About 8 years ago when I was on the hunt for Lava treatment rOtring writing instruments, I happened upon a fellow writing instrument enthusiast who had managed to obtain some vintage rOtring pens. He wasn’t a serious collector, so he basically began selling off a good portion of his rOtring cache. As luck would have it, he had 4 capped rollerball pens (600 Newton model) that featured the Lava treatment. There was just one caveat–the front tip was non-standard. The opening was wider (possibly double the size) than a normal Newton 600 that’s compatible with the G2 refill type. By the time I’d gotten to negotiating with him on these, he’d sold two of them, so I grabbed the other two. A couple of years later, I sold off one of them on eBay. Now, a G2 refill will still work in this, and it’s fairly tight enough that there’s not much tip drift, as long as you don’t press down too hard. You can of course fill the gap with either aluminum tape or some DIY fashioned plastic collar.
Still, this left me curious. Did rOtring have a special proprietary rollerball refill that fit this? Or was it meant to take something else as an insert, like a wide felt tip?
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You may have some luck bouncing that question off the guys at the rOtring Museum subreddit
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They helped me properly identify an old tri -pencil I picked up. And they have lots of great pictures of older products.
rOtring Museum participation is by request. I submitted a request, eventually got a message with a link to add myself, but attempts to do so resulted in a subreddit failure. I wrote back, but no response.
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maybe also the “normal” rotring subreddit can help?
No responses there…
I’m trying to contact the other moderator on rOtring Museum…
I’d use the contact form on the museum’s website. They can’t be that untouchable.
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Thanks for the suggestion. I submitted a request through the website. Will report back if I hear anything.
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Still haven’t heard back from them. I did take some better photos for clearer detail to show the difference between the two rollerball tips. The size difference should be obvious now.
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Wow. Those are gorgeous.
Weird that you didn’t get a response.
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Thanks. One of them has some tiny… “snail tracks” on the finish, which looks like it could be manufacturing variances. Easily missed unless you look really closely. But the wide-mouth is nearly perfect. I’ve rarely seen perfect lava finish examples, as I think it was a difficult process and that’s partly why they discontinued it.
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I want that coating on my poptop van. That would be 
.
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But you’d likely have to matte vinyl coat it. Lava is susceptible to wear, unfortunately.
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Good point. Such a cool finish. I know very little about rOtring pens but this is drawing me in.
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It’s rather unusual. It looks uncomfortably rough, but it’s not. And it sparkles, in bright light.
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It would be interesting to learn how they made the finish.
Eitherway, I messaged the guy that runs the museum on Reddit and got this:
hi! received the email from cytherian trught the site and answered asking for photo. he must have missed my answer…maybe went to spam. you can let him know tu use (e-mail)
Yes it is very intriguing and rare piece. I actually have silver and black.
I had the same quest ti find out years back. So I know few things about it.
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Yes, I had heard from DuxPens and responded. I didn’t hear back but I did get a message on Reddit that I was now permitted, so I posted there.
So from what you’re saying, there were silver and black versions of this?
I wish I’d known how rare it was when I got it. I originally bought two of them for a good price. Then later, because I couldn’t find a refill to work for it, I sold one of them and got a higher price that paid for both in total. I still kept one because a little voice in my head said “keep it, keeeeeeep iiiiiiiit.” 
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Finally heard back.
Thanks for posting this interesting pen.
I believe it is a prototype that never got to the stores.
I have found also silver and black version and will share on www.rotringmuseum.com soon together with my other discoveries about it.
Very curious.
I uncovered my original correspondence with the seller. He’d gotten them from a collector in Germany who used to work for rOtring. I’m guessing he managed to grab some prototypes before he left… then, in his older age, had decided to start letting go of his rOtring possessions.
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