Seiko

They exist.

 

I have it on extremely good authority (two sources) that these actually do exist. However, it is alleged that there are fake examples out there, and I'm pretty certain that one sold recently

The quality of my one is extraordinary. If it is a fake, then someone went to an insane amount of effort to create it, and for relatively little gain (if you're going to fake it, why make so few?).

I am personally aware of the existence of 6 stainless steel 3180's. The most recent one to have sold on Yahoo Japan was almost certainly fake, or at least, has had the hour markers replaced (so apologies to whoever bought that one).

What is interesting about the other 5, is that they have subtle differences that mirror differences in the regular gold filled 3180 over the course of its existence.

"Regular" gold-filled 3180's can have three different logo types, two different dial types, 2 different hand-set types, and two different lion medallions.

The earliest logos were printed - like my stainless steel example shown above. Then came carved logos, and finally applied logos.

The earliest hands were "mountain" hands, later hands flat (as per the above example).

Early dials were sunburst - like the one above, later ones matt.

So, my example has printed logo, flat hands, and a sunburst dial.

The second example I am aware of has a carved logo, flat hands, and a matt dial.

A third example has a carved logo with mountain hands (i'm not sure of the dial variant).

The fourth example I only know has flat hands.

The fifth example I have not seen good enough photos of, but I believe it is the same as mine.

If you're going to fake it, why make so many variations? Perhaps you're faking these with a gold filled 3180 as a base, but if that's the case, read on.

The most intriguing thing about all the 3180SS however is that it has a unique - to the best of my knowledge, not found on any other Seiko, let alone Grand Seiko - caseback medallion. The medallion is similar to the early-type medallion on the gold-filled examples, but with the text "Chronometer" underneath the lion, rather than "GRAND SEIKO" above it.

If you're going to fake these, why go to the trouble of designing and creating a totally custom caseback medallion that doesn't exist anywhere else?

All the SS variants that I am aware of have either printed or carved dials. For the regular gold-filled 3180, printed dial examples are like hens teeth. You hardly ever see one. Carved dials are also very, very rare (although not so rare as the printed ones). I've seen every single listing for a 3180 that has come up for sale in Japan over the last 15 months. Not that I've actually counted, but my gut feeling is that for every carved dial I see, I see 50 or more applied logos.

There are three ways to fake this watch.

First option - build pretty much everything from scratch except the movement. That would be insanely time consuming and costly to do.

Second option - get a donor gold filled 3180 and somehow remove the gold from the case, hands, hour markers... replace the medallion with something you custom made... etc etc. But if you're going to do that, why use the rarest examples of the gold-filled 3180 as your base watch?

Third option - franken it. Find cases, dials, handsets that work with the 3180 movement. Strip the dial down to nothing. Get that sunburst effect somehow, print what's necessary on it, find the right steel hour markers that match exactly the design of the gold ones on the regular 3180's from somewhere, etc etc. Oh... and custom make a caseback medallion that doesn't exist anywhere else.

The story on these hasn't been fully told yet. Whether we ever get to fully understand what these watches are, I have no idea, but I'm happy to hang onto mine in the hope that one day we'll find out!

Kind regards,

Gerald.

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