I know i should love them, but I find myself having a hard time justifying a GS over a Seiko SARB at less than 10% of the cost.
Yep you should
let me please explain how I see it:
In Japan, if you want to become a sushi chef, during 8 years you will cook rice.
After 8 years, that's in the case you are gifted, you will be allowed to start using a knife, and start cutting fish (for a few years). After decades of learning, practicing, practicing again, and practicing again, you will at some point become a sushi master, most probably in your 40s-50s. Then you will train pupils, and so on...
Well, in Japan, sword making, sushi cooking, and watch manufacturing are following the same model: you practice all your life, to go up the ladder, and finally earn the respect of your pears, and the right to craft, exercise your art at the top level.
Seiko has a council of allegedly 3 'watch masters', all 60+ if I am to believe rumors, whose hands are ONLY used to assemble GS. Those guys have been putting movements in SARBs 10 years ago, and earned the right to work on GS after decades of practicing, simply because they are the best watch makers in the archipelago.
Also, SARB are still assembled by hands, but parts of the movement are industrial, not the same as the "100% made by hands" GS can claim.
So, in terms of process, GS are actually with the Patek, JLC, Lange of this world, when their pricing is much more aligned with Omega for instance.
So yeah, excellent bang for bucks, an exclusive feeling (GS is still very rare in NA), and that fantastic feeling of being the only one in the know: you are wearing a Seiko, a watch that 99.99% of the people will think of as 'low end/entry level' when it is actually a super high end, the perfect disguise
That said, they have issues, their design lacks a bit of a signature/originality, but it's far outweighed by their qualities IMO.
GS FTW!!!!
I doubt they qualify as "Fine Wristwatches", but what I've seen of Nixon's 51-30 leather line looks quite nice. Big fan of this particular colorway:
Not yet released, though.
$600 for a cheap Swiss Quartz seems extremely expensive, and it's 51mm, we are talking a wall clock around your wrist, so I would try something on with a similar size before ordering
...Oh, and this is nothing but my personal taste, but I really think it does not look that great, a bit like the watch of my boring Geography teacher (which he wears with
this and
this)