It's not a trap
It's a face off
Introduction
The purpose of this newsletter is to provide guidance on which vintage Grand Seiko auctions on Yahoo Japan might be of interest to collectors. I also detail those “dodgy” listings that you need to avoid.
What you will notice is that this isn’t just a simple list of auction listings - in discussing the merits (and demerits) of the listings I often branch off into a bit of background that I hope will be useful in helping you to learn some of the nuances of collecting vintage Grand Seiko.
For those paid subscribers who are reading one of these newsletters for the first time, you can access the archive of all the previous newsletters on the Substack website (or the iPhone and Android apps).
Going forward, I will be unlocking these newsletters a week after sending them out to paid subscribers. The main benefit is of course alerting paid subs to the auctions that they might be interested in bidding on (and avoiding), but I feel the educational value post-close of the auctions is only fair to share to all.
Important note for UK and EEA subscribers -
Yahoo Japan is now actively blocking connections from the UK and the European Economic Area due to the prohibitive costs of adhering to the GDPR regulations for a relatively small number of users.
To get around this for the purposes of this newsletter, links to the auctions detailed will be provided through one of the Japanese proxy companies - FromJapan.
Whilst I have been a customer of FromJapan for many years, I do not receive any benefits from using these links.
Peter Quill
Grand Seiko 5645-7010 CG
It would be hard to know where to start this week, were it not for my traditional approach to sort the list of everything in the Grand Seiko category on Yahoo Japan, and then start at the top.
Ever wondered what a NOS cap gold cased 5646-7010 should look like? Wonder no more, because that is what we have here.
No further words necessary.
Grand Seiko 4520-8000
In any other week this lovely example of the 4520-8000 would be a highlight of the newsletter, but this week it’s just an also-ran.
Still worth mentioning though - I know a lot of subscribers are after one of these, and whilst of course it can’t compare in condition to the 56GS above, what it lacks in NOS-ness, it more than makes up for in desirability.
The first Grand Seiko with raised logo dial
Just a nicely aged example of the first Grand Seiko. You’ll be needing a new crystal when you send it in for service of course, but whether or not you choose to attempt to buff up the case a little is entirely a personal choice - it certainly looks like it could do with a visit to the spa!
It’s a shame the seller hasn’t provided a direct front-on shot of the dial, because it looks very clean indeed, except for what looks to be some minor staining in the region of the 8 minute marker.
Should do well - but will that case come to life with an ultrasonic clean, or is the aging more than surface deep?
Grand Seiko 5646-5010
Nobody was tempted to grab this last week in the last seconds of the auction for its BiN price of 200,000 Yen, so the seller relisted this week on an open auction with no minimum bid, and it’s currently sat at 137,000 Yen, with two days to go.
Auctions can be funny things - you would be surprised the number of times a seller tries to get a minimum desired price for something, fails, relists it on open auction, and someone ends up paying more for it than they would have done had they bought it first time around!
OK so I’m not certain that’s what will happen here, but I did feel the original price was in the right ballpark for this, so it will be interesting to see what it ends up hammering for!
Grand Seiko 5646-7040
Anyone care to run through the tenets of the famed Grand Seiko “Grammar of Design” on this one to see how many boxes get ticked?
Introduced alongside the 5646-7030 in the 1974 volume 1 catalogue, the 5646-7040 was one of the very last references to be launched in the vintage Grand Seiko era, with only the 6156-8040 coming later.
It of course looks nothing like any other vintage reference, being the only example of a vintage Grand Seiko with Arabic numerals. Possibly a slight homage to the Wako clock tower, but almost certainly the inspiration for the modern era Wako limited editions.
These are pretty rare, and I know a lot of people are after them, so I would expect this to do very well indeed.
Grand Seiko 6145-8000
You have to scroll all the way to the final photo to discover why I’ve highlighted this auction.
The downsides are pretty clear - some disappointing damage to the dial around the periphery running all the way from the 2 to the 4 index, a below average case which has quite a few nicks and scratches, and has seen some gentle polishing, and a gouged caseback medallion (why oh why do people do this?!).
But the upside may be good enough for some to look past all that, because as we seen in that final photo, this is accompanied by its original guarantee - and from a time when the guarantee had the watch case serial number written on it.
That’s sufficient I’m sure for some to perhaps view this as a “project” watch worth taking on and then looking for a replacement dial.
18K gold GS buckle
If you’re missing an 18K gold buckle for your 18K gold cased Grand Seiko, you’re in luck, because here’s one!
As to which references this would be correct for, the answer is “quite a few”.
One of these sold last week (it was listed after the newsletter was sent out, and closed on Tuesday) for just over 100,000 Yen, so there’s your guideline for what you can expect to pay.
Grand Seiko 6156-8040
As with the 5645-7010 that leads this week’s newsletter, here is another listing that I would really like to pick up for myself, but you lot are not going to make it easy for me, are you?
Last week I featured a listing a 6156-8040 that had a BiN price of 218,000 Yen, and that I thought was pretty reasonable and might sell. Well, that one didn’t and is still available.
This one is in a different league. It’s probably the nicest example of the reference I have seen come to market since I sold my one many years ago. The one I had truly could be described as “mint”, and this one comes very, very close indeed.
This is one of those rare occasions where I think it is reasonable to make the claim for an unpolished case, which means whoever ends up winning this (please, please let it be me!) can expect case finishing that puts modern Grand Seiko to shame.
And I’m completely serious when I say that. Here’s a macro of the case on the one that I sold -
See you at the finish line for this one!
Grand Seiko 5645-7010
Oof. That dial - incredible.
The case? Not so much.
But I’d be very happy with this one!
Grand Seiko 43999 SD dial
SD dial - check.
Coarse knurled crown - check.
Manufactured in 1963 - check.
Superb condition - check.
The best SD dialed 43999 to hit Yahoo Japan in a long time.
Grand Seiko 4520-7000
So much good stuff this week that this almost didn’t make the cut, but I couldn’t let it go past without a quick mention!
Lovely patination on the dial, and although we could do with some differently angled shots to be certain, the case looks great too.
Gotta hand it to the seller for his description though -
“Please refrain from bidding if you are looking for perfection.”
That’s it. So, err, yes - some risk here perhaps!
It’s not a vintage Grand Seiko, but I like it
Grand Seiko SBGR007
The SBGR007 - a limited edition of 300 pieces in white gold - is one of my favourite Grand Seikos from the modern era. Released in 2000 for the 40th anniversary of Grand Seiko, I suppose these days people would refer to this as a “neo-vintage” watch.
These don’t turn up very often, but up until a couple of days ago there were actually three available. One of those has sold, whilst there is another example available at Komehyo listed at 900,000 Yen.
However, the Komehyo example is just the watch, strap and buckle - no boxes or paperwork. Well, Ok there is a box, but it’s just a modern generic Grand Seiko box, not the gorgeous wooden box that this was originally sold with.
For modern Grand Seikos - especially limited edition anniversary pieces such as this one - I would suggest that original box and papers are absolutely essential, and certainly add more value to a reference such as this than the mere 10% price difference between the example at Komehyo, and the one listed on Yahoo.
The third example that sold earlier in the week was also missing its box and papers, so sadly it seems that as time passes, more and more of these sets get broken up. With the certificate being specific to the watch - and, unlike these days, actually recording the daily rate over the course of the 17 days of testing - once the papers and watch get separated, they are highly unlikely to ever find one another again.
If I hadn’t been fortunate enough to pick up a full set of this reference on my last trip to Japan, I’d be buying this one.
The High Evolutionary
Grand Seiko 5646-7010
You might be a little surprised to see this one down here, but I’m not convinced about the seller’s claim that this one is “dead stock”, and if a listing is deliberately misrepresented, it belongs with the bad guys.
Dead stock is typically used to describe a watch that has never been worn, but might show signs of aging or have a few storage nicks and scratches on the case. Think of it as one level down from NOS. Here however, the watch has very obviously had some “attention”.
The crystal is not original - despite the seller’s claims that the faceted crystal means it was originally sold as a Wako limited edition, and the case certainly to me looks as if it has been refinished (I’d be very interested in others’ thoughts on this - please do comment below).
In a week with so many other great listings, it wouldn’t surprise me if people who perhaps lose out on some of the others end up chasing this one hard - it’s already at 151,000 Yen.
Grand Seiko 5646-7030
If we were to take the word of the seller, this is a “mint condition” 5646-7030, but as has been the case with some of his listings in the past, the watch doesn’t quite live up to that billing.
It’s always a red flag to me when a watch is shown with the wrong price ticket. As a cursory check of the 1974 volume 1 catalogue would tell you, this reference was sold for 47,000 Yen, not 43,000.
The box and buckle are of course incorrect, and I really don’t like the look of the print on the dial. Here’s how it should look -
And now the one from the auction -
Ok from the original auction photos I was a little suspicous about the dial, but now I’ve zoomed in - well, it’s rather obvious isn’t it? Whoever reprinted this didn’t even take the trouble to get the dial code right!
Weird Frankenstien
Just bizarre. Move swiftly on!
Redone coloured dial summary
As usual, I close with the usual reminder to steer clear of any vintage Grand Seikos with coloured dials similar to the above. This is not a comprehensive photo - there are many references that get this “treatment”, and several listings typically appear every week.
That’s it for this week - some great listings turning up for Golden Week, but did you notice what is absent from the newsletter for what I think is the first time ever?!
Ouch. What’s happened there. Hmm. Will look into it!
Missing - our redial K friend?