Let's start with the photo in question, in an article by Worn and Wound on the 10th anniversary of the Orient Mako the following photo was included in the article.
And here is a link to the article:
http://wornandwound.com/orient-marks...iversary-mako/
Like all good detective stories, let's flash back to late 2015, early 2016. I didn't know much about the Orient brand or indeed the Mako, but the all blue version appeared on sales corner for sale by Paul (Cat7), I was stunned by it, I thought what a cracking watch and the deep blue colour looked wonderful. Paul had listed it below £100 and then bumped it and reduced the price - it was one of those occasions when you can't say no. I bought it and was delighted with it. I have no idea why, but I flipped it to Trev (Peck) and was hit with buyers remorse quite quickly. I thought replacing it would be easy, but the few that appeared on e-bay sold really well. Eventually I managed to get one on e-bay about 6 months ago.
Around this time I stumbled upon the Worn and Wound article and the photograph. Having been a lad in the 70s and 80s in pre CD days, every single seemed to come in three different colours, a picture disk and a 12" vinyl - this must be where the collecting bug stems back to.
My first port of call was to checkout all the Orient dealers to see if anyone had any of the missing four in stock. The only one I found was the Orange dial at Creation Watches in Singapore - 58% off and free postage, so for the princely sum of £101.00 number two arrived.
The third to show was a bit by surprise, sitting one evening watching the footie with my i-pad on my knee flicking between TZ and e-bay a Pepsi on a black divers strap suddenly appeared as a 'buy it now' and was located in Stoke on Trent, so I bought it. The lady selling couldn't believe it, she told me that I bought it within minutes of her posting the listing.
Whilst happy with the purchase I needed a genuine OEM Orient SS bracelet so started hunting for one and found a guy in one of those Russian block countries who was selling one (he's-back-is-Stan) as Lee Evens once joked. I took a punt, but the deal worked out okay, so the Pepsi is now on SS bracelet.
The next opportunity was the black. I found two for sale, one in Germany with the listing entirely in German and the other was in Chicago. So I messaged the guy to see if he would ship to the UK, which he was happy to do so number four arrived.
This just left me with the biggest hurdle to get over, trying to find a yellow. The W&W suggested that on 90 were made and the feedback at the base of the article suggested that they were only available to people in the US. It quickly sold out. This required me to up the anti and go in for some extreme hunting. I had about 10 tabs on my i-pad open and set for this watch, e-bay.co.uk, e-bay.com, Chrono24, Amazon.uk, Amazon.com etc. You get the picture. Several times a day I whizzed through them without success.
Then the other Monday morning I was up about 7:30 and enjoying a cup of tea, when one flashed up on e-bay.com. The seller was in Calgary in Canada and had listed at midnight his time, as we are 8 hours ahead I just happened to see it as it went up. He put a buy now price or make an offer. None of that nonsense, I just clicked buy now before anyone else could. Nearly two weeks later and the watch arrived this week.
So now to purpose of the whole exercise, the recreation of the photo. Apologies for the quality, not easy trying to get a good clear image with an i-pad.
And of course no article is complete without a customary wrist shot.
Thanks for reading,
Ken
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