Seiko Credor 40th Anniversary Signo Cherry Blossoms Skeleton GBBD965

To celebrate 40 years of Seiko’s luxury brand Credor (debuted in 1974), the introduction of a new limited edition Signo model has come forth.  You may remember a few weeks ago when we shared a live experience of Seiko’s Master Engraver, Kiyoshi Terui, doing a hand engraving at the Baselworld Fair (which can be seen HERE).  This was a sneak peak of what we knew was coming, but was not officially released until today.  We are proud to introduce the first Credor model ever to make its way to the USA, the new Seiko Credor 40th Anniversary Signo Cherry Blossoms Skeleton GBBD965.

This new limited edition model will express the motif of cherry blossoms with 3 pink mother of pearl cherry blossoms, floating down a stream from the 3:00 to 6:00.  The blossoms symbolize Japanese aesthetics, with every part of this skeletonized movement hand engraved by Seiko’s artisan, Mr. Terui.  The ring around the outer edge of the dial is a blue toned mother of pearl, with a 37.4mm wide, 6.6mm thick platinum 950 case.

Seiko has utilized their 6899 ultra thin hand wound caliber in this new limited model.  The movement itself is is a part of the caliber 6800 series, which was actually developed in 1969.  The hand engraving executed in this model has to be within an extremely tight tolerance.  The movement itself is only 1.98mm thick, and parts in this caliber can be as thin as 0.25mm thick.  A delicate depth of only 0.15mm can be engraved on the components, and the artists patterns engraved are within an astounding 0.01mm tolerance.

The 6899 caliber has a 37 hour power reserve in order to keep a +25/-15 second a day accuracy rating.  While this is not going to be close to the actual performance (as we have learned in other Seiko timepieces performing much better then their rating), this is extremely difficult to achieve in a movement this thin.  This dual level movement has a unique feature in order to achieve stable accuracy.  Due to the skeleton design of this caliber, air resistance in the balance is reduced and the swing angle of the balance increases.  To correct this, a “torque control wheel” is used to control the stability of the watches accuracy and improve the swing angle of the balance.  This caliber is produced in extremely low volume at Shizuku-Ishi Watch Studio in Morioka, Japan.

The 40th Anniversary of Credor is expressed in engraving on the case back.  In the highlighted area in the image above, “CR. 40” will be engraved subtlety.  Arizona Fine Time is extremely proud to be receiving very few of these extremely limited models, with only 40 pieces produced for the entire world.  The MSRP on the GBBD965 is $26,000 and is scheduled to be released by the end of 2014.   If you have any questions, please feel free to call us at 1-800-486-3996 or submit an inquiry to AZFineTime.com.

 

Thanks for reading!