The Catch : Seiko Prospex SRP653 50th Anniversary Special Edition

I am a fan of the Seiko Prospex collection; and amongst the pieces that I had previously added to my collection included the following :

Mine was the bronze colour though.

There was another piece i.e. Seiko Sumo SBDC003 that I had been tempted to add to my collection, fondly known as Blumo amongst Seiko fans. It was not officially brought into Malaysia (or so I was told by the Seiko boutiques that I frequented), but you could still order online and have it delivered to your doorstep. The 6% GST would add to the purchase cost, obviously. And the depreciating Forex had increased the post-exchange rate price tremendously, so I had to think twice before clicking on the purchase buttons these days.

But when Seiko displayed 2 brand new pieces in celebration of its 50th anniversary during Baselworld 2015, I was very much tempted to add one of these pieces to my collection first. Which would you choose amongst the following :

Both these pieces were from the Tuna-series, with the SRP653 fondly known as the Blue Tuna Scallop (there was another similar designed SRP655 known as the Red Fang Tuna Scallop) and the SBDX014 fondly known as the Gold Emperor Tuna (this piece was inspired from the Emperor Tuna SBDX011).

Given that the Tuna Scallop was a Special Edition series and the Gold Emperor Tuna was a 700-pieces Limited Edition series (NB : Turned out that the Limited Edition piece was the SBDX016 and not this SBDX014), it was not surprising that the Gold Emperor Tuna had been snapped out even before the boutiques had them on display for less than a week.

The Tuna Scallop similarly had an over-demand situation, so locating pieces in the boutiques was a bit of a challenge but still viable.

Between the Red and Blue, I was more attracted to the Blue piece. In fact, the first shipment was said to have arrived in Malaysia in July 2015, and a fellow collector informed me that the boutique he frequented had 2 pieces. He chose the Blue. I thought of dropping by to take a look over the weekend but found that the Red was duly-sold off during the workday.

And so, I had been looking for the elusive Blue Tuna Scallop since. Until now, some 3 months later on 10/9/2015, when I finally netted this prized piece.

A review would be forthcoming later. Keep your eyes peeled on this page then.