Gold Plating Flaking Off 90Th Anniversary Pen?

[KAC]

I've own a 90th. It's the only modern pen I've purchased in at least a decade and it was to replace a 149 someone boosted from me (i.e., it was stolen). Anyway, aside from the mysterious appearance of an apparently spontaneously developed longitudinal through-and-through crack (which extends from the ink reservoir to nearly the filling cap) the plating has held up just fine. As for the crack, the pen is now at MB service. I'm hoping to see it within the next couple of weeks with a new barrel. It's been there since the 8th.

[KJY]

I have a 149 90th since it came out. Nothing of these flaking issues here.

(But my 75th 149 has this flaking issues)

[JCC123]

Good to hear that this was an isolated incident.

[James-B]

On 4/8/2016 at 8:17 AM, penparadise said:

I will occur again and again and again. As I wrote in other threads the rosè gold is plated over the yellow gold - on the solid gold nibs and also over plated yellow gold as on the trims. It happens with the 75th Meisterstück anniversary edition as well as with the 90th anniversary edition.

Sometimes one can be happy and the plating stays fixed, sometimes it's spalling. This may be influenced by your individual hand perspiration or if yo polish your nib - which I did.

Sounds like a defect and if you are going to use it (which you should) I would return it. After 4 repairs it's clearly going to happen again. 

[James-B]

On 4/8/2016 at 9:55 AM, jar said:

It's kinda like folk that buy so called demonstrator pens and then complain because there are places ink gets that are near impossible to clean.

 

That's the whole purpose of a demonstrator; to show you reality.

I disagree. If they know it flakes off they should not have produced them. No one wants a pen that the sinish flakes off. Use solid rose gold and raise the price but to put out a pen that flakes is unacceptable. Especially a pen that is supposed to honor the glory of 90 years for Montblanc. Think of the message that it sends. 

[James-B]

6 hours ago, JCC123 said:

Good to hear that this was an isolated incident.

4 times is isolated? He is extremely very unlucky then. 

[Dragan]

Really interesting. The topic is especially interesting to me because I also have two fountain pens from the 90th edition and luckily for me, my pens don’t have that problem.

I'm thinking... all 4 times the plating fell off from the same place, the ring on the upper part of the barel. If I understood correctly, other parts of the fountain pen do not have that problem. It maybe be related to hand perspiration?

[JCC123]

15 hours ago, James-B said:

4 times is isolated? He is extremely very unlucky then. 

Isolated to just him 😛

 

I would guess that 4 times the charm since he never came back to complain about it?

[KAC]

I thought about having the nib on my 90th reworked by a "nibmeister". I was told that the gold plating on that model was insufficiently durable to permit that sort of adjustment. That was disappointing.

 

My only other modern MB is a Hemingway (bought new for ~$400). I used it daily for many years and it had no problems at all. I only cite that as a contrast. Beyond that, I don't know if manufacturing standards have changed or that's just the way it is.

[JCC123]

1 hour ago, KAC said:

I thought about having the nib on my 90th reworked by a "nibmeister". I was told that the gold plating on that model was insufficiently durable to permit that sort of adjustment. That was disappointing.

 

My only other modern MB is a Hemingway (bought new for ~$400). I used it daily for many years and it had no problems at all. I only cite that as a contrast. Beyond that, I don't know if manufacturing standards have changed or that's just the way it is.

That's a strange thing to say since Montblanc produce these the same way so why would rose gold present a problem now? There are literally millions of these pens floating around for 100 years and I've never heard of plating coming off of Montblanc pens before. I have a suspicion that the OP must be doing something to them or is in an environment that causes these problems that he's not aware of. I still have Montblancs from the 80's that's been through hell that have their gold plating perfectly attached. I have another Platinum finished ballpoint from the mid 90's when they were first released that also has the plating perfectly fine.

 

I wish the OP can tell us what's what...@Bunny_Police??!