Vintage Seiko Crown Special 18K solid gold indices Special Dial (SD) 14K gold filled case

The King Seiko Jr.

Men’s watch from 1961 is still in good working condition beautiful dial with 18K solid gold indices including new genuine leather strap. Perfect piece for vintage watch collectors. This is a beautiful vintage watch for your daily wear, also makes an excellent gift.

Case size: 36 mm
Case Material: 14K Gold filled
Indices material: 18K solid gold
movement: Manual winding hacking seconds

the Seiko Crown was Suwa’s 1959 replacement for the 1956 Seiko Marvel which was their first fully in-house movement. The first Grand Seiko, the revered 3180, released in 1960 was developed directly from the Crown, and occupies its own important place in Seiko history. What you may not know is that after the 3180 was developed, some of the improvements made it back into the Crown model line as the Crown Special. You can think of the Special as a regular Seiko Crown on Grand Seiko steroids.

The 341 caliber found in the Crown Special adds diafix-jeweled bearings for all of the wheels in the going train giving a final jewel count of 23. The regular Crown has either 19 or 21 depending on the year of manufacture. The Grand Seiko 3180 has two additional jewels in the barrel, totaling 25, so the Crown Special’s 341 falls directly in between the Grand Seiko and the regular Crown. The extra diafix cap jewels on both 3180 and 341 help both the accuracy and reliability by maintaining precisely the right amount of oil within the bearing and by keeping contamination out of the bearing long term.

Seiko Crown was positioned as a mid-range machine, but this “Crown Special” appeared as a high-end machine. The Grand Seiko, which was already sold as a luxury model, was too expensive to be a watch that anyone could afford. Therefore, the “Crown Special” was sold at that time at a price that was relatively easy to purchase even though it was a high-end machine.

The Special Dial logo is an octagonal sun shaped logo printed above the six o’clock index on the dial. Often referred to as the SD logo, this logo signifies that the index of the dial is made of either 18k or 14k solid yellow gold (or 14k white gold for stainless steel cased watches).

Seiko watches with the SD logo all had planted index (called 植字 “shokuji” in Japanese). Planted index meant that the hour index (or markers) were set into the dial using pins (often called “ashi” or legs). Setting the index into the dial itself involved human hands and was an extremely laborious process (just ask the Swiss who used a similar technique but many eventually abandoned the practice).



Thank specialdial and beyondthedial for information


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