Exclusive : Ball Engineer ii Genesis 125th Anniversary Limited Edition - First Real World Pictures @ Malaysia

Ever since I wrote about the pre-order for Ball Engineer ii Genesis 125th Anniv LE back in December 2015, I have received an average of 2.5 e-mail queries per month on the said watch. And each time, I sent back a standard reply that I have not received the watch as yet and could not comment on the real world review as requested.

Well, more than 4 months have passed since my order and voila, I received an e-mail 2 weeks back that my watch was had been shipped to Malaysia and was pending the custom clearance. Yeah, ever since the GST was imposed, it had been a tedious exercise purchasing goods from abroad. I used to buy watches from overseas due to better prices and as watches were tax-exempted prior to the GST implementation, it was easy to buy, write my review, then flip the watch off before the next arrival. But it's no longer as easy these days and it was very much a hassle if one gets called to KLIA for the GST payment and clearance.

Ball SC's interior design was akin to 50 Shades of Red. 

Need a Security Pass to go in.

Anyway, that was how I found myself sitting patiently at the waiting lounge of Ball Service Centre Malaysia, while the customer service representatives prepared the watch for me. It was quite a wait actually, and there were more and more customers coming in for their watch collections. We were said to be amongst the first batch in Malaysia to receive the Genesis. Chatting with the CSRs, I gathered that the most popular combination in Malaysia was 43-Blue-Bracelet, which was the exact combination that I pre-ordered. Looks like I am a Malaysian through and through.

Package retrieved and pending the journey home.

After lunch, I began to explore the package that Ball SC had passed to me earlier.  The box was different compared to the other 2 Ball (Hydrocarbon and Fireman) watches' generic boxes that I had. Not sure if this box was specially for the 125th anniversary or if all new Ball watches now came with this drawer-like box.

The watch by itself had quite a presence. The numerals were huge, and the micro gas tubes were 1mm thick (!); which should shine like torches in the dark. I would know later the night. Plenty of polished surfaces on this watch, and it was pretty bling-bling. With the 40mm, it would have made a nice dress watch, I believed; although the dial was too sporty to be a dress watch. In a way, you could say that it was neither here nor there. It's not a real diver's watch (although Ablogtowatch referred to it as one) as it had no unidirectional bezel and WR was only 100m. It's not a real dress watch as it was just sized too big to be one, and those large numerals were more akin to pilot watches. Yet, it's not a pilot watch as it clearly lacked the huge onion crown for easy access while with gloves. So I guess it was really a scientist or engineer's watch (like the Milgauss) since it was sporty but elegant, and had shock resistance up to 5,000Gs and anti-magnetic protection up to 4,800A/m.

The blue dial was a really nice shade of blue. It looked like black in darker areas, and would changed into a darker shade of blue against the light. I have had other blue dial watches, but not this shade of blue; so I considered the tinge of blue to be rather unique and attractive. The classic colour ensured a sense of evergreen classiness, so you could wear this watch as a daily-beater should you choose so.

The caseback had really excellent engravings depicting Ball's 125th anniversary of railway history, and was amongst the most beautiful caseback that I had seen. And Ball had engraved my name between "Swiss Made" and the serial no. as part of the pre-order special; and the engraving was smooth to the touch and lined up perfectly with the rest of the engravings. According to the CSRs, the engravings were made at Ball's Swiss plant and quality control was highly-controlled there. Add to the fact that this was the first watch where Ball engraved the owners' names on the casebacks, and it was altogether a rather nice gesture.

The bracelet was pretty comfortable, and even my missus agreed so. It had full and half-link adjustments, so one could have the bracelet adjusted nicely to one's wrists. The clasps were the butterfly type, which depicted a sporty-elegance there.

This particular combination i.e. 43mm blue dial with bracelet, was already out of stock worldwide although other combinations were still available in limited numbers. Truly a nice watch to add up to one's collection!