A Quartz to Keep Me Company in My Twilight

A Grand Seiko SBGX261 accurate to 10 seconds a year

I am a failed minimalist. No, not an ineffectual creative employing the tenets of the visual arts and design movement that originated in 1960s New York. Rather, an unsuccessful practitioner of the simple living lifestyle that emphasizes, among other things, maintaining a reduced number of personal possessions. At least when it comes to watches.

I’ve had a watch here and a watch there, come and go, prior to the collecting bug biting me... hard. At the onset of my involvement in this hobby, I was determined to be a one-watch person. Aside from having less to keep track of, there was a certain romance about it. I envisioned it being a trademark accessory, one that I would be readily identified with, and one that I could hand down to the next generation. And I found it (I’ll save the specific model I selected for another possible write-up). 

Life, as it does, then threw my wife and I a curveball—albeit quite a happy one; we had twins. The experience has been and is amazing, but marooned me in a muddle of my own mental making (in hindsight, likely the fault of a sleep deficit, but separately, I love me some alliteration). What kind of monster would present a watch to one child, leaving the other empty-handed, ha! Not me, so one watch became two, and that was final. Until I convinced myself I needed a more robust timepiece for hypothetical weekend adventures which, akin to exercise and healthy living resolutions each new year, never fully materialized. And then what about my beloved nieces and nephew—they would no doubt treasure a memento from their favorite uncle (okay, only uncle). At some point recently, I scanned the top of my dresser and caught ten watch faces in my rotation staring back at me. 

In the mid-2000s, I attended night classes towards a Master’s degree at a satellite campus of a major university. My then-job was paying the tuition, and the material reviewed was engaging, so why not? There was an information/greeter’s station at the entrance of the lobby in the building where the courses were held. One evening, to my excitement, I somehow noticed that the older gentleman who staffed the desk was sporting a stunning, vintage, silver-dialed Omega Seamaster with a date magnifier on a wonderful beads-of-rice bracelet. I’ve never been shy to strike up a conversation, so naturally I inquired about the Omega. Pulling from my dulled memory, I recall that he was the original owner, having purchased it in the 1960s. It appeared pristine, though I suspected it was a daily wearer, if not an only watch. 

That gentleman and his Seamaster have crossed my mind repeatedly in the years since. Not from the perspective of a potential watch do-over if I was given the chance, Marty McFly-style, rather, with eyes facing (back to, sorry—couldn’t resist) the future. As I gradually gift my watches away, I anticipate holding on to one that will keep me company in my twilight. But which one? While the competition may be fierce—and considering one or two additional planned acquisitions—I already know the answer. My Grand Seiko SBGX261, which is—gulp—a quartz watch. 

Why this one? It ticks (get it? quartz!) several boxes for me. I am broadly a devotee of Japanese products, and of Seiko even before I was aware of Grand Seiko (GS).

At 37mm across and 10mm thick, the size is Goldilocks-esque for my slim wrist. The just-right proportions coupled with a crisply clean aesthetic, yields a piece I can adapt effortlessly to dressing up or down as the situation demands. My mother-in-law (the source of my wife’s, who uncoincidentally is not a watch aficionado, superior to mine financial acumen) is prone to echo the well-known real estate advice, ‘buy the smallest house in the best neighborhood.’ The SBGX261 is the least expensive model in the GS lineup, but one receives the equivalent superb build quality, including dial furniture and case finishing, as its costlier siblings, all constructed and assembled in-house by one of the most vertically integrated brands in the watch industry.

On to the elephant in the room (I imagine an Indian one since that’s my country of origin), yes it’s quartz, but no, it’s not just a quartz. It’s powered by a high accuracy quartz (HAQ) movement bursting with impressive features. While its +/- 10 seconds per year has been bested by other manufacturers, in real life it has varied no more than -2 seconds for me. Again, that is per year! If you crave further technical details—homegrown and aged-to-perfection quartz crystals matched to circuits tuned specifically for that crystal, twin impulse seconds hand advancement with backlash technology, instantaneous date changeover, etc., then I highly recommend that you read Jack Forster’s article entitled, in part, Sexy Robot. Overall seductiveness aside, something that runs, runs exceedingly well, and with minimal input demands (Forster mentions the sealed movement not requiring service for up to a 50 year interval, which I understand was walked back by GS, but undoubtedly covers my remaining shelf life) sounds pretty good to the older version of me. 

I’ve previously rattled off these specs (and more, exhaustingly) attempting to justify to anyone asking that yep, I paid that much for a quartz watch. I no longer do that, nor feel compelled to. At over 25 years old currently, the movement design and technology is still at or near best-in-class. As an individual of modest means, and coming from humbler immigrant roots, I’ll never own anything else that is the cream of the crop in its category. Certainly not a mechanical watch (what best signifies here becomes harder to pin down, though I’m looking at you, A. Lange & Söhne). But that’s still not the strongest evidence for my conclusion that the SBGX261 is ‘The One’ for me. It’s because I’ve bought it beforehand, sort of.

You see, I formerly owned an SBGX063, a champagne-hued variant, early in the independent period when GS dials were double-signed with Seiko. The dial was spectacular— transforming from a light golden tint to a silvery grey depending on ambient lighting—and I’ve read anecdotally that it is a challenging technical feat for GS to fabricate. However, I convinced myself it was too formal for my tastes, and preferred a black dial for versatility. If I’m being completely transparent, it was also that I subscribed to the popular notion among watch enthusiasts that mechanical is ‘better’ than quartz. So I replaced the SBGX063 with its black dialed mechanical (automatic) analogue, the SBGR253. 

In my estimation, I had arrived at my realistic watch destination. Here was my off-the-beaten path, but uncompromising alternative to the omnipresent Rolex Datejust. Not drawing unwanted attention, but thoroughly appreciated by fellow watch nerds. I really tried to bond with it, but it wore top-heavy, and I missed the dead accuracy and set-and-forget nature of the HAQ GS. Off to a new home the automatic went, and its void was filled by the best of both worlds, the black dialed SBGX261. 

It continues to bring me joy each time I slip it on. I paired it with a lovely aftermarket beads-of-rice bracelet. I think the gentleman with the Seamaster would have approved.

—Casual Time #6 by Prashanth Parmar

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