Musings on "that" 43999 SD and chat etiquette

Ok, so an extra newsletter for your inboxes this week, as there has been quite some discussion in the chat regarding a watch that has been listed for sale over at The Tokei Club, and whilst I initially started to simply reply in the chat thread itself, once I got to over 500 words and was nowhere near finishing, I realised that actually, it might be better to respond with a post instead!

For those subscribers who don’t currently partake in the chat threads, I would encourage you to go take a look. Substack’s chat functionality is not what you would call perfect, but it seems to be working out OK, and certainly from my perspective, I’m very happy with the way that a community appears to be coalescing in the chat, and would love to see more participation.

No pictures, no structure to this newsletter, it’s just what it says on the tin - some musings on etiquette in the chat, and a watch that kicked off a rather heated thread.

Unfortunately the embedded chat link doesn’t seem to be working, but you should be able to reach the thread in question here. If not, just head to the chat and scroll to April 2nd.

As for the watch being discussed, I will be linking to it in tomorrow’s newsletter as well, but you can get ahead of the game by popping over to the listing on The Tokei Club.

It’s a 43999 SD, listed for 2.9M Yen…

I will start by copying in the initial few hundred words that I started to write as a reply, and then continue from there.

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"ofc Gerald will say that someone with no faculties of comparison to alternative options in the material world and who wants such an example badly will just buy it at any cost, so shoot for the stars"

No, Gerald would not say that, because Gerald has a considerable amount of respect for those with a passion for vintage Grand Seiko - be they collectors, dealers, or those who 'just' have an interest in the watches. If you can find a single instance of me showing this level of disrespect to anyone with a genuine interest in vintage Grand Seiko (fakers excepted), please point it out to me, and I will apologise genuinely, publicly, and profusely. We can all be guilty of going off on a rant once in a while and end up posting things we later regret - lord knows I've done it myself on way too many occasions over the years - but if I have done this in the past, I will hold up my hand and take ownership of my mistake.

Whilst I am not at all comfortable for the chat to be used as a place to attack others (be they subscribers or otherwise), I also made a promise to myself when opening it up that I would not directly censor anything that anyone posted. If that means that ultimately it will descend into yet another corner of the internet where the signal is massively out-ratioed by the noise, then so be it - I'll just turn off the chat functionality. But please note that we are a long, long, long way away from that happening, and I’m kinda hoping that this comment [now post - ed.] might help to increase that signal:noise ratio.

At the end of the day, it is entirely up to one individual how to price a watch, and then it is up to others to decide whether or not they want to buy it. I mentioned in a reply earlier in the thread that I was really hoping this would be listed at under 1M yen, so that I could snap it up without a second thought. And then that 56GS that was featured on last week’s all-too-brief newsletter sold on Yahoo for 801k and it was clear that was never going to happen.

It's unfortunate that there was a typo in the listing for the 43999 SD when it went live, but we're all human, so let's just move on from that. It’s not really material to the discussion.

2.9M Yen is certainly a hefty amount. But you have to look at the context. (I'm going to convert to USD for ease of reference sake. 2.9M Yen is $19,125 at today's exchange rate. Let's round it up to $20K).

Back in 2021, I privately sold a deadstock 4420-9000 (I assume anyone reading this will be familiar with the watch in question) for $40K. I absolutely guarantee you that I could sell that watch again, today, for more than that, but we'll leave it at $40K for the simplicity of the maths.

More context - that 5646-7010 that was featured in last week’s newsletter -

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- it sold for 801K yen, or approximately $5,300.

More context - I have never seen a truly mint 43999 SD, let alone one with a fully intact caseback sticker (and the caseback sticker is particularly important in this instance, as I will discuss later).

So - a 56GS for $5,300, a 43999 SD for $20,000, and a 44 for $40,000. All basically in the same, deadstock, condition. Does the asking price of the 43999 SD, in that context - the price ratio is pretty much 1:4:8, make sense now? I would say that yes, it does - with one caveat that I will come onto towards the end of the newsletter.

The price the 56GS hammered for I think surprised a lot of people (me included), and could well be considered to be a blip - we will find out soon enough, because two more in similar condition have been listed this week, and it’s very possible (indeed, I think likely) that ‘the market’ will react with a “oh wait a moment - so 56GS’s in this condition perhaps aren’t as rare as we thought last week?”. But there can be no arguing - at least in my mind (and I’m particularly adept at arguing with myself) - with the relative asking price of the 43999 SD to the 44GS that I sold back in 2021.

In the chat, reference was also made to a full set 6186-8000 that the same dealer had listed a while back. The 43999 SD was mentioned as being “almost the same price as” the 61GS VFA (although my records would indicate that the VFA was actually listed at 4M yen - around 38% higher). I recall that at the time that watch was listed, there were more than a few eyebrows raised and opinions expressed. But guess what? It sold.

The Tokei Club also currently have listed a rather lovely 6185-8010, and although the price is listed as “price on request”, from comments in the chat I believe it to be $75,000. Once more, doubts were raised about the asking price. But at the weekend in Hong Kong, I handed over a 6185-8010 to a collector who had paid that same asking price for the one I had. I would argue that mine was marginally better quality, but there was not a huge amount to choose between them, and if it was not possible to compare them to one another, I’m pretty sure that any collector would be absolutely delighted with the quality of either of them.

Look - let me cut to the chase here. There are two things going on, one of which perhaps I should have sought to nip in the bud earlier on.

Firstly, people are finding the asking prices for the absolute top quality examples of vintage Grand Seiko references a little hard to swallow. No issue with that at all, but it’s entirely possible to have a reasoned and rational discussion about it without resorting to the second thing.

And that second thing is disrespectful and unwarranted personal attacks on someone whom I consider to be “one of the good guys”.

I’m going to be probably a little more open and honest than I should be now. The guy behind “The Tokei Club” - let’s just refer to him as “H” - is basically living my dream. Somewhere there is an alternate universe where, upon finding myself unemployed after a decade in the Middle East, rather than jumping on a plane to Thailand, life had turned out a little differently, and I had been able to jump on a plane to Japan instead.

In that alternate universe, I would be whizzing around Japan on the Shinkansen, building up relationships with Japanese dealers and collectors (something close to impossible to do properly from afar), visiting all the watch and antique fairs, and putting my heart and soul into finding the absolute best examples of vintage Japanese watches that money could buy, and spending whatever it took to acquire them.

And then, I would offer them to collectors around the world.

But we live in this universe, not that one. Certainly on occasion I have received (more than?) my fair share of criticism for how I have done things. When I first started “The Grand Seiko Guy” it was very interesting indeed. One individual, who will remain unnamed, went so far as to call me “a cancer on the Seiko community”.

Another prominent member of that same “community” castigated me publicly on a forum for daring to collect so many vintage Grand Seikos in such a short space of time, and then later offer them for sale. Well guess what moron - I lost my fucking job and have to put food on the table and keep a roof over my family’s head. So fuck you every which way from Sunday. Oh - and what then happened just a few short months later? You started up your own site offering vintage Grand Seikos for sale? Wonderful. Simply wonderful. Wanker.

There - you see? I can rant with the best of them. And that’s me being reserved in my responses.

I have only - very briefly - met “H” in person on one occasion. It was a couple of years back at a watch fair in Tokyo, I’d done my rounds of the tables, seen nothing particularly of interest, and was sat outside the room catching up with some emails. He came over and introduced himself to me. If truth be told, I’m sure I must have come across as more than a little abrupt and rude - perhaps not least because at the time I was probably still rather envious, and even a little jealous, of what he was doing, but also because I’m not the most sociable of individuals at the best of times.

But over the years since then, I have watched from afar as he continues to turn up incredible watches, and present them for sale in a very thoughtful, considered, and visually appealing way. We chat online quite a bit these days, and I’m thoroughly looking forward to meeting up with him over a few beers when I’m in Tokyo a month from now.

As for the pricing? Well, I think the results speak for themselves.

In that alternative universe I mentioned, I’m “H”. And in that alternative universe, those jibes and snide comments in the chat are being aimed at me. I would - very respectfully - suggest that we will all be better off without them.

But please, by all means, please, continue to engage in a positive and constructive (and fun!) manner. We have the seeds of a great little community here with a hyper-focus on vintage Grand Seiko - there is nothing else remotely like this anywhere else.

The caveat

There is one caveat that needs to be addressed with regards the SD dialed 43999 that “H” is offering for sale, and that is of course - as already highlighted in the chat thread - the caseback serial number, which indicates production in March 1964.

I have affirmed strongly in the past that when presented with any SD dialed 43999 dated later than January 1964, one should tread very carefully indeed. The rationale for this is simple. There is no question whatsoever that some SD dialed watches have been recased (or alternatively, some AD dialed watches have had their dials swapped). Poor quality SD dialed watches are not exactly unheard of, and I don’t doubt that for some out there it can be tempting to pick up a beaten up one of these that has a good dial, and wait for an early AD dialed watch with a good case to turn up and do a swap of the dial.

One has to draw a line somewhere and say “this is absolutely OK, this I would think very carefully about before accepting”. For me, that line is - at least prior to “H”’s watch being listed - January 1964 (actually I used to draw it at December 1963, but more evidence meant I was happy to push it out a month), based purely off keeping a close eye on watches that surface (although of course I don’t catch them all).

But that is not to say that there are not examples of 43999’s with SD dials from later that should be completely dismissed. There are some of course - September ‘64? October ‘64? Nah, I don’t think so - those can certainly be dismissed out of hand.

But how about March 1964?

Well, until this one turned up, I wasn’t aware of any others. But “H” shared this old listing with me showing another example.

So that’s two now. And there are very possibly more out there that I’ve not caught sight of yet. For reference, I’ve seen fewer than half a dozen from January 1964 (and no 43999 of any variant that is dated February 1964). We’re not exactly in the realms of large sample sizes here.

But, this isn’t just an SD dialed 43999 dating from March 1964 that we are dealing with here. It’s a dead stock SD dialed 43999 dating from March 1964 with a fully intact caseback sticker.

And I do mean “fully intact”. Looking as closely at the photos as it is possible, I cannot see a flaw in it towards the edge of the back (there appears to be a tiny tear near the “W” in Waterproof, but for the context of this consideration, that’s not relevant). What is particularly interesting is how the sticker (a bit of a misnomer - it’s more of a film really) would appear to actually wrap slightly into the notches in the caseback that are there to accept a caseback removal tool.

Honestly I’ve never examined a stickered back closely enough to see if this is common or not - I’ve not really ever had reason to - but in this case it could prove to be rather important. Simply because, I don’t believe it would be possible to remove that caseback without damaging the sticker in some way.

And if the caseback can’t be removed without any evidence, then there is no way this one could have had its dial swapped, and it provides us with incontrovertible proof that 43999 SD’s were indeed still in production in March 1964.

And if any evidence can be found that the caseback has been removed at some point in the past? Well, that doesn’t negate the legitimacy of the watch at all. This is not a boolean relationship - if the caseback has not been removed, clearly the watch is completely legit. If it has been removed, it does not prove it is not legit.

What I can tell you though, is that there is absolutely no way I would ever attempt to open that case myself!

So in summary -

By all means, we can ask questions about the watch, and by all means, we can discuss the price of it. But please, please - keep it civil!

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