ON THE WRIST: Seiko Prospex Padi Automatic Watch

 
4R36-05HO

An unusual 'On the Wrist' post today, because this was not the result of a shopping trip or a soiree around London... no, this watch actually belongs to my friend and work colleague Rich. Some of you may remember that in the dim and distant past Rich and I went to London for the day, looking at all the watches we could never hope to afford (and maybe a few we could). Rich is building up quite a collection of watches now, he has a TAG Heuer 2000 Series, a Tudor Pelagos LHD, a Pagani 'Aquaracer', a blue dial Seiko Automatic, a Casio digital watch and this Seiko Turtle.

Now I find Seiko massively confusing so apologies in advance if I make any glaring errors in this post, unfortunately my knowledge of Seiko is in no way comparable to my knowledge of TAG Heuer, but Rich assures me that this is a 'turtle, though exactly what that is supposed to mean I'm not 100% sure. I think it's mainly to do with the shape of the case. Which is... an 'acquired' taste, perhaps?

OWNED: Seiko SNDE03P1 Quartz Chronograph

SNDE03P1

Pretty sure you weren't expecting this, right? Well, as it happens this past weekend I bought a Seiko wall clock, a fairly plain affair albeit with a rather nice textured dial that looks a bit like frost. Not quite to the level of the Grand Seiko 'Snowflake' you understand, but then it only cost £27.50 so you can't expect miracles! Anyway, this got me thinking about my last non TAG Heuer wristwatch...

As you probably know by now (if you've been reading my blog for a while) my TAG Heuer fixation didn't really kick off until 2016 when I bought my Carrera Heuer 01 and crucially (the same weekend) a pre-owned Formula 1 off eBay. But leading up to this I had worn a very 'TAG Heuer Carrera-ish' Citizen, a Breil and latterly (once I split the bracelet on both of those!) this Seiko SNDE03P1.

I must have bought this in the very early months of 2016, because I know I only had it for about six months. Once I bought the Formula 1 I took the decision to cut all non-TAG Heuer watches out of my life and sold this one on eBay. This wasn't quite the philosophical statement it might sound, it was more that by this point I had four TAG Heuer watches and I needed to start wearing at least one of them every day instead of keeping all four 'for best'.

This was a crucial stage in my watch collecting development actually, as I had to force myself to wear an 'expensive' watch everyday and get used to the idea that it was okay to do so. This helped me enormously in the long run and I now wear all but my automatics and my Microtimer on a daily basis. This might sound a bit daft, but four years ago the idea of wearing a £1000+ wristwatch to work was completely alien to me.

My Briel was a titanium Ducati model with a carbon fibre dial and that was an attempt to step up my watch game a bit, from memory I believe it cost me about £350... I took it back to get a quote to repair the bracelet and replace the curved crystal which had a scratch in it, this came in at £180 and it was about then that I realised that £2-500 tier watches were perhaps not the best way to go.

I decided that it would be far better to invest that £180 in a new watch (and believe it or not I actually managed to get about £80 for the Breil on eBay even with a broken bracelet and a scratched glass). I toyed with the idea of stepping up further, but then made the mistake of 'settling' for this blue dial Seiko.

I guess you can see why it appealed to me; blue rubber strap, metallic blue dial with orange highlights, dive bezel, oversized 45mm case, 6-9-12 chronograph... on paper it seems perfect, but owning this watch was definitely not a rewarding experience. In fact almost as soon as I'd bought it it felt like a mistake, but I persevered...

Obviously it's a few years ago now, but I do remember that the watch was very top-heavy. It seemed to rattle around on my wrist an awful lot, something I've never experienced with any of my TAG Heuers it must be said! And after a few months the watch started doing some weird things that necessitated a return to the service centre. So actually, that six month period was more like five because the watch was away for 3-4 weeks and I kind of remember being vaguely disappointed when it came back that they'd managed to fix it.

After this I really took against it and once the Carrera and the F1 were in the house it was only a matter of time, I think I received the Formula 1 on the Monday and the Seiko was on eBay by the end of the week. It didn't sell easily either, I eventually managed to salvage just £45 of my original £160 investment, so it didn't even hold it's value. So much for the mighty Seiko... ;)

ON THE WRIST: Seiko Marine Master Pro SBDB013 600M Diver

SBDB013

Seiko Boutique / Knightsbridge, 9th March 2019

Much like Rolex, I've never really been sold on the whole 'Seiko' hype thing... but since I was visiting Harrods anyway and the Seiko boutique is literally a two minute walk along the street, I figured I might as well visit again and perhaps try something on. Worst case scenario I figured I might get to try on an SKX and could then make an informed comment on whether it really is the watch icon that it's made out to be or not.

There were quite a few watches that look like SKXs in the shop, and that also seemed to be about the right price... but I couldn't see any that actually were SKXs. I find with Seiko there's a lot of this, a lot of very similar looking pieces, sometimes at vastly different price points. They had a couple of gold/black (well, kinda grey actually) Tunas next to each other, one admittedly a couple of millimeters smaller than the other and one was quartz and one was Spring Drive I believe, but to the untrained eye they looked incredibly similar. One was £2200 and one was £379, which is not great, but to put them right next to each other in the display cabinet is really poor selling in my opinion. Who really wants to pay £2200 for a watch that looks almost exactly like one that costs a fifth of the price?

Looking around the rest of the shop I was completely underwhelmed by the Grand Seikos on display, admittedly I had seen some nicer ones in Watches of Switzerland a few hours earlier (the snowflake dial in particular) but the ones in the boutique looked rather like overpriced Citizens if I'm honest. So I moved back to the front of the shop, and perhaps because I'd rather enjoyed trying on the Oris Dive Control Limited Edition earlier in the day, I thought I'd give this £3100 Marine Master Pro a go.

I'd love to be able to tell you something about it, but to be honest it wouldn't be fair as my perception of the watch was rather skewed by the attitude of the guy who served me in the shop. It seemed like me asking to try on a watch, any watch, was a bit of an inconvenience, and the fact that I had chosen this particular watch seemed to be taken as a personal affront!

"Why do you want to try on THAT watch?" He said, which admittedly may have been a particularly rubbish and misguided attempt at humour.

"Because I'm.... curious?" I replied, unsure as to what the 'correct' response was and not really expecting to be grilled over my choice of watch by the guy on the other side of the counter!

"It's JDM, do you know what that means?" He continued, in a manner so patronising it made me want to punch him in the face.

JDM, or 'Japanese Domestic Market' is a big thing for Seiko, they make many models (the most desirable ones it seems) solely for the Japanese market and these are only sold through their own boutiques or by private import. So the SDBD013 is some pretty hot stuff apparently, containing as it does a Grand Seiko spring drive movement.

But I knew that anyway, so eventually I did get the watch on my wrist and in all honesty it was seriously underwhelming for a £3100 watch. It was surprisingly light, given it's size and height, and no doubt most Seiko fan boys would be soiling themselves just to be in it's very presence, but I really couldn't have cared less. Which is why I can't really review the watch with any degree of fairness. I will say this, the strap was a bit tricky to do up, but the silicon rubber was super smooth and very comfortable for the short time I was wearing it. That aside, as you can see from the pictures it's quite an attractive piece, but considering it was within £800 of the pretty awesome Oris Dive Control I tried on the same day there's absolutely no way that I would choose this over that.

On a day when I experienced superb levels of service from Aneta in the TAG Heuer boutique and Lin Lin in the Regent Street Omega boutique (among others), this clown manged to completely turn me off the Seiko brand in less than a minute.

Undaunted I enquired as to whether they had any SKXs that I hadn't seen...

"We don't sell that range in here," said Charlie Chuckles, making a face like he'd just smelt something particularly nasty. "And anyway, I think it's been discontinued..."

Okay then, a watch forum icon it may be, but it seems the SKXs name is mud in the brands own boutique!

FEATURE: Another Trip to London to Look at Watches...

Long time readers may remember that almost exactly a year ago my friend Rich and I made a day trip to London with the express intention of visiting as many watch stores as possible... well, we decided to do it all over again, only this time we really went for it!

Our first port of call was the Omega boutique at the top of Regent Street, and strangely enough I'd never tried on an Omega before, so it really was high time I did. I ended up trying on six different pieces, including the Speedmaster and Speedmaster 2, three Planet Oceans and 300M Chronograph. We ended up staying in there nearly an hour, which I really hadn't been expecting or intending to do.

I must say, the service we received in this boutique from Lin Lin was superb and seeing that I was noting down the pieces that I had tried on she offered to print me spec sheets for everything. I'll probably never buy an Omega, but if I did, I would make a point of going back to this boutique and asking for Lin Lin, she is a credit to the company!

Next we headed down Carnaby Street and happened to stop off at the Swatch boutique. I've never been overly sold on Swatch, but I know Rich likes the collectability of them and it was interesting to see the System 51 models on display. We didn't stay too long before heading down a few doors to G-Shock.

I didn't actually try anything on in G-Shock, but it was quite interesting to see the wide variety of styles and prices on offer. They even had some steel models that were over £1000 which I wasn't really expecting.

We popped into the Karl Lagerfield store on Oxford Street so I could pick up a little gift for my wife. It's a shame Karl has died recently and I love that his cat is worth $3.5M. Crazy! After picking up this cute (if somewhat overpriced keyring), we headed a couple of doors up to Watches of Switzerland.

I've been in this store several times, but I've still never been up to the top floor. I always head for the basement first since that's where the LVMH brands are to be found, and this time I tried on a couple of TAG Heuers and my first Hublot. Then we headed back up to street level and I tried on my first Ulysse Nardin, it was to be a day of firsts, with more to come...

Mindful of the long day ahead and our poor feet, we decided a brief stop at the Slug and Lettuce on Hanover Street was in order. I had ideally planned to get in there before 12 as I feared it might be rather busy on a Saturday lunchtime, but it was actually rather quiet and we passed a pleasant half hour in there before moving on.

Our next stop was Oris on South Molton street, where I discovered the rather exciting 'Dive Control Limited Edition 1000M Chronograph', a real beast at 51mm but one that you could actually wear due to it's very short lugs and non-flaring strap. Can't honestly say there was much else in the store I was interested in, but that one got a big thumbs up from me.

Selfridges was next, and after wasting half an hour going around in circles trying to find the toilets, we finally hit The Wonder Room, where I tried on my first ever Rolex. Not only that, but I managed to find one that I actually liked... which was a surprise to me, as I find most Rolexes hideous!

Also in The Wonder Room, we looked at a couple of TAG Heuer Monacos, a couple of Aquaracers and a Breitling Exospace B55 on a blue rubber strap. Our server 'Alan' seemed to think that Rich and I were an 'item' and he suggested we might like to 'share' a Pepsi GMT Aquaracer!

Alan was clearly desperate for some commission as despite telling us he was heading off for his lunch he kept hovering as we moved around the room, terrified that the minute he left we might buy something from a different salesman. In the end he gave up and I tried on the Brietling assisted by a truly charmless chap who demanded to know what was stopping me committing to the £6000+ Exospace!

I had hoped to try on a steel non-Offshore AP Royal Oak on this visit, but it was not to be, Selfridges and Harrods were a steel Royal Oak free zone, which makes me wonder if they are now playing the same silly games as Rolex?

With time knocking on, we crossed Oxford Street to visit the TAG Heuer boutique and catch up with the lovely Aneta (who I already knew from the Bicester store). There wasn't much in store that I hadn't already seen, but I did have a good natter with Aneta and managed to try on the new Senna Carrera Heuer 02T. Also Aneta told me they are expecting the Nanograph in store soon, so hopefully I will be able to see that in the near future!

From here we took a walk down New Bond Street (completely missing the Victorinox shop we had hoped to visit), before stopping off at Charbonel et Walker to pick up some hideously expensive chocolates (£95 per kilo, I kid you not!), good job I only bought a few...

After a nice lunch in Richoux on Piccadilly (if you like Carrot Cake, this is the place for you) we crossed the road to Burlington Arcade, only to find that at 5:45pm the shops were shutting up for the night. Next time we will go there before we go to Richoux... but that wasn't the end of our day, because while Bond Street closes at 6pm on a Saturday, thankfully Knightsbridge does not!

And so we headed into the Seiko boutique where I was unimpressed with the both service and the overall attitude. A complete contrast to some of the places we had visited today, especially the Omega and TAG Heuer boutiques which had been exemplary.

And so we made it to our last destination for the day, Harrods. It was a shame to see that the enormous Lange & Sohn display piece had been removed (perhaps headed to Baselworld?) but we spent a good forty five minutes chatting with Mahmoud in Hublot while trying on some very nice watches. And then finally a good little while with Harry in the mixed brands room where we had a look at the new Tudor GMT Pepsi and a couple of rather striking Zenith Defy El Primero 21s.

Needless to say I will be reporting on each of the 27 watches I tried on in due course, I will probably spread them out a bit though as this blog is supposed to be focused mainly on TAG Heuer and only 7 of the watches I tried on were TAGs. I've made a start, and the Rolex, Oris and Seiko reviews should be up soon...

I wonder how many watches I'll manage to try on next March...?