Plaque Or G10 On Gold Coated Pens

[RegDiggins]

I sent the message below to Force re some queries on the Waterman Forum. He suggested it might be of general interest

and so I am posting it here........

Sent 25 October 2015 - 22:45

Spent today trawling FPN for info on refill for a Director General ballpen. Info which I finally obtained thanks to a member suggesting I snip the thread off a Cross refill and this fits perfectly.

Whilst I trawled I caught in the net some talk about Plaque or G on a Concorde. I noted that you rightly informed the writer at the time that it meant Gold Plated and that the G was probably for Galvano as it would be electro plated.

Later on there was a reference to Plaque or G10 on a metal pen so I thought members might be interested to know that this number refers to the thickness of the plating in microns.

My enquiries in the world of watches show that back in the day
the Swiss authorities introduced regulations with regard to gold plated cases which required them to be marked Plaque Or G then the thickness of the plating in microns ( e.g. 10,20,or 30 etc).

This soon spread on the continent so I have a Dupont lighter from late 60s with 20 micron ( Greek mu ) marked on it.

I also have Parker 75s from Meru in France where the Gold plated ones are marked 20 micron and the silver plated ( Plaque Argente ) are 30 microns.

Now to the whole point of this diatribe.

As gold prices rose and it became more and more expensive to coat pens most makers settled for the minimum allowable thickness and that was 10 microns. After a while they dropped the numbers so watchcases lighters and pens were marked only
Plaque or G indicating that the coating met the minimum requirement of 10 microns.

So Plaque or G10 indicates an early model and anything after has no number just the letter G An exception might be where the makers are stressing the luxury of their item by showing 20 or 30 after the G as with the Parker pens in France.

Hope this helps

RegDiggins