BY HARLAN CHAPMAN-GREEN
It’s no secret that the USA is the world’s largest market for wristwatches, as well as for pretty much everything else apart from Irn-Bru (Scotland’s gotta have something!). The USA is also where most of our readers are based, so, hi there from across the pond. It, therefore, makes complete sense for the watchmakers to focus a lot of their attention in the direction of the States, given the wealth and number of people there. It’s also no secret that watch fans in the USA love Seiko watches and, by name association, Grand Seiko watches. Therefore, Grand Seiko has seen fit to reward its loyal fans there with two unique watches bound only for the USA market, let’s take a look.
These watches follow a similar theme to a set of three special editions released to mark the founding of the Grand Seiko Corporation of America in 2018. Both of the watches are rather conservative in the dimension front, with their cases measuring 40mm x 12.5mm and finished with brushing and polishing for a cosmopolitan look.
As with most of Grand Seiko’s watches, the new pieces’ dials offer the main surprises. The SBGA507 model sports a blue dial, while the SBGA509 has a rosy pink one. Supposedly, these colours represent the colours of the sky over Lake Suwa during different parts of the day. Both dials feature a finishing technique called kirazuri, where kira refers to a sparkling finish achieved by adding a powdered version of the mineral mica. Kirazuri was a popular way of adding a new effect to woodblock paintings in Japan for a long time and is most likely still in use outside of watch factories there today. Attractive hands and applied markers are the norm for Grand Seiko watches, and they’re back here, too.
Behind the scenes is the self-winding calibre 9R65, which is a Spring Drive movement. For those unsure what that means, it’s a fusion of mechanical power storage using spring barrels and an electronic regulator for extremely high accuracy. Grand Seiko says that these are generally accurate to within -/+ 15 seconds per month, COSC chronometer requirements for mechanical watches are -4/+6 per day, to give you some idea. Not bad for a movement introduced 20 years ago. The 9R65 movement also has a 72-hour power reserve with an indicator on the dial.
It’s clear that Grand Seiko takes the US market seriously, although I hope we get something limited only to the UK at some point, I wonder what kind of finish they’d use.
These watches are both limited to 300 examples each at a price of $5,600.
