Quartz Time

As most of you may know, I indulge myself with this harmless collection of sensible watches. When it comes to "sensible" (of course) there are few watchmakers that seriously compare with Japanese ones. My oldest mechanical Seikos are nearly 50 years old now and still keep quite remarkable time ... for mechanical watches.

These are two watches from the modern "SGG" quartz movement series. The gold tone one on the right is a couple of years old now but the matching white faced one on the left arrived only yesterday morning from Singapore.

While valuable, chronometer certified, mechanical watches must be accurate to within 5 seconds a day, most quartzes (however cheap) are generally rated to within 15 seconds per month, although many are actually FAR better than that. Curiously the white/silver watch was set from the atomic clock website just yesterday but I honestly can't remember when I last reset the gold one. 

Mind you, these watches aren't at all expensive. I can't afford "expensive". I just think modern day garden variety quartz movements can be a marvel.