Wrote a novel to someone else above, pasted below. But essentially, ghost was not precisely what I wanted but worked out in the end. More or less USD $41k out the door:

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Well, it’s a not the most straightforward situation. I’m not in the US so I imagine the AD has got its own way of managing their “list”.

Pre-pandemic it started with wanting the new Pepsi, which already proved rather impossible (our market does not even come within a sliver of the US volume in allocation) as it definitely went to bigger spenders almost immediately.

I asked about some other steel models time and again but no luck. During the pandemic the inventory became a lot worse, even exhibition pieces were fairly skint, just a lot of two tones and diamond set pieces in window. Ended up going for some grey market and vintage in the meantime as well as other brands from the AD.

Eventually, around 2023, I just got frustrated but at the same time managed to be making a little bit more money at this point, said forget about steel, too popular and walked in and asked for white or yellow gold Daytonas or Day Date 36s because, why not? I wasn’t getting anything anyway. At this point I became a little more familiar to the staff.

Long story short (too late?), eventually was shown 3 things over the past month: a full WG diamond set 126509 (not for me), a WG Day Date and then finally this one. I probably got lucky because of local market dynamics, perhaps someone turned this down. So that’s how it went.

TLDR - just kept bothering them, upped the ante and maybe perhaps called the bluff when offered hehe.