The Swiss told Seiko they couldn't call it a chronometer. Seiko's answer was to build an entirely new rating standard, stricter than COSC, tested in-house, and name it the Grand Seiko Standard. What the Swiss intended as a takedown became the founding act of one of the greatest watch lineups ever made. The 62GS was born out of spite and principle simultaneously, and in 1966, those two things pointed in exactly the same direction.
 
The 6245-9000 is the first of the 62GS references, produced in 1966 with the gold lion medallion on the caseback before the GS emblem took over on the 9001 that followed. The 6245 movement gives date only, no day wheel, and the dial stays clean and uninterrupted because of it. The stepped dial adds a depth that photographs have never fully communicated, an inner architecture that only reveals itself in changing light on the wrist, and the bezel-less case with Taro Tanaka's faceted lugs rewards the kind of slow, close attention that most watches simply do not survive. A single heavy polish collapses everything Tanaka built into those angles. The edges here are sharp and exactly as he left them.
 
And then there is everything else. New old stock, sticker still intact on the caseback, original box, original buckle, sixty years gone by, and nothing touched. Most 62GS that come to market tell you a story of use, of service, of hands that wore it and time that marked it. This one skipped all of that and arrived here exactly as it left Suwa in 1966. 
 
The 2015 reissue is a sincere tribute to all of this, and it is simply a different thing entirely.
 
Shipped from Tokyo, Japan