Watchlords

Seiko quartz is definitely on my mind these days. Specifically, my interests lie in 1970s vintage Seiko, the golden days of Seiko quartz. While the first Seiko movement was the 35SQ, in the early 1970s Seiko produced three other lines of Seiko quartz watches: the QT, QR, and QZ. This was the hierarchy of their early quartz movements, with SQ at the top.

The 38SQ and 39SQ were once the highest end Seiko quartz movements, before the release of the Superior line in 1974 with the 3883 movement. These earlier watches were often marked VFA, like the 3823 and had accuracies of +/- 5 seconds per month (SQ) in contrast to the lesser models with accuracies of +/- 15 or 20 seconds (15 for 38QT and 20 for 38QR). The 3823-7000, for example, would’ve been positioned right at the top of the catalogue at a cost of 141,000 Yen. Now, that’s not to say that the QT, QR, or QZ were any less expensive – all quartz was expensive at the time, and these models actually had comparable build and higher prices than the Grand Seiko and King Seiko of the day.

https://montrespubliques.com/new-1minut ... m-sq-to-qz