've never had any of those issues." (Clearly, these folks haven't used their pencils enough), "You have to know how to sharpen them correctly." (Really? Don't most sharpeners work on the same principle? And honestly, should I have to sharpen my colored pencils in such a special way because they break all the time...or is it time to ditch the pencils and purchase a higher quality of pencils that have no sharpening issues?). Then there's, "Oh, don't worry, wax bloom can be fixed." (That's nice. But wouldn't it like tremendous to not have it in the first place??!!). I find all of these excuses to be somewhat humorous. The truth is, yes, I know what it takes to do the best to keep a PC colored pencil, I know what to do with wax bloom, I know the frustration of digging out good sized lengths of PC cores from every sharperner I have ever used. My point is...I'm not willing nor have the energy anymore to fiddle with all these issues, that do not happen with other colored pencils. So, I pass. There's no need to write or comment that you use these all the time and these are all you use and they work great for you. Well, that's good for you. But this is my review...and my personal view of these pencils after first falling in love with them...and then figuring out, over time, that they aren't worth the hassle anymore. I currently use a variety of excellent brands (Faber-Castell, Caran d'Ache, and Derwent). There many lines of pencils within these different brands that I own and use. Some are watercolor pencils. water-soluble wax pastels, and some are specialty lines such as the gorgeous Derwent Drawing colored pencils. There are plenty of choices to choose from...and experimentation is the key. Sticking with one brand of pencils and at the least, not trying any others, is very much like walking into a candy store, with a hundred dollar bill, able to choose anything you want to try but then after looking at the walls and walls of different candy you tell the man behind the counter, 'Nope, I only want the a candy necklace.' It's as if one has blinders on...and they can't imagine any other different product (candy) to taste any different or to be better. Something that I'm seeing all over the board (every large website I can find that sells this 150 set...as well as the smaller sets...is a HUGE price decrease. This is NOT a sale price. I got mine on sale for around $129, which was a discounted price. Now here on Amazon and at Dick Blick they are selling the 150 set for $80! This is unprecedented!! What I think may be happening (and I could be wrong) is that the company is trying to clear out all of their inventory. The purpose could be to fix all the quality issues that they are so widely known for, but that is a guess. One thing that is clear is that companies don't just lower their prices by $50 for absolutely no reason. It will be interesting to see what the true reason turns out to be. I no longer use these pencils and haven't for some time, but I'm very intrigued about this noticeable change in price and will be watching to see what and if things change. At this point, I cannot recommend the Prismacolor Premier colored pencils...even to students. And the quality issues named above are the main reason why I no longer use Prismacolor Premier Colored Pencils.