Seiko

Just wanted to pick up on a couple of points.

"6185 (A and B, VFA and Observatory Chronometers, date)"

"Cal. 4520 (no date), 4522 (date) and 4580 (VFA, Obervatory Chronometers)"

"or one of the just over 120 Observatory Chronometers from the chronometric competitions in Neuchatel or Geneva"

• No vintage Grand Seiko movements, nor any "Astronomical Observatory Chronometer" movements were submitted to the chronometer competitions at Neuchatel.
• From 1964 through to 1967, a total of 141 movements specially designed for the Neuchatel competition (by both Daini and Suwa) successfully passed the tests and were scored and awarded certificates. None of these movements were put into commercially available watches. There are many more movements that were built for the competitions, but either were not submitted, or were submitted and did not pass the certification process (there are only records of the movements that actually passed).
• The "Astronomical Observatory Chronometer" is not a Grand Seiko - it is "just" a Seiko. Both 4520 and 4580 movements were used for the AOC.
• It is believed that a number of 4520 and 4580 movements were submitted to Neuchatel outside of competition for certification from 1968 through to 1970 (note - the last chronometry competition at Neuchatel was in 1967). 4520 movement - 103 submitted in 1968, of which 73 passed and were used in AOC's. 4580 movement - 30 examples submitted in 1969, of which 25 passed and were used in AOC's. 4580 movement - 150 examples submitted in 1970 of which 128 were passed and were used in 4580-7000 and 4580-7010 Grand Seiko VFA's. But, crucially, none of this has been confirmed officially by Seiko, and indeed, in a conversation I had with Akira Oohira towards the end of last year, he expressed considerable doubt that this many movements would have made the trip to Switzerland and back. He has promised to look into this further, and I will check to see if there is any update from him later this year.
• To the best of my knowledge, no Grand Seiko VFA, nor any Astronomical Observatory Chronometer has ever been seen with an accompanying Neuchatel certificate. That to me is extremely odd, because surely one of the key selling points of these watches - if they had been certified at Neuchatel - would have been the certificate to accompany the watch when purchased? It just doesn't make sense that Seiko would sell the watch without the certificate. I have personally seen multiple examples of AOC's complete with their "in house" certificate, and also what was claimed to be (and I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the claim) a full set 4580 VFA Grand Seiko that again had an "in house" certificate and nothing from Neuchatel.
• The Seiko AOC, along with the Grand Seiko 6185A movement VFA's and the Grand Seiko 4580-7000 VFA, were all officially announced in the January 1970 edition of Seiko Sales. Featured alongside the text description for the AOC is a photograph of a Neuchatel Certficate, and the movement number can just be made out - it appears to be 965362. Sure enough, this matches the number of a movement that passed the Neuchatel trials in 1966, so clearly not an AOC movement. There is absolutely no mention of any movement certification at Neuchatel in the accompanying text for the VFA's.

With regards the number of models in the vintage Grand Seiko range, I have done a huge amount of research on this over the last couple of years, and also checked extensively - with significant help from Anthony - the documentation of vintage Grand Seikos in both Seiko News/Sales Newsletters and Seiko catalogues.

Exactly how many models there are depends very much on how you choose to count them. For example, do you count the Grand Seiko "First" as just two watches (filled gold and platinum), or do you count separately every variant? There are three different versions of the platinum cased watch, and no fewer than nine different versions of the filled gold cased one. Do you count other dial variations, such as the early and later dial 4420's, or 6145/6's? What about the 4520/2-7010's - the early examples didn't have "36000" on the dial, the later ones did. And then there are the 62's, which would appear to exist in 8 different versions (all possible combinations of day/day-date, steel/cap gold, lion/GS medallion). Etc, etc etc.

So, putting a number on these is challenging, but if you do truly count all distinct variants, then - currently - it comes out to 142

Kind regards,

Gerald.

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