2016-03-16

Folks,

Warning - bandwidth and text/heavy post!

I have a habit of picking up any of the old Casing/Interchangeability guides whenever they show up on ebay. I picked up ebay item 182038779262 mostly for the 1970 casing guide - it was a hole in my collection. I thought that the Seiko "Watch Parts Catalog" was something I already owned - basically, the one scanned and posted here. Mostly, it was - they both have all the same caliber pages, etc, though the one I just bought is in two volumes. More importantly, the new one has a section my old one doesn't. If these are already somewhere on the technical subforum, forgive me, but I couldn't find them and have never seen anything like them before. Apologies for the camera shots rather than scans, but I don't have a scanner handy.

Cover page, entitled "Calibre Charts":



Each following page is basically a fold-out 8" x 14" family tree of all related movements, including names for models where appropriate.

The first (11-) is women's watches. Some I've never even heard of (Universe? Venus?), but it does include the 1944 36,000 high beat women's movement.



The second (21-) is also women's watches, but these are more familiar.



The third (62/66-) gets into men's watches. Many mainstay late 60s models here, including Sportsmatic, Liner, Skyliner, etc. Interesting to see both the manual calibers and their automatic derivatives. I also was happy to see Disney Time, which appears to be a down-jeweled version of a 66- caliber.

The fourth (8XX/76XX calibers) has one of the biggest quality ranges, from the simple Champion/Fairway models up to high-jeweled Seikomatics.

The fifth (9XXX calibers) is entirely pocket and stopwatches.

The sixth (6XXX calibers) may have the widest range, including the 6106, 6117 Navigator/World Timers, the 61X6 Grand Seiko movements, and the 6159/6215 diver movements. Interestingly, the former is labelled "Professional Divers Watch" while the later is only "Divers Watch" - I guess once the 6159 shrouded diver came out they no longer considered the 6215 "Professional," though I've certainly seen official documents from Seiko call the 6215 that term.

The seventh (lots of 4XXX and 5XXX calibers) is a bonanza of higher-end dress watches, including King Seikos, Lordmatics, Lord Marvels, Goldfeathers, and Grand Seikos. The two exceptions are the Bellmatic and the 5717/9 one-button chronos. Interesting to see no 5718 - seems to support the theory they were never publicly released.

The eighth (25XX calibers) is all manual and automatic women's watches. All familiar to me except the "Birdie," which along with the "Angel" is oddly listed without any caliber number.

If anyone's still with me, I hope these were interesting to you too!

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