Vintage King Seiko 4502-7001 Silver Dial Hi-Beat Watch 1971 serviced UK Warranty

SPECIFICATION

Reference: King Seiko 4502-7001
Movement: Calibre 4502A, manual wind
Age: December 1971
Case Size: 36mm
Case Thickness: 10mm
Lug to Lug: 41mm
Lugs: 18mm
Condition: used Seiko watch
Box and Papers: No
Case Material: Stainless steel
Warranty: 12-Month mechanical warranty, UK only

POINTS TO MENTION

• In great preowned condition with light wear
• Case and bezel have some light scratches and marks
• Sunburst dial
• Fully serviced manually wound movement
• High Beat movement 36,000 BPH
• The gold medallion is in great condition
• KS sign crown
• Paired with an unworn stitched black leather strap

THE WATCH

When Daini Seikosha introduced its new King Seiko in the late 1960s, the ambitious part was not on the outside. Within the slender 45-series design was a hand-wound movement developed to beat ten times a second, at a time when Seiko's watchmakers were pushing mechanical precision hard. The 4502-7001 gives that restless engineering a remarkably disciplined home: angular shoulders, a quietly ordered face and a date window that sits exactly where it should. Nothing about its appearance needs to shout about the work that went into it.

A BIT OF TRIVIA

Daini's high-speed experiments produced a counterintuitive result. During work towards Swiss observatory competitions, its 36,000-beat movements performed better than more extreme 72,000-beat attempts. Simply doubling the speed was not the answer. The 45-series King Seiko came from the more interesting challenge: making high frequency work in a watch somebody could actually wear.

OUR THOUGHTS

There's a lot to appreciate in this 4502-7001 without needing to make a fuss about it. The silver dial is clean and well balanced, the case has those sharply drawn King Seiko lines, and the hand-wound 4502A is a genuinely interesting movement running at 36,000 vibrations an hour.

We enjoy the small ritual of winding a mechanical watch, but what matters most here is how well the engineering and design belong together. This is a King Seiko with real substance behind its restrained appearance.