Any material can be 'heirloom', it depends on the emotional value attached to it. A lot of materials made from celluloid haven't aged well, I have an old RCA pencil that is not usable due to shrinkage, but some old Werever pencils that appear virtually new. Many factors including what mix of original chemicals/woods/finishes and storage all play a part in how long something lasts. I have pens in ebonite that are 100 years old and are still usable, and some that are too fragile.
There is an article on the web about how to store and display early plastics, that might give some insights into what causes materials to change shape/degrade with time. I'll see if I can find it later.
Another thing to keep in mind is, most (if not all) 19th and early 20th century pens were made without any metal tubes, so if the pen changed shape over time there wasn't a stable 'reference' to see the change.