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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.

Do you get bored with these introductions? Should I perhaps start off with a brief summary of what’s in this week’s newsletter?

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Ethan Hunt

Box for the 57GS

Unfortunately it’s looking like a pretty quiet week for recommendations, and I couldn’t find a single listing worth highlighting that currently has more than 18 bids on it.

If you sort the listings in descending order of the number of bids (which is how I go through them to pick out ones to include in the newsletter), prior to this you will find things like a rather scrappy 4520-8010; an example of the first Grand Seiko with a badly stained raised logo dial; another “First” whose caseback has seen much better days, an early dial 4420-9000 (yay!) whose dial has obviously gone for a swim at some point (boo!); one of the saddest carved dial first Grand Seiko’s I can recall seeing in a long time… the list goes on. Maybe there will be some pieces of interest on the second page? We will see in a bit!

¹

So the first member of this week’s Impossible Mission Force is actually just a box. Everybody wants boxes these days it seems. Remember that box and papers for the Liner Chronometer last week? It ended up closing for 301,000 Yen.

To put that into some perspective, the most expensive Seiko Liner Chronometer watch to sell on Yahoo Japan in the last ten years went for… 310,009 Yen.

And that was dead stock with an almost fully intact caseback protection sticker.

The odds of the certificate matching up with a correct watch are close to zero. This was not a case of two people bidding for the missing set to a watch they already own (obviously that would be impossible anyway).

Aaaanyway… as was the case with the Liner set last week, the 57GS box listed here is just the inner box. When we see what it closes for, I guess it will provide some insight into the value that people see in a swing tag, price ticket, and manuals.

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Grand Seiko 5722-9011

Here’s a lesson on how not to list a watch.

You have the option of adding up to 10 photos to a listing on Yahoo Japan Auctions, and you’d think that sellers would realise that the value in the listing in most instances is almost exclusively in the watch head. But no, here the seller has chosen to use almost all the space in those photos to show the strap.

Bizarre.

So it’s easy to overlook the watch, but that would be a mistake, because this looks to be a very nice example indeed of the later variant of the gold cap 57GS.

There are two variants of the GC 57GS. The earlier one has the movement-case code 5722-9010, and first examples appear to date from August 1966. Almost every example of that first variant that I have seen has the lion medallion.

Around April of the following year, 1967, the watch is recoded as the 5722-9011, and the caseback medallion changes to the GS one, as we see here in this listing.

Apart from some oxidation on the case surface (which probably would come off with some gentle application of regular jewelry cleaner - although don’t blame me if you buy this, try it out, and it doesn’t work!), the watch looks to be in superb condition. It’s certainly one of the best gold capped 57GS that I’ve ever come across. The only slight possible problem is the crown. There’s a slight chance that its original and the patination is hiding the W Seiko, but more likely it is a replacement - which is very odd considering how good the watch looks.

The case serial number indicates production in February 1968, which makes this one of the latest produced 57GS that I’ve ever seen. The final appearance of the 57GS in the Seiko catalogues was in the second volume of 1968.

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Grand Seiko 6146-8000 cap gold

Ok ok, so it’s a tough week - I’ve gotta find something to list!

Naturally the dial on this one is going to put everyone off, but take a look at the caseback, and it’s clear that this watch must have a very interesting history.

The Toyota car company has had a presence in Thailand for many years, and in the late 1960’s there were a couple of models being manufactured in the country.

Those with long memories might recall another Toyota branded vintage Grand Seiko turning up a few years ago at a dealer in Dubai -

Whilst unfortunately there is no dial branding on the cap gold one, it is however interesting that another Toyota vintage Grand Seiko - from the same period - has surfaced.

I would imagine this watch would be a fascinating one to add to the collection for any vintage Grand Seiko collector living in Thailand. Can’t see anyone else being interested in it at all. And with a dial like that, surely no-one would be silly enough to bid more than 50,000 Yen for it? No siree. They probably wouldn’t even look past the first photo…

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Grand Seiko 6185-8020 VFA

Ok so this gets into the IMF purely on the basis of it being a VFA, but I can’t with my hand on my heart really recommend it.

The dial is just too stained for my liking, and the case is pretty knocked about.

But, there are loads of people out there who are very keen to add a VFA to their collection, and what this closes for will set an interesting marker.

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Grand Seiko 5645-7010

An almost perfectly even deep yellow hue for this 5645-7010. I like it. A lot.

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Grand Seiko 5646-7040

There’s always a lot of interest in arguably the most non-“Grammar of Design” vintage Grand Seiko of them all.

I featured a really nice example of this reference in a recent newsletter which ended up closing for around 270,000 Yen, but obviously there is a bit of an issue with this one (have you spotted it yet?!) that means if you don’t mind taking on a bit of a project, you might be able to get it for a lot lower than that.

5646 movements are of course in plentiful supply, so whatever it ends up taking to fix this, it shouldn’t cost much.

The part number for the crown is 45M32N (note - this is not the same crown as on the 5646-7010, but is shared with the 564x-7011 and 5646-7030). The crown stem (if needed) is part number 354560, and common to all 564x calibers. Quite what the difference is between the crown for this watch and that for the 564x-7010’s (part number 45M18N) I have no idea. If anyone can fill me in on this, please do comment below.

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The first Grand Seiko with raised logo dial

A bit of a risky punt this one, with only three low resolution photos to go off, but based on what we can see, it looks good, so makes the cut.

Caveat emptor.

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It’s not a vintage Grand Seiko, but I like it

Grand Seiko SBGA473 from Big Moon

I’m combining this week’s two bonus rounds into one, with this rather lovely - and very limited - modern Grand Seiko that’s been sat at Big Moon in Nagoya for a couple of weeks now.

It’s not mentioned in the listing, but if you look up the watch in Plus9Time’s database of modern Grand Seikos (now numbering over 1,000 references!), you’ll discover that this reference was made last year in a limited edition of just 73 pieces for the Seibu Ikebukuro and Sogo Chiba department stores.

Considering the regular SBGA211 Snow White (yes, it’s Snow White in Japan, not Snowflake!) lists for 814,000 Yen, I think 698,000 Yen for this limited edition is an absolute steal.

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Jim Phelps

Grand Seiko 4420-9000 late dial

We’ve seen one of these before - a very poorly redialed 4420-9000 whose most obvious tell is the lack of any dial code at 6. But even if it wasn’t for that rather glaring error, it would still have problems of course. Take a closer look at the main print -

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Grand Seiko 5646-7005

Watch is completely legitimate, but I really would encourage people to seek out examples of this reference whose cases have not been completely polished! The case should have a brushed finish.

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Grand Seiko 5722-9990

The obvious issue with this watch is the crown. 57GS of course should have the “W Seiko” crown (the “W” indicating the watch is “waterproof”), not the later GS crown.

However, there is another odd thing about this one, and that is how early the manufacturing date is (the caseback serial number starts with 57, indicating production in July of 1965).

Whilst I have seen handful of earlier examples of the “Diashock” dialed 57GS, my feeling is that this is simply too early to be a “true” transitional piece, and instead more likely originated with the “Chronometer” dial, and has had its dial swapped out at some point.

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The first Grand Seiko with raised logo dial

Yahoo Auction’s new “zoom on mouse hover” feature allows us to get a closer look at that very dodgy “Chronometer” print -

And here’s what it should look like.

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XQB240 bracelet for Grand Seiko 5646-7030 - or is it?

I’m not quite sure what to make of this one.

The seller lists the bracelet as being for a 17mm lug width, and there is only one vintage Grand Seiko with that lug width. The 5646-7030.

Here’s the XQB240 bracelet on that watch -

What you will notice however is that the end-links on the bracelet in the auction are very different to what we see above -

And in fact, having looked through Plus9Time’s seminal article on the vintage Grand Seiko bracelets, I can’t see any bracelet with the end-links in the listing.

Either someone’s put a GS clasp on a bracelet that won’t fit any vintage Grand Seiko, or they’ve put the wrong end-links on an GS bracelet.

Either way, best to avoid.

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Redone coloured dial summary

… 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 there are many listed this week, so be careful!

1. Turns out there were!