The Seiko 1974 Volume 2 Catalogue Supplement

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 1974 Volume 2 Catalogue Supplement

For the first time since 1970, a supplement to the main second volume of the year’s catalogue was issued.

This publication debuts the last ever Grand Seiko of the vintage era to be launched, but before we get to see it in the catalogue, there are another 20 quartz references introduced.

Although Grand Seiko was pretty much on life support, it would be wrong to assume that quartz had taken over completely. It was really only the top-of-the-line Grand Seiko range that was being decimated.

There were still several lines of mechanical watches with strong presence in the range at the lower end of the market, from 5 Actus models starting at under 10,000 Yen (less than a quarter of the price of the cheapest quartz watch); stylish Advans priced between 16,000 and 20,000 Yen; 5 Sports chronographs from 16,000 to 23,000 Yen; literally dozens of Lord Marvels/Lord Matics starting at 15,000 Yen and rising to double that; and of course the King Seikos – represented by the classic King Seiko and stylish Vanac sub-ranges – from the mid-20 thousands of Yen up to the mid 40’s.

One by one, quartz would continue on its inexorable path and eat into these ranges until almost no mechanical references remained in the range. But it would take a few years to get there, and we will of course be coming to the end of this particular journey well before that little crystal totally usurped the mechanical balance - there is just one final year to come of Grand Seikos featuring in the catalogues.

So without further ado, let’s take a look at the final Grand Seiko to debut in the vintage era –

6156-8040

Pictured at the top left of the page, in a way it does seem a little odd to be introducing a relatively high priced new Special into the range at this point in time – particularly considering that the day-date 6156-8030 (itself a direct replacement for the earlier 6156-8000) made its sole appearance in the first volume of 1974’s catalogue.

The watch was presented on a bracelet and featured a beautifully faceted stainless steel case. As usual, the catalogue photo doesn’t really do the watch justice, but I was very fortunate to be able to place a stunningly well preserved example of this reference into an important collection a few years back -

For those who have made it this far - thank you. Just two more catalogue articles to come, and then a couple of special updates to follow those.

And then I’ll have to think what to do next!