Saturday, April 27, 2013

A hidden treasure: Seiko LordMatic

Seiko Lordmatic 5606-9000

Hidden treasure??? Is not about Indiana Jones... certainly not about Benjamin Franklin Gates or Lara Croft... is about this particular series of vintage Seiko called Lordmatic. Lord is referring to someone with authority, someone great.... Therefore this Lordmatic must be a great Seiko! 
Seiko positioned this watch to compete with Swiss watches for the middle incomes and the working class. Lordmatic was in production during the late 1960's till 1970's. Unlike Ford Model T where you can only have the black colour, Seiko basically offered huge selection of cases, dials, bracelets for most of their models. 
Why I classified Lordmatic as hidden treasure? See, Lordmatic has built quality that second to none. In my opinion, its case and dial have equivalent finishing of those vintage Grand Seiko, and King Seiko. Comparing its current market values, it is far cheaper than the vintage GS, KS and some Seiko divers like 6105, and 6306.  


This Seiko LM 5606-9000 has a very interesting case. The case is actually pentagon shaped and is with satin finishing. The case and the case back are a single entity. I.e. you can't open the case back. This in a sense increase the water-proofing of this watch. For maintenance of the watch, it is opened through and by removing the acrylic glass. The acrylic crystal is measuring 36mm in diameter. The crown of LM series is unsigned. 



The silver tone dial is very beautiful with Seiko and LM logo emblems. The day-date window is beveled with silver frame. The hour and minute hand, as well as the hour markers are silver colour with heavy black strip. This watch do not use any luminescent material. 




This is a photo I found on the internet showing the Japanese made automatic 5606 movement. This 23 jewels movement has a quickset day-date and can be hand-winded and is with hacking function. The day disc is in dual languages; English and Kanji. This is a pure 100% Japanese made Seiko,  



I think this 5606-9000 Lordmatic is well fall into the category of  Apart from Seiko GS and KS, a Seiko high grade fine timepiece.

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