There are so many grades of ABS and Styrene that it would be hard to say whether one ages more than the other. At a guess I would say ABS would age less because of the extra rubber content compared to brittle Styrene.

Ok older thread , but due the pic's i have seen in the book "Objects due Mythe" i would say that at least some of the ESB trooper armours were definitve painted.
In that book a "pyro" Stunt trooper is shown and the whole armour seems to be painted.
Hard to see,but this armour also seem to has the rubber thigh's as well.

Anybody who has the book as well , would agree to me?

Well, if I remember correctly, then weren't the ESB troopers made up of mostly ANH armor? Many of the ANH suits were painted for the Tantive IV scenes. That's probably the original ANH paint job seen on the ESB pieces!?

Jup the regular ESB armours we reused AnH ones.
But i never heard that they repainted them for the Tantive shots.
Those were done last while the filming , that's also the reason why all costumes there looks so beaten up.

The pyro stormtrooper armor in the book does appear to have been painted. One interesting thing I noticed is the ESB decals for tears and traps have a light blue tint compared to the "ANH grey" paint of the ear rank bars on this helmet (pp. 206-207). The ANH Hero photographed in this book have "ANH grey" paint for ear rank bars, tears, and traps (p. 53). Some have said the slightly bluer color of these ESB decals was due to lighting used in ESB, but it's not. It really is a different color.

Jup that's a realy nice detail.
Also noticed it, but thought it may could vary cause of the lighting.

Btw. found that pic in my fundus.

Would say if the armours in AnH would had been painted, they had used the same paint as for the helmets.
As it seems there is a paint difference.

Yeah, matching the paint color on a PP/HDPE helmet to unpainted white ABS is quite difficult.

Is that from the Tantive scene?

Nope that's deathstar.
But this is from the tantive:



Nice to see how the AnH Hero is matching perfect to armour as the stunt right beside him does not.

Yeah. What I heard - can't remember from where - is that the painting happened just before the Tantive scenes. Also, this is just speculation on my part, but I doubt they painted the helmets - the stunts were already painted and chipping badly during the Tantive scenes, but the hero helmets were raw ABS and I doubt very much that they were painted. Also, even if painted with the same white as the stunt helmets, the helmets were painted earlier and had been through the rigors of filming, while the armor was brand newly painted, so even if it is the same color, they would look different.