Seiko 5606-7000
Seiko in recent decades have been famous for manufacturing special watch issues in collaboration with outside groups, usually associated with the arts and Japan’s huge library of anime characters. The watch in this article was the subject of a collaboration around 50 years ago and is a little more mundane but nonetheless relevant for what was to come.
Recent collaborations include JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Golden Wind Collaboration, Seiko 5 Sports Naruto and Boruto Watch, SEIKO Street Fighter V Collaboration, and the Brian May (of musical group Queen) Limited Edition Watch. Many of these watches incorporated bizarre colour palettes and this was well before today’s trend of bright pastel colour dials reaching into the most expensive watch ranges.
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure collection featured some amazing decorative designs and the colours were quite un-watch like. Bright purples, pinks, and blues were matched with a variety of dial patterns and case finishes. The limited edition watches were basic Seiko 5’s but today command up to A$1600 for pristine examples.
The watch featured in this article is much more mundane in style and colour although I have perhaps been influenced by the bizarre with my choice of strap. This is a Seiko Lordmatic 5606-7000 which is considered a middle to upper level offering from Seiko. It is quite small by today’s standards at 36mm in diameter (without crown), comes with a gold plated finish, and a silver dial that borders on white. It is an attractive vintage watch with a fair dose of Seiko’s “Grammar of Design” in its case format.
The collaboration is with Japan Rail and the inscription on the back reads “Achievement Award Memorial. From the Chairman of the Japanese National Railway.” The watches are not particularly rare and date from the late 60’s until the mid 70’s.
This is a good quality watch with a reliable 21,600 bph movement, but being around 50 years old you do need to choose carefully and there are two things in particular you should look out for. Firstly, the gold plated examples are prone to corrosion. Around this time the technology for plating gold onto stainless steel was lacking and manufacturers used base metal for the cases instead. If the gold was worn down to the base metal, corrosion could set in. (Note: Gold Capped watches from this period didn’t suffer the same problem and can be identified by a thick coating of gold on the top of the case with stainless steel showing underneath) . My watch actually has some corrosion between the lugs but I have removed as much as possible and applied a clear epoxy coating to the affected area which hopefully will protect the case for the future.
The second thing to watch for is a faulty date adjustment wheel. The 5606 movement was the first Seiko to use a plastic “Star wheel” to change the day/date, and unfortunately the experiment went a little astray when the wheels started to fail. It is a common problem with 5606’s, and is repairable, but with some considerable expense. Fortunately, in most cases the watches are worth the expense.
So that is our 50 year old collaboration watch. It doesn’t have the pizzazz of more recent collaborations but nonetheless is relevant in Seiko’s development as a watch maker.
Comments
Post a Comment