2020 3flushes Media.^^^ Indeed it may have been. Growing up I remember when IBM gifted my father a gold-tone, red LCD display watch. Can't recall the brand but it was early 70s and IBM didn't give out trash. So wish I had it now.
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2020 3flushes Media.^^^
Damn.3Flushes wrote: ↑January 14th 2021, 1:22am.
Pulsar made the first LED digital watches; your dad's was proly a P-3, released in 1973'ish, The P-1 was introduced in 1971 and cost $1300, I believe, for gold-filled, which was a buttload of money back then.
Solid 18 Kt. gold models on bracelets ranged to about $2400. By way of comparison, the 18 Kt 1803 'fat boy' or 1808 Rolex Day Date models cost $1850. Hamilton released several models around '73 as well, equally pricey.
In 1973, the P-3 was introduced and cost about $600 in steel, about $150 more than a Submariner. AIR, it was the P-3 (might well have been later) that introduced a mechanism that displayed the time the wearer rotated their wrist to check the time; requiring both hands to see the time led to drops in sales as the novelty began to wear off. They launched it with a really funny national ad campaign- I found a lot of old ads for these but not the one for the first 'buttonless'.
The collectors market for these is huge; they can bring 6 G's in decent shape 11+ for 18 Kt.- the Pulsars, that is- IDK about the Hamiltons.
I was a kid, but everybody wanted one of those. EVERYBODY people went nuts for those, from all walks of life, too.
2020 3flushes Media.^^^ Very cool. Props to you for holding onto that for so long.3Flushes wrote: ↑January 14th 2021, 2:14pmThis is my original Seiko A-159. These were the first watches to combine a chrono and alarm function, and they were also the first to use LCD panels. The chrono function included lap times.
My uncle got this for me from Hong Kong in late 1975; AIR, they were released in the united states in 1977. They are not worth much to collectors, topping out at about $200, but some of the later models can fetch upwards of $3,000.
The popularity of these made the watch a phenom- they sold 10's of millions of them over the years.
Due to the little bleed in the LCD I don't keep it running anymore.
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