So it appears that the industrial M knockoff with the blue paint job recently sold 
)
I'm the seller. And it wasn't trying to be an "Industrial M knockoff." It's pretty common knowledge these cases are available from Unicomp. The badge is different and in a different position. And the model number differs. It was simply intended to be a beautiful (to me) keyboard with the best damned keyboard switches ever made. My intention was to create and sell a buckling spring board that didn't look like everyone else's buckling spring board.
Taking old boards, especially IBMs, and restoring them and modifying them is something I enjoy immensely. My avatar here is a
Displaywriter that I customized. Here's what I did with an F107 and M49 that I purchased from Orihalcon:
Here's another M, though it's not quite ready for primetime:
And speaking of not ready for primetime...
... an F122, with glow-in-the-dark vinyl-wrapping (with wrinkles hiding the world's crappiest wiring), LEDs, and a solenoid.
... a Longhorn-edition of the Model F AT (the elegant yet elusive Model F UT!)
)
I want to address one other point regarding the Model M: The base plate.
If you've ever refurbished one of these and removed some rust from the plate, you're left with something that looks like this:
(from someone else's Model M refurbishment)
The newly-exposed metal from grinding has started to oxidize almost immediately (this is why we use flux when we solder!), and it's only a matter of time and relative humidity before this base plate is rusting again. And, IMHO, it doesn't look very good.
My priming, paint, and polishing job on the barrel plate inhibits the rust from coming back.
Of course no one sees it! That's not the point. It's a preventative measure against rust, and indicative of the attention to detail that went into refurbishing the keyboard.
In every way that I know of, this keyboard is better than the original, and I stand behind it.
