Grand Seiko SBGV007 Full set

Non-European customers please take into account VAT & customs. We declare real value.

Grand Seiko quartz SBGV007 features Grand Seiko’s beloved black dial and it is most definitely not Swiss as it is also not mechanical. This is one of the most exquisitely hand-finished and hand-assembled quartz watches you will ever encounter. This particular version is part of the Master Shop Limited edition, which means that it is a limited production watch that was only available at select Japanese retailers. More on that below.

At a glance this timepiece is an easy 40 millimeters to wear and it's pretty slim to only 10.7 millimeters thick, it will easily slide underneath any dress cuff for its other measurements across the wrist from lug to lug are only 46.3 millimeters - if you include the solid end links it's a more substantial 50 millimeters across. The lugs are a typical Grand Seiko 44GS vintage at 19 millimeters and you can see that if you do want to swap out the bracelet for a strap there are strap tool apertures in the lugs so you'll have plenty of fun mixing and matching, that said the factory bracelet is a very nice piece and I would encourage you to simply stick with it and size it to suit as you can see it's a combination of staggered link alignment as well as a combination of polish and satin, you can see each removable link is fixed with a screw there's a half link on each side of the clasp and the clasp itself has a nice low profile, again less likely to catch on things than a bigger dive clasps, that said the watch is 100 meters water-resistant ready to swim if you are.

The famed Grand Seiko of the late 1960s had signature Japanese design elements with a couple of different case designs, but the 44 GS is the one that appeals to many the most due to the polyhedron shape which is made exquisite by the black zaratsu polish executed on the originally Swiss/German Sallaz machines. But the foremost practitioner of this particular type of mirror finish is now Grand Seiko, as you can see the SBGV007 is finished on every polished facet of this complex case, which has only the narrowest satin finish case band. What's extraordinary is that the spinning tin plate against which this black polish is achieved is simply a hand coordination affair where the spinning tin plate is touched by the metal and the metal is guided by hand and experience of the artisan. There is no mechanization, there are no tooling jigs used to create this millimetrically precise and corner-to-corner symmetrical execution, it's “simply” a handmade case on an enormous Zaratsu polished scale, this is black polish you normally see only on Swiss watch movement components, not something the size of a case!

Now, considering the dial one can see more of Grand Seiko’s craft art as the process involved in the making of this dial and all of the dial elements is done by hand by a master watchmaker in his master shop only (hence the designation “master shop limited”). You can see the faceting, the satin and the polish of the handset as well as the indices - even the aperture window for the date is hand-finished. This is what you get with a Grand Seiko quartz. Also note that it aligns perfectly with the index every single time because inside the case is Grand Seiko’s in-house 9F82 movement. One might ask what is the difference between the 9F82 and the 9F62? Grand Seiko quartz movements are made in two different sized movement for different sized cases - how impressive is that..

The movement has a three-year power reserve via the battery and it is thermo compensated featuring a trimmer, so if you live in extreme environmental conditions or the quartz crystal is aging, the trimmer allows a watchmaker to adjust for the variation and that's a feature seen on precious few quartz movements - such as for example the Rolex Oyster quartz. This watch is much more accurate than the oyster quartz; the combination of the trimmer, the hand adjustment, the hand assembly and the thermal compensation means that this movement is accurate to plus or minus 10 seconds per year and you've got a quick set system for a date that is itself adjusted by a watchmaker who only performs adjustment on these 9F dates - it's a lever and cam system with a spring jumper which changes precisely right around midnight at the same time every night between 12:00 and 12:05 a.m. and it's usually at about 12:02 that it jumps and pops like a rifle bolt. This movement however is not only known for its accuracy of just +/- 10 seconds per year, it is also highly durable and resistant to shocks and magnetic fields.

It's very impressive this nine jewel watchmaker assembled watch, tuned by two different watchmakers and then ultimately it is a lifetime movement designed to last as long as you do. Also rather impressive is the fact that the 9F which originated in the early 1990s remains the best in the business featuring a number of refinements that you might not even notice at first glance, such as the latch adjustment system that ensures the second hand always lands precisely on the indices, moreover the hands are long, they have a full volume that extends to the tracks that they indicate. All this is achieved with a double pulse double torque motor system so that instead of having to use spindly under sized hands generally associated with quartz movements Grand Seiko can have these beautiful full sized and full-featured hand-finished seconds minute and hour hands, that are exquisitely polished and beveled like no other watch to keep you staring at it for more than just the time.