My grandfather on my mom's side of the family gave my dad a French Mabo metric tape measure as a gift.
It rode in my dad's 911 for years.
Then along comes ME, (insert dumdarse me) who drops it in a lake. My dad was pissed beyond belief. Understandably. He made me rummage through the lake with a big magnet. No luck.
In the 1980's (after an exhaustive Yellow Pages search) there was only one Mabo dealer in our town, I drove there, and this was a discontinued model. I was out of luck.
I always felt awful. When my dad died, I found one on Ebay, and tossed it in my 911. Drove around with it for months. One day while visiting his grave, I dropped it off for payback, a little late.
Looks like they are still on ebay. Funny thing is, I never even got to try out the metric part of the tape.
edit- interesting tidbit- they don't just measure on the tape, they measure from the top. Check out the pics.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/385635664626?hash=item59c9ad42f2:g:1MoAAOSwwdhkbnM m&amdata=enc%3AAQAIAAAA4INej3SpO7SWOcwT27EpN9ftoaeUe tK%2BqR2cDE1Itu0iqh31HgiZx7y2aKg%2BxIKEnzlmaBnrdRQ WgN2ugpc0AOFHR0AOHeP0WN1sqy0aIDrwe3%2FAAqPRS0ub8A5 95EwV8Hb2mxNM%2FH9s%2Fus%2BwxLZpe30fAMQ2ETL5fnIAhe Rm8UBw6UFxHUdGLwmYgldjljKTChPcLZ0koIIJTynKS6jQU4dP %2FMt59CdmaAfZokf6ajudy29h1WbAixiLoLxeiNMYoq8zT9xk mouc93%2F7zp%2FpZMKNRYeS%2BoZmkT6eN900YXX%7Ctkp%3A Bk9SR4bftcnzYg