Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Seiko Sportsman 17 jewels

Seiko 6602-9982

1960's is regarded as a Cultural and Counter-cultural decade in our modern history. I would classify 1960's as a turmoil era. There were the construction of Berlin Wall, The Cold War, The Vietnam's War, The Arm and Space race, The First Man on the moon, The Civil's Rights Movement, the landmark speech of "I have a dream", and political violence and assassinations... We witnessed the rise and fall of the Great; we saw what supposed to be "A Great Leap Forward" became a national disaster, followed by "A Cultural Revolution" that almost wiped out a Great Nation.......


1960's also produced some remarkable fine classical watches. Here, I have a manual winding dress watch from The Seiko Sportsman range. This one dating to March 1968.


From the dial, we know the watch was produced from Seiko's Suwa factory. This is a very clean silver radiance face with raised silver baton hour markers. It is equipped with sword type silver hour and minute hand. I always love the long slim second hand that sweep smoothly...


The size is 36mm without its crown and 10mm thick. The watch has a raised acrylic crystal. The only fault with this watch is its case. This is a brass case coated with stainless steel and after a good 45 years, you see the sign of corrosion.  I matched this watch with the beads of rice bracelet from the same era. The original crown still intact and function well. 


The caseback is made of stainless steel. It is a snap on type, so the water resistant may be compromised. 


After removing the caseback, you will see a workhorse in this watch. This is the 17 Jewels mechanical winding 6602B movement. It is still running strong after all these years.....



Borrow the below from a Japanese ebay's seller Saitama_Shanghai who listed a somewhat similar watch. This watch or its sibling is described on page 19, 49 of the book "Japan Domestic Watch Vol.7 - SEIKO Marvel".





3 comments:

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  2. Hi how do you open the back case? I tried using the watch pry tool but it wont even go in the gap. Can i see what tool you used to open it? Thanks

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  3. i got one 'sportsman' on 2006. without date. excellent watch . all the nand wound seikos from that era are spectacular watches. another great model is the seiko gold feather

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