Seiko

At the request of a fellow Purist who recently joined the Grand Seiko ownership club, I am doing a quick review of my Grand Seikos. I think this is all of them, but sometimes there's one laying around the house, so I reserve the right to add extra photos. In addition to the GS models, I have taken the liberty of adding my high-brow Credors, as they are close cousins to GS. All of these photos were taken at the breakfast room table under natural lighting, so as not to spoil our evening tea (too much). As the time went on, the light faded, so my apologies for a grainy shot at the end.

Here we go:

 

Manual wind, spring drive, power reserve, approx 1998



Automatic, spring drive, power reserve, moon phase



Manual wind, mechanical, skeleton, platinum, ultra-thin



Manual wind, mechanical, power reserve, chronometer



Tea went cold, so had to grab some Pinot Noir and go check the photos ...

Cazalea

then a Vianney Halter came into my hands.



While I was also getting my GO back from an extensive and expensive service ...

I nearly got seduced by this rare Andersen Moon; however

it had some issues, and I'd always wanted a "Climate Action" IWC, so I got that instead

and then a couple of Presage Chronos caught my attention



and that's why I never got around to getting a 44GS

Although technically not a GS, this is one of the very first commercially-sold Seiko Spring Drives. I think 500 were made in the late Nineties. It was about 35mm, thin, with a crummy bracelet. But still a milestone. 



at the time I didn't appreciate it - and I didn't like that tiny link being all that held the bracelet together. 

Now I have the Credor variant from the same era, so I'm happy.

too boring, frankly. In retrospect, I'm still kind of neutral on it

This quartz, "low end" model just was too bland



This one, a manual wind, I sold to another Purist because I had 3 similar watches SBGW001, SBGW003, SBGW005 and decided I didn't need to keep them all

I have no idea why I sold this, because I liked the funky case and the diamond pattern dial



except that I briefly had one black (quartz) and one white (automatic) and must have felt that was excessive



I owned one of these, and foolishly agreed to sell or trade it to a guy in SE Asia as part of my deal to get the SBGW003, and then went out and found another one immediately, even before I shipped the first one.



This is another sub-brand of Seiko, in the GS level of quality but rather than a respectably suited businessman, it's his tattooed, pierced, overly-stylish cousin.

I also had this Credor Chrono, which is just a hair under the GS level, but I couldn't read it well due to the white hands on white dial, so it went away somewhere

Cazalea

Here it is next to my 45mm Stowa.

Inside a 20mm tall case, it's a normal spring drive movement

PS - my candidate for worst watch design ever

It matches the moon phase