I have been reading up on Dorics here, and saw several referenced to plastic bodies taking on an orange glow, and eventually falling apart. Is this a problem across the board with these pens, or only for certain colors or vintages? If so, which ones should one watch out for? Kind of frightening when you consider the price of these beautiful pens.

Does this occur with Parker Vacumatics as well? I've seen several on ebay that looked to have a reddish glow in spots (on non-red pens), never thought much of it until now.

Thanks,

Dan, who is now the happy owner of a modest green Pacemaker, which, for the moment, shows no color shifts.

Any old item from (presumably) any material risks degredation with time.

That said, Vacumatics for the most part are quite stable. You might be seeing the ambered transparent stripes looking reddish on the ebay pens, though of course i am not looking at same pens as you right now

Some Doric colors are more sensitive than others.

regards

david

Which colors are more sensitive?

Dan

Not every pen in even the most vulnerable colors will necessarily go bad, but the colors that have the most likelihood of crystallization in descending order are in my opinion:
Cathay Green, Kashmir Green/green marble, Morroco red and red marble. Blues, Blacks, Tunis (gray) are the most stable. Other colors fall in-between Of all the difficult pens the Pacemakers in brown are the worst. Having said that, and although as David points out, all plastics undergo some changes over time, pens that have been well stored over the years seem to do far better. By this late date in the history of Dorics, Dorics that are going to go bad usually already have some slight signs of degradation visible to the trained eye and can be avoided.

Syd the Wahlnut

Thanks for clarifying that Syd!

Dan