Excellent catch! I had taken note of some of the designs imprinted on the clicker, and the Balium was certainly the most divergent. Certainly looks Tolkien inspired. The others are mostly geometric shapes and various layout patterns. “Tecnor” reminds me a little of “TRON”, the movie… with all of the parallel lines.
Well, this whole adventure inspired me to buy a few more of them. The ballpoints are the most prevalent and available, so I grabbed 3 more in the Rexor, Tanakor, and Rubidium colorways. Once I have them all together, I’ll do a group shot.
There’s a few sellers on eBay from India who have been offering up rOtring core writing instruments, with a mixed range of prices and feedback. Luckily, I thought to check out ETSY and I found a seller that was more price friendly. In particular, I was trying to hunt down the Rubidium model which was priced notably higher than the others on eBay. The ETSY seller had a very agreeable price. So I took a chance. Package shipped May 24th and arrived June 11th… better than the 25~30 day estimation given.
REXOR, TANAKOR, and RUBIDIUM have joined my lineup:
The Rubidium colorway has a kind of Star Wars Empire impression. I really like Tanakor, which is a distinctive black and white contrast colorway. The only one I’m missing is TITANIUM… which, I should probably just get to complete the whole collection… at least of the BP/MP format.
Somehow I never noticed that the Rubidium has a black nose cone and button. Given that The Phantom Menace was released in 1999, I suspect you may be right about its Star Wars vibes, and that Rubidium can justifiably be considered the Darth Maul Edition.
Also, for a bit of weekend light reading (and couldn’t we all use some of that?) here’s an entertaining review of the rotring Core Balium that I stumbled upon while trying to find an actual rotring Core Balium (no joy yet).
The substack seems to be mostly about super-fancy fountain pens (the type with snake-shaped pocket clips, etc) and gonzo fiction. Even so, it’s probably worth keeping an eye on, if only to remind yourself how much more affordable it is to collect mechanical pencils than fountain pens.
Thank you for linking that review. I’d not seen it before. It’s remarkably good! I’m enjoying Ricardo’s writing style. And his love for the Balium is entertaining, to say the least. Also, fascinating that it was less than 2 years ago when he’d bought his Balium core from a brick-and-mortar store in London. “Indie” shop explains it, as they must sell all sorts of discontinued and vintage writing instruments. It has been almost 2 decades since rOtring dropped the core line.
I wish he’d bought an XS nib, which is what I have on my Tecnor. It writes more like a slightly lean F (like the LAMY Safari). And I think he’d have been more pleased with the line from it. I wrote with my Tecnor FP for about a year, until I got a vintage PILOT mµ (myu) 701 that displaced it. The big fat cap of the core is not clothing pocket friendly.
Intriguing! I am familiar with many of rOtring’s vintage isograph / rapidograph technical pens, and I’d never seen this dual stylo variant. Very curious. I wonder if it was a good seller.
It’s actually possible to turn any pre-1980s variant handle into a double-ended one by unscrewing the stepped end piece with the red ring.
However, because this removed the rotring branding (in white text on the red ring), rotring also sold a dedicated double-ended holder with the rotring logo on the barrel, as above.
When they introduced the isograph with its tapered holder, there was briefly a variant variant (!) with isograph-style cap and holder, allowing it to be used with compatible accessories such as the sec-o-mat modular dry storage, etc.
That makes sense… using the same thread tooling for both ends. Saves money.
I have a few of these old clipless isographs and in one bag of “miscellaneous stylograph bits,” there is that holder with the clear cylindrical cover… must be a sec-o-mat.
Oh, right. Now that makes sense. Yes, I remember something about “humidifier” on that case.
I do have a couple of rOtring isographs that came with this curious rectangular red plastic mount… and it looked like it belonged attached to something else. NOW, I get it. It mounds to the base of the sec-o-mat.
The Rubidium ballpoint has one detraction. The nose cone is NOT made of metal. It’s a nice quality plastic, well finished. Weight is 1.4g. The satin silver finish steel nose cones featured on all of the other colorways are 4.4g each. A full 3g heavier!
