I had a tendency in the first lockdown to spend some spare time at my new ‘home office’ scrolling through sales and auction sites while muted on Zoom calls. Sounds familiar to a lot of people I bet. This had, of course, the usual side effect. Packages containing watches, parts of watches, and watchmaking tools from all over the world arrived at my home with an almost alarming regularity.

And the thing is, when you are using a consignment service, it is solid man-maths to add a few more bits to the package. Shipping is pretty much already covered after all. Which is how I came to own a broken and non-running Seiko 0853-8000 King Quartz.

It was thrown in the package for a number of reasons. Primarily, the dial colour and texture intrigued me enough to want to see it for myself. I know enough about Seiko watches to know they do great dials and wondered if this was as it appeared in the seller’s photos. Add to this that I had not handled a King Quartz before and knew nothing about the 0853 movement that runs it.

And so the package arrived. A book about vintage Japanese watches, a couple of vintage GS, some 7546 spares and a rather sad looking Seiko 0853-8000. The 0853 module was first used in 1974 and remained part of Seiko’s line-up for a decade. This particular example was dated June 1975 so was in the first year or so of production.

The first thing when receiving any quartz watch that isn’t running is to make sure there is no battery in there that could start (or continue) leaking and damage the movement. The battery cover came off easily revealing an empty battery compartment. The next step is to decase the movement, which is done through the caseback. Taking the caseback off was simple, it has a nice big and obvious lip to get a case-knife into. A cool old-fashioned blue circuit board (and a fair amount of dirt) saw the light of day perhaps for the first time in the almost half a century of its life. So to cut the story short, as this is a review of the watch and not a service guide, a strip down and thorough clean, followed by a (quite fiddly) rebuild and oil, plus a fresh battery and voila! She fired up. Always a good moment. A quick polish of the case and found a suitable strap to fit and off we go.

So what is the Seiko 0853-8000 like? The watch itself is 37mm diameter excluding crown and sits approximately 10mm thick, although it sits a little high due to the case shape. It has hidden 18mm lugs, limiting strap options, but at least it isn’t the common Seiko foible of 19mm. There were a few dial options for this model in 1975. This one has a “Bamboo” dial having striped ridges, in silvery white, and has completely tropicalised to a beautiful copper tint. (But also check out the “Tatami” option which is awesome).

Lastly, it has a very cool little complication that I’ve not seen on another watch before. With the crown in the normal position, turn it clockwise and the second hand skips a beat, putting it back one second. Turn it anti-clockwise and it skips forward two beats, gaining a second. Combine that with the factory stated accuracy of +/- 5 seconds per day and you have a piece that a Japanese salaryman in the mid-70’s could easily keep very accurate over long periods of time.

I think this Seiko 0853-8000 King Quartz is a keeper.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/45Gye200VAhuKFOwXdpjSK?si=vblwCrbGT4yKOkus454UnA