Inked Dice

A discussion of inked dice came up in a recent game. Long time player will remember that the first polyhedral dice came uninked (and were pretty ugly to boot). Almost all dice made today are inked, which means they are tossed into a inker with the powdered inking material and tumbled, so that the powder fills the indented numbers. Unfortunately, this process slightly rounds the edges making the dice less true than what are called razor edged dice, such as casino dice or Game Science dice.  Over the years, players have developed a preference for already inked dice, rather than doing it themselves with a marker or crayon and have proved willing to accept the tradeoff.