Getting back to business

It won't have escaped your notice that things have been a little quiet around these parts over the last few months.

There are a number of reasons for this, not least the fact that the view from the new "office" - as pictured above - is rather distracting and not exactly conducive to getting any "work" done!

Whilst sitting back admiring the sunset every evening, supping on a cold bottle of Singha or three, I've been thinking about how to adjust a few things going forward to make the site a little more manageable and less confusing to keep up with - both from the perspective of creating, and consuming, the content presented.

As hinted at in the updated text on the home page, I wanted to change the focus a little and not have watches for sale quite so "up front and center" as they have been in the past. Most significantly, I wanted to change the way I offered watches that were available for sale, both to take into account the rapidly changing market for vintage Grand Seiko, and also to make it a lot simpler for collectors to decide whether or not they wanted to add something to their collection from this site.

So, despite the fact that here at TGSG we are currently sitting on around 100 vintage Grand Seikos - including examples of every single VFA - going forward there will only ever be three watches for sale offered at any one time.

The three watches will be carefully chosen from our extensive stock to represent the breadth of options available to those looking to add a vintage Grand Seiko to their collection. The initial aim is that one will be an "entry level" piece - typically priced under $3,000; the second will be a "First"; and the third a VFA. There are of course some very interesting pieces that don't fit into any of these groups, so on occasion something else will fill one of the slots to mix things up a bit.

When a watch sells, its place will be taken by another similar piece from our extensive stock. Crucially though, no watch will be listed for more than 6 weeks. If a watch has not sold within 6 weeks of debuting on the site, it will be "retired" to the vault, and replaced with something else.

If you do the maths on the stock we have, the number of watches that will be listed at any one time, and the fact the offer is rotated every 6 weeks, it will be rather obvious that should a watch return to the vault, it could well be years before it is offered for sale again. Given the price trajectory for vintage Grand Seiko over the last 12 months, that is not something that we are overly concerned about.

Additionally - and apologies in advance for this - we will no longer be entertaining requests along the lines of "I'm looking for a specific vintage Grand Seiko - do you have this reference available?". Whilst almost invariably we would have the desired reference in the vault, there will be no desire to part with it.

The only watches that will be available for purchase will be whichever three are currently listed, and each of them will only be available for purchase for an absolute maximum of 6 weeks.

No doubt some people will be reading this and thinking it's not a particularly smart way to maximize revenue, but that would be missing the simple fact that we're not in this with a desire to accomplish that objective. There is a lot more to life than money, and if that sounds odd, we invite you to take another look at the photo at the top of this article.

The first three watches will be going live later this week. They won't be presented as we have done in the past - with separate "product" pages featuring each watch - rather, there will be a simple blog post introducing all three watches at once, accompanied by Instagram posts to drum up some interest. And maybe - maybe - a YouTube video.

Oh, and please don't think of these sales offerings as "drops". We don't do "drops" round these parts.

See you all later in the week when the first three watches will be revealed.