This was a great find! I spotted it in a eBay listing as a job lot. Always a good place to look for pieces. What caught my eye was the beads of rice bracelet. These tend to be quite rare on Seiko’s now and on their own are worth the same / more than the watch itself. I think the bracelet was also on some more desirable models and this is why they have become sought after.
I was the winning bidder at £29.00 plus post (December 2020)
I was not sure what the real condition would be in or if this was one I would repair and flip back on eBay for a quick profit. My experience tells me to always remain optimistic as these old Seikos have acrylic crystals that scratch and damage easily so they always look a mess but can be hiding a near perfect dial underneath. Equally the crystals are easy to replace and extremely cheap.
Here is it when it arrived.
As you can see it still looks really bad but don’t let this fool you. The dial on this watch is near perfect.
Now I did not take any photos of the restoration of this one, I have seen 100s of 70## movements and this would be no different. It was extremely clean and for 1973 model there was not a service mark to be found on the caseback so I like to think that I may be the first person to work on this since it was assembled nearly 50 years ago!
I did however film the disassembly & assembly of this one but for a #Short YouTube clips. 60 second videos!
watch and enjoy!
The service went as expected and the watch came back to life easily and is running to my acceptable accuracy.
I gave the case a very light polish, mainly to enhance the shine back I also refinished the very thin bezel as this was quite badly scuffed and dull. It has a brushed finish which proved quite difficult to apply but I did my best and to the naked eye its acceptable.
I sourced a generic tension ring acrylic crystal to complete the project. Bracelet was practically boiled in the ultrasonic for hours as it had DNA build up from 4 decades…
So here is the finished watch. A real improvement I hope you will agree.
Here is an interesting photo I setup of 3 Seikos from the 60s, 70s, & 80s. Two are mine, this 7006 (middle) and the 7009 on the right From the 80s. On the left is a watch I serviced for a friend and filmed for YouTube. A Seiko 8306 Seikomatic R from the 1960s a really nice high end Seiko movement. the video link is below the photo if you would like to watch it.
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