# Grand Seiko



## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

As some of you may have noticed, I've been thinning-out my watch collection recently.

To replace a few of the many casualties (and more to come) I fancy a Grand Seiko.

I know little about Japanese watches though so I have a couple of questions for those of you that know more than I do; which is probably everybody on this occasion.

What are the relative merits of the vintage and new Grand Seikos?

I know there are a couple of places online where I can buy from the UK, but do you think it's worth a trip to Japan to buy one "locally"? Â I quite fancy a trip to Japan anywayÂ


----------



## Thian (Nov 23, 2008)

Relative merits of the GS line are....high accuracy, fit and finish, conservative perennial good looks, reasonable vintage prices and for new models, priced under European exotic brands selling over $10,000usd! The newest Spring Drive models are also in the thousands of dollar range but still under high end European brands. I have never owned a GS model and don't aspire to one either. My closest Seiko is a vintage Lordmatic SPECIAL caliber 5216 made in the Daini factory in 1974. It is midsized, handwind/auto/hacking model rated at around 10sec/day (in 1974) with faceted crystal and is two toned casing with gold plated bezel. Very sweet model and 28,800bph too, oh...25J version as well.

The GS line is usually familiar to WISs only, so no Rolex type attention , should you acquire a GS! haha!


----------



## SIB (Sep 9, 2007)

I owned the Grand Seiko GMT Spring Drive and it was one of the nicest watches i have ever owned. Fit and finish were fantastic and it just oozed quality. I've owned litteraly hundreds of watches over the years but this is probably the one i most regret letting get away . I stupidly sold it to buy a Hublot Big Bang


----------



## msq (Feb 18, 2010)

you can probably get a pretty good discount if you buy there, but keep in mind that some of these watches have "only in Japan" warrantees. Also, they generally have solid backs, so if viewing the fancy movements is your thing, then they might not really be for you.


----------

