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Today’s Watch – Citizen’s First Quartz, 8811

June 23, 2020, 11:26 am
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Today’s watch was a very significant one for Citizen – launched in mid-1973 it was their first quartz model. Using the 8810, 8811 and 8821 movements, they were electro-mechanical calibres, like the Cosmotrons before them. In other words they were battery powered, with a quartz crystal regulating a magnetically driven balance wheel via mechanical gears. The result is a remarkable 115,200 beats per hour oscillation, and accuracy for the 8811 & 8821 variants of +/- 10 seconds per month, and just +/- 5 seconds per month for the ‘EFA’ 8810. These hybrid movements were soon replaced by full electronic movements – I have read that they may have been produced for little more than 6 months. They are rare, especially the EFA models, and are high quality pieces – they were very expensive to buy new. They all have a ‘jewel’ at the 12 o’clock position, with two more at 6 and 9 o’clock on the EFA version. Mine is from October 1973 and is one of the 8811 models:

This is the range of models, from a 1974 catalogue

And the movement:

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Today’s Watch – Citizen Cosmotron GX

June 25, 2020, 11:23 am
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Today’s piece is another battery powered model, and although it’s a Cosmotron, it’s something of an anomaly. Unlike any other Cosmotron this one does not have a magnet driven hairspring – in fact it is a ‘hummer’ – a tuning fork watch. I don’t know why Citizen branded this as a Cosmotron – my only theory is that the design of the single coil 3701B movement was their own, and not made under licence from Bulova as was seen with their Hisonic range. There’s no mistaking it’s a hummer either – it hums very loudly, and is not the best thing to have on your bedside table if you want a good night’s sleep! I’m not a great lover of roman numerals on watch dials, but they work well on this one in my opinion. The finely printed black hour markers contrast well with the clear white dial (not very well shown in today’s photo), whilst the slender hands also have a fine black centre line – it’s a very smart look. The GX is a fairly rare watch, so a nice one to add to any collection. This one is from November 1975:

More on this one here:

https://sweep-hand.org/2012/05/21/this-weeks-featured-watch-33-the-cosmotron-gx/

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Citizen’s Case Numbers – the Mysterious Case Number Letter

June 26, 2020, 11:55 am
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A change today from a watch feature to something that’s always been a bit of a mystery – the letter stamped at the end of Citizen’s case numbers. Although not needed as a part number since the case number alone, e.g. 4-123456 provides that, I have never pinned down just what the additional letter indicates. I wrote to Citizen Japan about it – didn’t get a reply! So I’m left to my own theory 🙂

Most vintage Citizens with the above case number format, typically from the late 1960s and on through the 1970s have ‘TA’, ‘K’ or ‘Y’ stamped alongside the case number:

My theory is that these letters are factory codes – relatively recently I got hold of a scanned catalogue from the early 1970s, and that includes a list of factories:

My best guess is that ‘TA’ is the Tanashi or Tama Seimitsu factory, ‘K’ is the Kawaguchiko factory (dials were made there and dial codes often include ‘KA’ too), and ‘Y’ is …… not so obvious! You can see as well the ‘Star’ Seimitsu Company – older watches have ‘STAR’ marked on them since they initially made cases for Citizen, but later produced smaller parts, particularly screws.

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Today’s Watch – Citizen Diamond Flake

June 27, 2020, 1:07 pm
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It’s the weekend so today’s watch is a hand winder 🙂 The Diamond Flake was Japan’s thinnest watch when it was launched in 1962. The 25 or 31 jewels 2700 movement was thin enough to create a watch measuring a mere 2.75mm deep, beating the Seiko Gold Feather by just 0.2mm. My example is from September 1963 – I haven’t had chance to do a fresh photo today, so this is an old one:

There’s more on this and the very nice movement here: https://sweep-hand.org/2013/05/15/this-weeks-featured-watch-51-the-diamond-flake/

As the ‘lock-down’ is eased and life gets busier, I’ll be doing fewer ‘Today’s Watch’ posts – still got more to show you though 🙂

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Citizen Parawater – The Oceanic Tests Update

June 30, 2020, 9:55 am
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English language sub-titles are now included in this excellent YouTube video:

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Citizen’s Record Master Chronographs

August 16, 2020, 2:36 am
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I’ve covered Citizen’s range of automatic chronographs in some detail, but made less reference to their hand wound models based on the 5700 calibre. I’m now very pleased to bring your attention to a new reference page, put together by an avid 5700 collector, which provides excellent detail about all the hand wound chronographs Citizen produced in the late 1960s / very early 1970s. It is very well put together, with great textual and pictorial information, and can be found here:

The Ultimate Citizen Recordmaster Collectors Guide

https://citizenrecordmaster.weebly.com/

I’ve also added a link to my Blogroll

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Season’s Greetings

December 25, 2020, 2:30 am
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Thank you for visiting and following my blog. Best wishes for 2021 and I hope you are able to enjoy Christmas despite the impact of the pandemic.

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Questions and Comments

January 24, 2021, 10:45 am
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Thank you for asking about your watches, or ones you are interested in – I have a few yet to answer, and should be able to get to them over the next day or two 🙂

I hope you are all keeping safe and well.

SONY DSC

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Lost Emails!!

March 4, 2021, 4:22 am
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I’ve recently had an email exchange with a blog visitor about a case back marked 62-7275 and 4-540310 – unfortunately all the emails have gone missing, despite searching every folder! No idea how this has happened, but please get back to me 🙂

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Internet Problems!

April 6, 2021, 11:40 am
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Apologies for not replying to recent comments, it’s partly due to internet connection problems which have been a PITA especially over the last week or so. An engineer is coming tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll be back in business after that.

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Internet Repaired, but……

April 24, 2021, 7:40 am
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My broadband has been sorted (needed a new cable from the roadside cabinet to the house) but I have missed replies to a few enquiries, especially via the ‘ask a question’ box in the side bar. I do apologise for this. I managed to mark all my emails as ‘read’ so I’m not sure which replies are outstanding.

If you have not heard back from me, please get back in touch and I will try to help with any queries you have.

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It’s been a while….

January 18, 2023, 12:25 pm
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Well, it is now 2023 and I thought it’s finally time to do a new blog post! I must first apologise for the lack of activity over the past 18+ months and my failure to respond to people’s comments and enquiries. Although I have tried to reply to questions via the ‘Got A Question?’ form on the right side panel, I have not logged comments on the blog itself. Again apologies for that.

After the end of the Covid ‘lockdown’ and my daily posts, I kind of ran out of steam for a while – and then other priorities intervened, particularly relating to elderly parents. Things have now moved on though and my enthusiasm for Citizen’s vintage watches has revived somewhat. So, I hope from now on you will see more posts, and I’ll try to keep the blog ‘alive’.

Given that this blog (like me!) won’t go on forever, I’ve been thinking what might be a useful way forward. Since information about vintage Citizens has always been fairly hard to come by, my intention has always been to provide a source of reference material for fellow Citizen enthusiasts, collectors and even watchmakers. For example, I’ve always had enquiries from people looking for part numbers, servicing information etc., perhaps because they are working on/restoring their old watch. So I will create new pages where I can upload reference information that can’t (easily) be found elsewhere, which will be more accessible than simple posts, which soon get harder to find.

If you need good technical information including disassembly, assembly and servicing, case design and general and specific guidance on movements, please go to these downloadable original English language publications on TheWatchSite (the Seiko & Citizen Forum):

https://www.thewatchsite.com/threads/1971-citizen-technical-information.171138/

I’ll add this link to the Reference Data found in the right hand panel on the Home Page. Although the information precedes the 81 and 82 movements, and doesn’t cover the earlier Jet movements, it does cover the Citizen’s main movement families from the 1960s and early 1970s.

I do still have a few models that I’ve not yet covered on my ‘Featured Watches’ page, so I will continue with that.

Although comments are very welcome in response to my posts, if you have a question about a vintage watch (maybe one you’ve not got an answer to before!) please use the ‘Got A Question‘ form – thank you.

Finally, I only have reference material on Citizen’s vintage mechanical, electro-mechanical (e.g. the Cosmotrons) and very early quartz watches, i.e. up to 1980. I’m afraid I can’t help much with more recent quartz models and Eco-Drives.

Need pictures to finish…..so here is my Jet 777 Autodater, one of the rarer models from the early 1960s:

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Citizen Technical Information – New Links

January 22, 2023, 1:43 pm
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With thanks to Mark (see comments), please note that the link I posted to the 1971 Technical Information Files is out of date and the files are no longer available. I’ve had a look around and here is the most useful guide, which covers ‘Movements for Gents’ – I was able to download it from this link:

Now I’m getting back to grips with the blog software, I realised I could upload my copies of these files! So they are now all available via a page: https://sweep-hand.org/1971-citizen-technical-information/

You should be able to download from the page, which is found in the header of the blog.

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This Week’s Featured Watch #81 – the Varia-Matic (A1309)

January 29, 2023, 12:00 pm
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This week’s featured watch is not one of mine – it belongs to Thierry who contacted me about it recently and kindly sent photos. It’s a rare export ‘Valiant’ version of a Jet Auto-dater, called the ‘Valia-Matic’ on the dial. I have seen a Valiant hand winder before, but not this automatic model.

Here’s a view of the dial side with date window:

As you can see the stainless steel case holds a 21 jewels movement, with date window, and is marked ‘waterproof’ rather than ‘parawater’, indicative of a watch made for export rather than the Japanese domestic market. There is also no ‘Jet’ name printed on the dial and the positioning of the logo, model name and jewel count is different from what would be typically seen on Japanese market Jets.

One appealing aspect of some of these export models is the use of special designs on the back, and this Valia-Matic is no exception:

A closer look of the back reveals what appears to be a Roman legionnaire motif:

The surrounding engraving includes ‘anti-magnetic’, ‘shockproof’, ‘waterproof’ and ‘unbreakable spring’ all of which cater for English speaking markets whilst the serial number – 5110857 – gives a production date of November 1965. The full model name is given as the Valiant Automatic.

As well as the production date the use of a screw down back and the date complication indicate that this is not one of the earliest Jet models, a range that Citizen introduced in 1961. Here’s a nice shot of the movement (so much better looking than a swinging weight design imho):

The ‘A’ in the model number – A1309 – tells us exactly what the movement is. Citizen used this for just two movements, one of which is the hand wound ‘Ace’ which can be discounted here of course. The other is what we are looking for, the 1120/1121, which was first produced in January 1962.

As with all Jets, this movement runs at 18,000 beats per hour. Here’s a link to my blog page which summarises all the Jet movements, to which I now need to add the Valiant Automatic: https://sweep-hand.org/the-jet-automatic/

The Valiant joins other export model names that were used with more than one movement. The Valiant hand winder for example uses the ‘Homer’ date movement, i.e. the 18xx series. The ‘Newmaster’ is the more common example of these, which was also used with a Jet movement – the Jet variants will always be the more desirable as well as the oldest. Other examples using the Jet automatics are the ‘555’ and the ‘777’ – if you know of any more please let us know.

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Citizen’s Automatic Chronographs (8100/8110) Instruction Booklet

April 6, 2023, 4:36 am
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When Citizen launched their line of automatic chronographs they produced a ‘new product digest’ about them in the form of an instruction booklet to inform their sales representatives. It gives detailed instructions on the use of the 8100 and 8110 models, as well as some technical information and lists of parts. Presumably this was published in 1972 when the chronographs first came to the market, and this example is in English.

Here’s the full document, in .pdf format:

Click to access citizenchronographbooklet-4.pdf

(I’ve added this to the reference page on Citizen’s vintage chronographs)

The cover illustration also gives us two examples of original bracelets, especially the rare one on the 8100:

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