February 10, 2021

The watch I currently wear (Jan-2021): Seiko LordMatic 5606-7191

Background information

The 7191 is the second Tanaka style LordMatic watch manufactured by the Suwa factory. The previous model 7190 had a monolithic case. The 7191 looks identical but uses a screw back case and has no parts in common. The design is similar to Tanaka style King Seikos of this period from Suwa, with an elegant dial and clean lines. Seiko offered the 7191 model from 1972 to 1974 in multiple variations. Apart from the classic sunburst dress watch dial (420) there exists a light gray (421), a shaded green gray (428), and a silver linen texture and Roman numbers (480) dial. The dress watch dial is available in a gold plated case (420 SGP). There is a sportier version with dark blue (554), black (556), or shaded green (557) dial. Those models cost less and used the 23 jewel movement in stead of the 25 jewel variant. In 1974 Seiko added two more variants with cut glass crystal: A white (810) and a shaded green with King Seiko VANAC alike appearance (816). All models come with a stainless steel strap. In 1974 this watch cost between 17000yen for the standard stainless steel dress watch up to 21500yen for the gold plated version.

November 29, 2020

The watch I currently wear (Nov-2020): Seiko LordMatic 5206-6130

Background information

The Seiko LordMatic 5206-6130 appeared in the 1973 Seiko catalog. The watch exists in two variants: With a white (270) and with a dark (272) dial. Both of them use a stainless steel strap and cost 21.000 yen. To put he price into perspective, a LordMatic 5606-7190 cost 17.000 yen and a King Seiko 5226-6000 35.000 yen. The Daini factory manufactured the watch model from 1972 to 1973 . This particular watch was produced in September 1972. It was one of the few Lord Matic watches with a 5200 stream movement and a Tanaka Grammar of Design appearance. LordMatic models with a 5200 stream movement are marked with a Special label on the dial.

November 8, 2020

An overview to vintage Seiko watches

Vintage Seiko watches attracted my attention for two reasons: Seiko advertisements for Grand-Seiko watches, which referred to their heritage, and the fact that the 4S15 movement was a re-release of the 52 movement stream from the seventies. We must first define what vintage actually means. Vintage is often used to differentiate products before the period of automated industrial production (usually before 1970). For Seiko watches I would change this to watches before 1975, so before the Quartz domination. It is of course true that Seiko also underwent a transition from a manufacture production to a more automated industrial production at the end of the sixties, but it is nevertheless sensible to draw the line at the definitive end of the era of mechanical watches in the seventies. Once you turn your attention to Seiko vintage watches, you will soon notice that there is a lot to learn and discover about these watches. At the beginning of the sixties, Seiko entered the western market and dared to challenge the established Swiss watch industry in terms of technology and quality. The series that comes to mind in this context is of course Grand Seiko.

October 20, 2020

An overview about the Seiko 7S movement family

Seiko always offered mechanical watches even after the Quartz revolution they themselves have initiated. The main workhorse movement in the mid-range was the 7000 series that was produced from the seventies until the end of the nineties. In 1996 Seiko introduced the 7S26 family as a successor and replacement for the 7000 series for the mainstream market of automatic watches and has since been a mainstay in mechanical Seiko watches. Origin of all 7S movements, a 7009 movement from the eighties Seiko offered mechanical watches throughout the eighties, and the 7000 movements were besides the 6300 series the movements used, but this is the topic of another article. In this article we will focus on the movements that descend from the 7S26 movement introduced in 1996. This movement lacked advanced features as hacking second and hand-winding in the beginning, but Seiko iterated on this design for the last 25 years adding those features in later incarnations. Until today the 7S26 design is the basis for all Seiko movements from entry level to watches of the upper mid-range and even high-end watches.

July 20, 2020

My path to collecting Seiko watches

I have always had a preference for mechanical watches. My father gave me an Omega Constellation from the seventies. Later I owned an early Glashütte automatic watch, which was powered by an ETA movement. Unfortunately my early watches were either stolen or I lost them.

Some years ago, I discovered by chance the affordable Seiko 5 Sports automatic watch series. Most people know them because of their affordable but very attractive diver models. Although I admire large stainless steel diver watches, I find them uncomfortable to wear because of my rather small wrists. I bought a Seiko 5 Sports SNZG15K1 automatic military style watch. This is a very affordable stainless steel watch, which is available in Germany for about 180 Euro and looks like it costs much more. As with their divers, Seiko has nailed the looks: This is how a military style watch should look like.

December 28, 2019

Blog Technical Details

This web blog is generated with the Ruby Jekyll framework. Of course you can create static pages in any way you like. Since I am actually a fan of the Perl scripting language I have e.g. already implemented several pages with Perl and the Perl Template Toolkit. So why Jekyll? Jekyll meets for me the balance between simplicity, functionality and comfort. It brings everything with it to create a static blog page.

December 26, 2019

Why the heck moebiusband?

I usually use the nickname moebiusband. If you google for moebiusband you can read on Wikipedia (Quote from the Wikipedia article):

A Möbius strip is a surface with only one side (when embedded in three-dimensional Euclidean space) and only one boundary. Its discovery is attributed to the German mathematicians Johann Benedict Listing and then independently August Ferdinand Möbius in 1858.

A Möbius strip made with a piece of paper and tape. (By David Benbennick - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link to original):