Long story, and I wont subject you to the rest of it, but lm going to end up throwing plastic a lot this year for strikes.

 If you were given the choice, would you choose a brand new white dot, or an older one (as in 1990 model)?

 I’ve seen a lot of the newer ones cracking out around the holes pretty quickly, but I’ve got an old one I bought at a yard sale a while back for a quarter (yes, a quarter).

 Which would you choose?

If you want to throw for strikes, I'd use anything with a real core over a pancake, even the older "softer" ones.  I've used a red XXXL (not exactly new, but not really old like the caramels) quite a bit over the years - all my spares and fantastic on short sport patterns). It has chipped around the thumb a decent amount, but not enough to plug and re-drill.  For plastic, I'd put performance over brittleness - it's not like the entire ball cracks like resin.