Seiko King Quartz from 1976 in excellent condition. It features a textured dial inspired by traditional Japanese tatami mats, one of the coolest dials when it comes to vintage Seiko.
Both the hammered-finish case and the original AR-coated crystal remain in excellent shape. The bracelet is light and loose-fitting and can be easily adjusted to fit most wrist sizes. The day display can be displayed in Japanese Kanji and English.
The watch has been inspected by a watchmaker and fitted with a new battery and battery hatch gasket (October 2025).
Details In the sweltering heat of Daini Seikosha's Tokyo workshops during the summer of 1974, engineers worked over circuit boards no larger than a postage stamp. They pursued the quartz dream Seiko ignited four years earlier with the Astron, the world's first quartz wristwatch. This was not about raw power but precision on a budget. The result was the Caliber 0853, a high-grade analog quartz movement for the King Quartz line, Seiko's upscale tribute to the mechanical past in a quartz future.
The 0853 was a feat of miniaturization: a 32.768 kHz tuning-fork resonator, the heartbeat of quartz accuracy, vibrated to divide time into 10 beats per second, surpassing the 5 beats of Seiko's earlier Cal. 39 series. Integrated circuits, etched with micrometer precision, controlled the stepping motor driving the analog hands, while a date-and-day wheel advanced at midnight. Powered by a single silver-oxide battery (SR44), it offered monthly accuracy of plus or minus 10 seconds, modest today but revolutionary for an affordable luxury watch, outpacing many Swiss automatics reliant on balance wheels and escapements.
By 1975, the 0853 powered the first King Quartz models. The 0853B variant appeared by late 1976 with minor tweaks for smoother operation. It remained a workhorse in watches priced up to a million yen until the King Quartz line ended in 1985, overtaken by twin-quartz models boasting 20 seconds per year.
