A VFA movement was expected to keep accuracy to +/- 2s per day. The VFA standard stood for ‘Very Fine Adjusted’ and was a standard above both the Grand Seiko the Swiss Chronometer standards.
Today, we associate quartz watches with affordability and mechanical watches with luxury, however 50 years ago, the exact opposite was true. Anyone familiar with Seiko caliber numbering may know that the third digit is often an indication of the quality of the movement and here we have an unprecedented ‘8’ in that position. January of 1970 saw the introduction of the VFA classification with a very special watch indeed, the Grand Seiko 6185-8000. 7015-6010 Time Sonar Automatic Chronograph from Daini SeikoshaĮven though the Quartz Astron’s introduction in 1969 foreshadowed the demise of Grand Seiko as a brand of mechanical watches, in 1970, Seiko were still forging ahead, pushing the boundaries of mechanical watch accuracy. However, the 701x chronographs are also an order of magnitude rarer on the vintage market since they were only sold in Japan compared to the 613x watches which were sold world-wide. The Daini caliber is the more technically advanced and has proven more reliable due to a more robust chronograph wheel. A decade after the Grand Seiko/King Seiko first inter-factory rivalry started, here was another. I doubt many will be surprised when I tell you that Daini also developed their own rival 701x automatic chronograph in 1970 to compete with Suwa’s 613x. 6138-8020 ‘ Panda’ Automatic Chronograph from Suwa Seikosha. However, few vintage Seiko watches have the value retention of the ever-popular Panda, so your money should be safe, if you choose this route.
Good examples fetch between $1500 and $2000. For 1970, the pick of the 6138 chronographs for me, is the 6138-8020 Panda dial. It manually winds as well, which is something the 6139 does not. As with the 6139, the 6138 features dual quickset for day and date and is built around the same column wheel, vertical clutch combination. The 6138-based chronographs can be differentiated from the 6139 by their dual subregisters allowing up to 12 elapsed hours to be counted. The 6138 was supposed to be the first of the two chronograph movements to be released, but apparently production issues in 1968 meant that the 6138 was delayed in favour of moving the 6139 release up. While the release of the 6139 caliber in 1969 garners all of the praise for being the first production automatic chronograph, in my opinion, the related 6138, also from Suwa, is the more impressive movement. Quartz watches were available but were expensive and cost many times more than their mechanical brethren. However, at the turn of the 1970s, mechanical watches were definitely still in vogue at Seiko. A decade that will see Seiko reduce its mechanical watch output to virtually zero and kill off some of its most famous mechanical timepieces. The end of the last guide left us on Christmas Day 1969 at the dawn of the quartz revolution. It will come as no surprise then, to find some quartz watches highlighted in the following decade. This makes them ideal candidates to search out for a birth year watch or even a birth month watch. The first digit denotes the year of the decade in which the watch was made and the second digit denotes the month of manufacture: 1-9 and then 0, N, D corresponding to the 12 months of the year.
SEIKO MODEL NUMBER 3N0062 SERIAL NUMBER
In our previous installment on Seiko watches from the 1960s, we saw how the serial number of each Seiko watch can be used to indicate the month and year of its manufacture. Collector GuideBirth-Year Seiko Watches: 1970-1979
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