The Seiko 1973 Special Luxury Catalogue

Preamble

For the benefit of those subscribers who have signed up recently, each week I publish an article featuring scans of vintage Grand Seikos that appeared in the Seiko catalogues of the 1960’s and 1970’s.

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 1973 Special Luxury Catalogue

1973 saw the publication of the fifth “Special Luxury Catalogue” (“SLC” for brevity) featuring the top of the range products from the Seiko range. Whilst not the last of the SLC’s, it was the final one to feature a Grand Seiko, and yes that is “a” Grand Seiko, as there is just a single reference to be found within its pages.

5646-7005

The first eight pages of the catalogue feature precious metal quartz watches, and it is only when we get to page nine that we find the sole Grand Seiko to be represented in the catalogue - the 5646-7005.

Priced at 500,000 Yen, and making its catalogue debut in this publication, the Grand Seiko 5646-7005 on a 18K bracelet was the most expensive Grand Seiko of the entire vintage era.

The watch had previously been available on a leather strap, first appearing in the 1970 Special Luxury Catalogue for the price of 185,000 Yen, and making its final appearance in the 1973 volume 2 catalogue at the slightly reduced price of 181,000 Yen.

319,000 Yen was clearly a huge amount of money to spend on the bracelet, and I rather suspect that very few of these references ever sold. The version on leather strap is fairly common, but I have only ever seen one example of the watch on the 18K gold bracelet, which I was delighted to be able to place into an important SE Asian collection a few years ago.

Interestingly, a very similar bracelet was also used for the 18K gold VFA – reference 6185-7000 – that appeared just once in the 1971 Special Luxury Catalogue. In that publication, the 6185-7000 was available either on a leather strap or the 18K bracelet, with the additional cost for the bracelet being “just” 140,000 Yen. For reference, the price of gold in the second half of 1973 was around $100 per ounce, whereas in the second half of 1971 it was around $40 per ounce, which explains the huge jump in the premium for the bracelet between the two watches.

It’s worth reposting the image of the VFA here to show that, whilst appearing initially to be the same bracelet, there is actually a difference between the one found on the 5646-7005, and that on the 6185-7000 -

You will notice that whilst the mesh of the bracelet would appear to be the same, on the VFA the clasp at the end attaches differently. On the VFA there is the possibility to adjust where the claps attaches, whereas on the 5656, there is only the single bar for it to attach to. Additionally, whilst the bracelet is branded “GS” on the clasp for the 56GS, I rather suspect that on the VFA it would be branded “Seiko”, although with no photos of it seemingly in existence, that is just conjecture on my part.

That’s it for this week - next week will see a further reduction in the size of the Grand Seiko offer, but the good news is there are three new references to discuss!