What the heck!?! Now I'm buying Seiko Pocket Watches!?! :-O

[Thomas]

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Seiko watch collecting goes in so many directions!?!    One month I'm looking for 1970's vintage faceted-crystal VANACs with brightly colored dials, and the next thing you know I buying limited edition Seiko Railroad Pocket Watches!!??  


Last week I picked up my first, a real bargain on the 2000 Historical SCVR001, with numerals that hark back to the original 1929 pocket watch, a sterling silver case (92.5%), and a unique 8L34 movement. (Thomas's Pocket Watch Bargain)


And today I won the auction for a very limited 25-issue, 2011 Seiko K Polestar 25th Anniversary 7C21-OA22 Railroad Pocket Watch.


As I am sure you all know (!), "Polestar" is the nickname for the Kita-Osaka Kyuko 8000 series railcars that ran on the Kitakyu Namboku Line in north Osaka starting in 1986, with through service to the Osaka Municipal Subway Midosuji Line.


These multiple-unit electric trains were beloved by their daily commuters and were considered very luxurious for their day, especially considering the older trains they replaced. They were also one of the three recipients of the 27th (1987) Laurel Prize of the Japan Railfan Club for their outstanding functional features and design.


A 25th Anniversary Railroad Pocket Watch was commissioned from Seiko, to be released in 2011, using Seiko's newer SVBR001 quartz pocket watch with the 7C21 movement featuring a 10-year battery life. This was an extremely limited release of only 25 specially engraved watches!! Here are the sellers pictures from this morning's auction along with a screen-shot from YouTube that got my research started:



























If you check the last picture, of the video panel in a Kita-Osaka Kyuko 9000 series railcar, you will see the same logo as on the back of the watch. The 9000 series replaced the 8000 in 2016, but this image led me to the older 8000 trains and the beginning of the Polestar history, although there seem to be a few 8000s still running.


Here are several informative links that cement that the Polestar reference as the Kita-Osaka Kyuko 8000 and give some background and history into this particular series of Japanese train:


Google Kitakyu 8000 Series Polestar


Kita-Osaka Kyuko 8000 Series


Wikipedia Kita-Osaka Kyuko 8000 series


WikiVividly Kita-Osaka Kyuko 8000 series


Northern Osaka Express "8001 LAST RUN"



Well, what a remarkable find!    I guess I'll need to buy some vests, that have watch pockets for my pocket watches!  


- Thomas


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[ajkrik]

I have several. They're big enough for my clumsy hands to repair if I can find parts.

[pip]

I hear you! I have (quite happily) been outbid on a fair few vintage Seiko pocket watches. Things of some beauty, but I’d not ever take them out of the house!

[Henry]

Very Cool Thomas... 

To this point I have fought the temptation to buy a pocket watch... But I do seem to always be having to watch my pocket..

 

[russtmurray]

Good stuff. Those are real gems. Now, are ya goin' to mod any?

[HiBeat]

Oh yes, I definitely see a vest in your future, and a natty WRUW pic to show it off !!

Wow that is a very collectible watch.  Well done sir.

[pip]

Just re-read my post and I forgot to say how cool your new PW’s are. Don’t know how you tracked them down but well done, they’re gorgeous.

[Thomas]

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Oct 16, 2018 0:34:09 GMT -8 pip said:

Just re-read my post and I forgot to say how cool your new PW’s are.

Don’t know how you tracked them down but well done, they’re gorgeous.

Thank you pip!

I find them by spending "insane" amounts of time searching the Yahoo! Japan auction listings. 


Every night when I get home from work I spend an hour or so searching before I turn in, and on Saturday or Sunday morning I'll sit down very early and spend another few hours searching.  


During the week I usually just search for "newly listed" or "popular and newly listed" with "Seiko" as the search string , and scroll through about 50 pages of 20 listings each.


On the weekend sessions I start with my (currently) 96 search strings bookmarked that I will open and walk through, like "Seiko SARB", "Seiko 7002-8000", "Citizen CTS57" and so forth. I probably look at 1000 watches using these bookmarked searches.


Once I get through those I will do the top down "newly listed" Seiko search like I do on week nights, but try and go through at least 200 pages of 20 listings each!  And after looking at those 4000 newly listed watches, I often do the Seiko "popular and newly listed" search for about 50 pages of 20 listings each, so I don't miss a popular watch that wasn't listed recently. 


So, nothing really special or magical, no secrets, just a lot of looking!! 


- Thomas

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[pip]

Oct 16, 2018 5:00:18 GMT -8 Thomas said:

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Oct 16, 2018 0:34:09 GMT -8 pip said:

Just re-read my post and I forgot to say how cool your new PW’s are.

Don’t know how you tracked them down but well done, they’re gorgeous.

Thank you pip!

I find them by spending "insane" amounts of time searching the Yahoo! Japan auction listings. 


Every night when I get home from work I spend an hour or so searching before I turn in, and on Saturday or Sunday morning I'll sit down very early and spend another few hours searching.  


During the week I usually just search for "newly listed" or "popular and newly listed" with "Seiko" as the search string , and scroll through about 50 pages of 20 listings each.


On the weekend sessions I start with my (currently) 96 search strings bookmarked that I will open and walk through, like "Seiko SARB", "Seiko 7002-8000", "Citizen CTS57" and so forth. I probably look at 1000 watches using these bookmarked searches.


Once I get through those I will do the top down "newly listed" Seiko search like I do on week nights, but try and go through at least 200 pages of 20 listings each!  And after looking at those 4000 newly listed watches, I often do the Seiko "popular and newly listed" search for about 50 pages of 20 listings each, so I don't miss a popular watch that wasn't listed recently. 


So, nothing really special or magical, no secrets, just a lot of looking!! 


- Thomas

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Blimey Thomas, that is why you get the good stuff and I don’t! Hard work always pays off.

[Thomas]

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Oct 16, 2018 11:04:55 GMT -8 pip said:

... Hard work always pays off.

Nah, doesn't seem like work when I'm doing it.    Cold beer and a bowl of cashews by my side!  


And I see a lot of weird stuff too!    Quite fun, if a bit time consuming...


- Thomas

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[akable]

Congratulations Thomas, look forward to seeing some more photos of this and SCVR001 when you receive them.

Regarding your searches, I do something very similar so my only piece of advice would be to change your results to 100 items per page instead of 20. Seems like a minor thing but will save a surprising amount of time.

I find that I am often distracted by YJ suggestions as to other products I might be interested in as these seem to be surprisingly well selected.

[Mr.Jones]

They all look the same to me...


That said, you are not alone and congrats on a rare find! I rather keep to the lower priced models. Good thing Seiko made so much of them! I picked up the 7550 from customs today, popped in a new Battery and off it went. Don't think it had a battery change in the time since it was made (in 1985)...

[Thomas]

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Oct 16, 2018 20:19:24 GMT -8 akable said:

Regarding your searches, I do something very similar so my only piece of advice would be to change your results to 100 items per page instead of 20. Seems like a minor thing but will save a surprising amount of time.

I find that I am often distracted by YJ suggestions as to other products I might be interested in as these seem to be surprisingly well selected.

Ahh, the master is searching on Yahoo! Japan itself! 

I have always used the Buyee client for everything, as it used to do translation very well, held my "watch" list and did the yen dollar conversion. 

But after they added the "support chat" feature, Google Chrome does not translate the description next to the picture when searching no matter what you do, and even on the auction post itself it does not translate the watch description by the seller, although you can manually click the "Translate" button and get a translation. 

But experimenting with Yahoo! itself, the Chrome auto-translater works wonderfully!    The translation is also much better (more complete) than what I would get on the Buyee window. I have set up my search strings to use Yahoo! and set the search window count to 100, and I am now searching much more efficiently! 

Oh, and the Yahoo! search criteria works much better too! The search term "Newly listed" in the Buyee client really was a sort by "days remaining" while in the Yahoo! window it really is watches "newly listed" regardless if how long the seller has set the days remaining. And the "Recommended" seems to be smarter algorithm than the "Popular and Newly listed" in the Buyee window.

Thank you for the suggestion Global Ambassador Kable!!    I can always click on the Buyee link when it is time to get serious and add a watch to my Buyee "watch" list, so now I have the best of both worlds. 

- Thomas

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[akable]

Glad it works out better for you Thomas.

I have always used the actual YJ site directly as it works much better than the alternatives. The closed auction search on YJ is also much better than the proxy sites.

For the less common searches you might want to just setup email alerts to notify you if something interesting turns up instead of having to do searches that almost always return no results.