Vintage quartz watches.

Why collectors are turning to vintage quartz

For years quartz was dismissed by collectors, which is exactly why it is now one of the smartest corners of the market. The engineering in an early Seiko or Citizen quartz movement was cutting edge in its day, and the design language of 1980s and 1990s quartz watches, thin cases, integrated bracelets, bold dials, is back in fashion.

Practicality seals the argument. A vintage quartz watch keeps near-perfect time, needs no winding, and costs a fraction of its mechanical equivalent to maintain. For a first vintage watch, or an everyday piece that happens to be forty years old, quartz is hard to beat.

Buying vintage quartz with confidence

The main things to check on a vintage quartz watch are the movement's condition and whether the battery has ever leaked. We inspect every piece for both before listing, fit fresh batteries where needed, and test timekeeping over several days. What you see photographed is exactly the watch you receive.

A short history of the quartz revolution

On Christmas Day 1969, Seiko released the Astron, the first quartz wristwatch, and the industry changed permanently. Within a decade quartz had gone from a luxury costing as much as a small car to the movement inside almost every watch sold, and the Swiss industry it disrupted lost two thirds of its workforce before reinventing itself.

That history is why early quartz is collectable and why 1980s quartz is so good: the survivors of the crisis, Swiss and Japanese alike, were competing ferociously on quality and design. The thin cases, integrated bracelets and confident dials of that era were the product of an industry fighting for its life, and it shows.

The quartz pieces collectors chase

Early Seiko and Citizen quartz from the 1970s carries genuine historical weight. Designer quartz from the 1980s and 1990s, Gucci's dress pieces, Raymond Weil's slim tanks, Tissot's two-tone classics, is climbing as the era's style returns. Both pass through this collection regularly. The battery-free branches of the family have collections of their own: Seiko Kinetic, which charges a cell from the motion of your wrist, and solar and Eco-Drive, which charges one from light.