Honestly, I have no idea.
People started asking me for these colours, 3880 to 3895, well after I had bought the store. It was maybe a year in to my being there (so 2019) by the time I’d even been asked once for them. I don’t know why that was… maybe some designers started specifying them in their patterns. Considering they came out in 2013 or so, that is rather strange.
I asked my supplier if I could get them and it turned out I could… but only in a 16 pack… one of each colour. That would make it quite difficult for my customers if they needed two of one colour. Would they have to buy two packages of 16 colours just to get the two they needed? It looked that way.
Then I found out that DMC was selling them individually on their website. Good news for my customers! Oh, no it wasn’t, DMC US doesn’t ship to Canada (which for the most part, is good for Canadian shops).
But then an order came in in which I had ordered several of the 16 packs and they weren’t there! They were subbed for the other DMC 16 pack that has colours from the regular line. I called my supplier and was told that those were gone and these were being used in their place.
Then one day, maybe mid 2021, I looked in the ‘Coming Soon’ section of my supplier’s website and found the 16 colours, or so I thought. I excitedly pre-ordered them and waited for them to come. They showed up and were we ever excited. Until we realized that there were only 14 of them. Two of them 3882 and 3890 didn’t show up. I still don’t know why but I couldn’t order them from anyone.
And then… shortly after we got them… we were told they were discontinued. What?!
So, I give up. There are colours that are close, so I recommend you just substitute and don’t stress about it. Some of the DMC subs aren’t super close, so we went through and checked the Anchor floss to see if there was a closer match. Photos are below so you can make an educated choice.
The discontinued DMC is in the middle, the DMC sub on the left, and the Anchor on the right.
Except for the two I couldn’t get. I have the DMC sub and the Anchor together, but just a photo of the discontinued DMC beside them. This is not great for colour matching as the photos were not taken together. But we threw them in there just so the set would be complete.
