My first vintage: Mark 4.5 blue dial (ref 176.0016)

The seller of the silver dialed example above would also have had to go to the trouble of buying and replacing all of the hands and the silver 24 hour disc, all of which are different from the black Mark IV's. But that setup is identical to what can be seen on other Omega watches of the era, notably the 176.007. Since this dial was already being used on some 007's and 010's, and also 005's all prior to or around the time that the 009 Mark IV was introduced, l suspect it was then also used initially in the 009. Or it may have been a sales sample or a prototype, though I surmise many "prototypes" offered are actually fakes. It may have been the only one Omega produced! Fatcat, do you recall how the seller represented this watch, perhaps as a sales sample?

I think somebody got a rare original Omega Mark IV there. We may never see it again.

Maybe you could get more photos of the text? It's not so easy to reproduce these, especially if you have to remove other text first. I've contacted experienced watch dial restorers for simple text repair jobs and ended up not having anything done because of the difficulties and because all told me it wouldn't look exactly original. Some of these were experts in Rolex dial restoration. For reasons I don't understand, all explained that a dial had to be completely stripped down before any restoration work could be done. I passed.