a question about patina on tritium lume dials

is there anything in the laws of nature that says there has to be a patina on the lume over X amount of time? I'm wondering what type of conditions a watch would have to be preserved in, in order for some oxidation/patina to not occur, or is it just taken as fact that it will after a given time. I've seen dials that looked wrecked, I've seen some that look brand new.. but I'm also aware of the "relic" guitar market and people who produce brand new guitars to look as if they've acquired "mojo" which, unbelievably, can demand a higher price.. for the impatient many who simply like how they look.. either way, I'm growing more and more cautious of this price mark-up for the watch equivalent of a used pair of jeans because, you don't have to break 'em in yourself.. but the initial question still stands if there's something that anyone knows about that speaks specifically to tritium vs radium saying after blah blah years shrinkage/fading will occur etc

Tritium is a double edged sword, the aging can look stunning but will eventually degenerate into some nasty shades.

Hi teenagediplomat,

In fact its all about the laws of nature as you put but also as much about what the Tritium or Radium are mixed with as to how it decays or even what colour it produces there really is a ton of information out there if you really want to know everything there is to know and here Google is your friend. But just to give you a brief idea of the differences here are a couple of points of interest.

"The isotope of radium normally used was radium-226, which has a half-life (the time it takes for the element to decrease by half, thanks to radioactive decay into other elements) of about 1,600 years. That means that it would take sixteen centuries for the radium to be half as effective. It also means that the radium is active long beyond the lifetime of the watch. In fact, since the ZnS phosphor was under constant attack from the radium’s radioactivity, the limiting factor for the glow of watches of this vintage is never the radium itself, but rather the lume material."

"Despite the differing strength, tritium lume works exactly as radium does, with radioactive decay triggering typically zinc sulfide. One big difference is in their half-lives. As opposed to radium’s 1600+ years, tritium only has a half-life of just over twelve, meaning the lume is only half as effective after twelve years, then half as much again after twenty-four years, and so on. The lume material is not attacked radioactively as aggressively as with radium, but the reduced half-life means 1960s watches rarely remain illuminated."

That's just some of the more basic information that I managed to find doing a Google search but you could find everything you want to know by searching and reading.

Marc