The Seiko 1970 Number 2 Catalogue

Preamble

For the benefit of those subscribers who have signed up recently, each Tuesday I publish an article featuring scans of vintage Grand Seikos that appeared in the Seiko catalogues of the 1960’s and 1970’s. (Apologies for again being a day late!)

Although based on the articles originally published on TGSG website, these articles will be updated where appropriate with additional knowledge gained in the three or so years since they were first made available.

Additionally, since I now have the complete set of the catalogues, I am able to publish these articles in the correct chronological order - something that wasn’t possible when posting to the main website since, when starting out documenting the catalogues, I hadn’t completed my collection of them.

You can view the previously published newsletters in this series here.

The Seiko 1970 no.2 catalogue

The second volume of the 1970 catalogue features a total of 34 Grand Seiko references, with 31 of them being in the men’s range.

Compared to the first catalogue of the year, we find four watches dropped from the range, two brand new references added, and the inclusion of the VFA’s that had made their debut in the 1969 Special Luxury Catalogue.

(When first writing up this catalogue for TGSG website back in 2018, I wasn’t aware of the existence of the 1969 Special Luxury Catalogue, and therefore erroneously thought that the appearance of the VFA’s here was their first catalogue appearance.)

This would be the final catalogue where every Grand Seiko in the range was based on a calibre beating at 36,000bph.

At the end of this newsletter I will include scans of all pages of the catalogue, but the focus of this article will be on the changes to the previous publication.

The VFA’s

Featured on the first page of the catalogue are five references that debuted in the 1969 Special Luxury Catalogue - the four introductory VFA’s, and the remarkable Ultra Thin Dress Watch (“UTD”).

The inclusion of the UTD alongside the Grand Seiko VFA’s may seem a little odd, but it is explained away by the title at the top of the page, which translates to “Special Luxury Watches”.

4520/2-7010

The two brand new references in this catalogue are the time only 4520- and time and date 4522-7010. Presented in brushed “turtle”-shaped cases, it is interesting to reflect on how back in the day, Grand Seiko were not totally locked-in to “The Grammar of Design”. Indeed, skip ahead to the scans from all pages of this catalogue at the bottom of the article, and it’s hard not to be impressed with the incredible diversity of design across the range - something that some might argue is sorely missing in the modern era.

One final thing of interest to note about these two references is that we see examples on the market both with and without the “36000” text on the dial. Despite the fact the variants without the text do not appear in the catalogues, they are a lot more common than those with it.

Dropped - the “cross-dial” 6145/6-8000’s

The four references that were dropped from the range for this catalogue are the “cross-dial” variants of the 614x-8000.

In the previous catalogue these were featured both on bracelet and leather strap. The fact that the bracelet versions were only introduced in the supplement to the 1969 number 2 catalogue probably goes some way to explaining why these are so rarely seen on the market today.

Gallery

Below are scans of all the pages from the Seiko 1970 Number 2 catalogue that feature Grand Seikos.