# 1970s Ricoh Strangeness



## stromspeicher (May 28, 2015)

I've been meaning to share more of my collection, its one of the reasons I joined this forum. I've been playing with my old 1970s Ricoh and Orient quartz watches today.... so here's one... something you don't see very often....

Its a Ricoh cal 510 from 1977. The 510 was produced from 1976 but this example is from 1977. It is rather strange in quite a few ways but is still rather attractive with its pale blue patterned dial and dark grey shiny case....














































Its a reasonably sized man's watch in a carbide (or similar?...) case. Ricoh made one or two other watches using the earlier but much more common cal 570 in carbide cases. Those cases however were more conventional deigns (a la Rado..). I've never seen a Japanese watch in this general style of carbide case before. The edges on the front are all quite sharp. I have no idea how one actually produces a case like this - there is a conventional metal chassis permanently fixed into the inside of the carbide, presumably to give it the required strength given the slender geometry of the brittle outer material.

The movement is also unusual, particularly for such an early quartz watch. The 510 movement was basically Ricoh's fourth quartz cal - after the dinosaur 550, the early 570 and the 590 which was a contemporary of the 510. The 510 has no crown and no seconds hand. The watch is set using the bottom button and then started (ie synchronised to the second) with the top button. A further unusual feature of the 510 is that the hand jumps forward one minute at a time - no smooth sweep.

Another odd thing about the watch is the hands - one black and one silver. When I got it I thought that someone had put the minute hand back on the wrong way... But I carefully checked both hands and it seems to have been designed like that. It actually kind of makes sense when your wearing it - a quick glance more or less gives you the time on the hour hand - a more deliberate look picks out the minutes hand against the pale blue dial. I think it make sense... Perhaps not...


----------



## Always"watching" (Sep 21, 2013)

Dear stromspeicher, thanks you for such an interesting thread. I am surprised that no-one else has yet replied because I also have seen one or two early quartz watches by Ricoh - a name most frequently associated with cameras. In fact, between 1962 and 1964, Ricoh Watch formed a partnership with Hamilton to manufacture electric/mechanical watches, and from about 1962, the company produced a number of auto and hand-wind mechanical watches, including dive models, for a period of time, even, it seems, making their own movements. There are evidently still Ricoh watches for sale new, as Amazon.com has a fascinating Ricoh COMMANDER REMINDER watch with a dual LED and traditional analogue display, and a vibration alarm. This watch, which is stated as being a Japan import, is priced at $250. There is a fascinating thread about Ricoh on the Seikoholics forum and if you wish to look at it, just go to "seikoholics.yuku.com/sreply/389/RICOH-Branded-watches#.VY7Nh_IViko".

I have only just looked up Ricoh watches on the internet for the purposes of this short post, and I shall certainly take a deeper look at Ricoh watches in due course. I do remember, when I was looking at using photography on a professional basis some years ago, I almost bought the top of the range Ricoh SLR but ultimately chose a Pentax instead.


----------



## bridgeman (Dec 9, 2008)

Ricoh Riquarz 580 1979

just flew in from Hungary of all places. VEry tidy Riquartz with the 580 movement. 40 x 35 with 20 lugs.

in another thread I was asking about jewelled Quartz movements, this has 5 ,and strange "pusher in" crown at 2 to

Zero the seconds hand for accurate setting. Few marks here and there and comes with an engraving of 11/5/1980 on back.

clean white dial no changed now from Seiko metal to old leather which is much more comfortable .pictures to follow,

(forgotten hadn't uploaded to pbucket)


----------



## bridgeman (Dec 9, 2008)




----------



## Thimo2 (Mar 6, 2019)

That's weird even by Ricoh standards, I've never heard of a carbide watch. I've almost pulled the trigger on some of their funky autos on ebay a few times, always thought they had an underappreciated cool factor. Thanks for showing.


----------

