My Ball isn’t What I Thought
So this is my second Ball watch. I bought my first from a seller on eBay and it went great. Watch was quality, as described, and a great price. So next I kept my eyes peeled for an Engineer III.
One comes up from a Japanese seller described as an Engineer III Marvellite in Black. From the photos the dial appeared more grey than black to me, but I figured it a result of washed out compressed imagery. If it turned out to be grey, that would have been fine with me and price was about the best I’d seen for the condition in my short time looking so I jumped on it.
The watch arrives, and sure enough the dial is more of a grey. Again, it didn’t really matter to me. As I’m removing the links I notice this rainbow or oil slick effect on the face. A coating on the sapphire? No, I realized that the dial became resplendent and textured in the light. Checking the caseback, it’s numbered out of 100. I go back to the eBay listing and look up the reference number. NM9026C-S38CJ-BK, Very little comes up under that reference, but now im seeing the listings from Japanese dealers selling this limited JDM Ball with a black mother of pearl dial.
All I can do right now is laugh, it’s not the simple piece I thought I was buying but it’s my own fault to be fair. None of the listing photos showed even a hint of that MOP dial, but all I had to do was search that reference number. I’m sure I could return it, but right now I’m leaning towards keeping it. So far it appears as a muted dark grey in all lighting other than direct lighting. I also really like the blue tritium at 12 and on the hands as opposed to orange. I hope you enjoyed this story about my second Ball.