Vintage Seiko 6218 Weekdater – A baby Grand Seiko 62GS
To many vintage Seiko watch collectors, the 62 Grand Seiko is one of the holy grail in the collection, however the heavy demand from the market means that the 62GS are all pricing at a heavy premium and is out of budget for many of us. Therefore it became our quest to source an alternative from the market for all of our dearest followers.
Seiko back in the 70s have a practice when working on movements of a watch, they will build a base movement and fine tune the base movement into higher accuracy movement for their higher end watches. We can find the 56 series base movements using in both Lord Matic and the higher accurate ones used in King Seiko and Grand Seikos. The same principle applies to the 62 series movement too! After the search from the historical Seiko reference book and the market, we finally settle our target on the vintage Seikomatic series manufactured in the 60s where they are housing the base version of 62 series movement.
The 62 series movement used in the Seikomatic watches are workhorse movement, has an 18k bph vibration rate, and Diashock protection. The 6218 movement was housing a wide variance of Seikomatic watches, with wide selection of dial layout, case material, day wheel format etc. This is essentially the workhorse movement at the time for Seiko.
The 62 series movement will later work its way up to become one of the finest movements Seiko have ever manufactured housing in the 62 Grand Seiko.
I was attracted by this particular example of Seikomatic 6218 8010 because of the following reasons.
Unlike the earlier example of Seikomatic 6218 where they have a more soft style in case design, this later reference features a more bold and angular case with brush and mirror polish finishing giving the watch a more strong wrist presence.
The use of mirror polished sword hands, this style of hand can only be found in the earlier Seiko reference and now is reused in modern Grand Seikos, it is safe to say it the the inspiration of the later Grand Seiko reference.
The "Seikomatic" font use in this particular reference is unique as well. It is a writing that is never found in other Seikomatic references making it truly one-of-a-kind reference and highly collectable.
The sunburst silver dial was preserved nicely with no signs of aging on the dial given its age. It's amazing to see the watch preserved in such a nice condition.
With its clean design, Seikomatic was used to target the young businessmans sector, where they are targeted to pair with suits and worn to office daily. Because of the usage, most of the reference found in the market are in poor condition. We are proud to be able to source one in mint condition!
With its timeless design, we are confident that it will be able to continue its mission to pair with your suit flawlessly for the next decades to come.
Specification:
Maker: Seiko
Model: Seikomatic 6218 8950
Era: 1966 Apr
Case Diameter: 36 mm
Lug to Lug: 42 mm
Lug width: 19 mm
Case Condition: Amazingly preserved case. Most examples in the market have a polished on the caseback, while this example have the original caseback marking still fully intact. The case shape and original finishing is still so well preserved.
Dial Condition: Silver Sunburst Dial in nice condition
Movement: 6218 automatic movement serviced in Japan
And of course, it comes with any colour of our Kyoto Series Leather Straps. Of course you can pair it up with any straps we have in store by adding just a few extra to make the watch suit your personal taste. Just let us know which one you like to pair the beauty up with.
