First off, lemme just say: vintage Seikos *can* be awesome. Seriously. Some of those old models are absolute classics and worth snagging if you find a good one. But…and this is a BIG but… you gotta be careful, especially when looking online.
The thing you *really* need to watch out for is, well, let’s just call ’em “Mumbai specials.” Yeah, I’m talking about the watches flooding eBay from India and Pakistan. Now, I’m not saying everything coming from that region is automatically garbage, but… a *lot* of it is.
Why? Well, here’s the deal. See, what they often do is take old, beat-up Seiko movements – and often, they *are* genuine Seiko movements, that’s the sneaky part – and stick ’em in new cases with repainted dials. And they’re usually, like, *aggressively* polished. I mean, so shiny it looks kinda…fake, ya know? Overpolished and the dials are screaming “fresh coat of paint!” – and not in a good way.
So, are they *technically* fake? Mmmmaybe not entirely. It’s more like… franken-watches. Like someone took a bunch of watch parts and mashed ’em together. You *might* get something that works, but you’re probably getting something that breaks soon.
And lemme tell ya, some of these dials are, like, *wildly* inaccurate. They’ll slap on whatever design they think looks cool, regardless of whether it ever existed on a real Seiko. So, you might end up with a “Seiko” that looks like it was designed by a toddler with a paint set. No offense to toddlers, some of them have real artistic talent, but… you get my point.
Also, this is my personal opinion, but the price is a huge clue. If you see a “vintage Seiko” going for, like, £15 on eBay from India, alarm bells should be ringing louder than a church on Sunday. C’mon, think about it. No *real* vintage Seiko is going for that cheap unless it’s completely busted or, well, a Mumbai special.
Another thing to watch out for is the crown. Apparently (I’m going off what I read online here), a genuine Seiko crown is often a “screwing crown,” which means you gotta unscrew it to adjust the date or time. A fake, from what I’ve gathered, might just use a regular old quartz movement and a cheapo push/pull crown.
Now, about other ebay sellers that aren’t based in India. I heard about a seller called vividlily. I heard it’s now trading as something else. So it is still important to be careful when you buy a watch.
