What will you pay for a Meca-Quartz movement?

Around 30 bucks for the movement.

The rest depends on the watch around it.

400 wouldn't be unreasonable for a sapphire crystal, well made steel bracelet, well designed dial, well finished case and great long lasting lume.

The movement is only 1 component and there are values at many price points that use this movement type.

Have you replaced a meca-quartz movement? What all does this include?

Nope.

I buy my watches already made.

There are plenty of expensive three hand quartz watches above that top figure. Movement is only one consideration

I got mine for fifty quid second hand (ba dum yah) but I believe it’s usually 100-180 for the model I have.

One of my Pagani Design uses a Seiko mecha-quartz. It’s a Moonwatch homage, and it only cost me about a hundred bucks. It does everything I want at that price. I’d be fine with paying more if a difference could be shown to be of value.

That's actually a fun exercise that I was thinking about doing. Unlike a quartz chrono, you cannot adjust the zero of the chrono-seconds or the chrono-minutes. You would have to run the chrono, reset it, and and then install the chrono hands aligning them just right. And the regular watch hands need to be set on top of that.

(You also have to connect the battery + with the AC terminal in the rear to reset. Other than that the movement can be changed like any other movement.

I haven't done it myself yet, but I'm sure there is somebody around here who did.

First I've heard of it. Perhaps I'm a rube for being ignorant of this.

I bought my Dan Henry 1964 for ~$250. Vintage looking chronographs with mecaquartz. Get lots of compliments on the watch.

A VK63 3 register chrono with date meca-quartz movement sells for less than 30US$ on ebay. You can find this VK63 in a variety of watches from 100 to 400 US$.

There are a few problem with a meca-quartz. First, as @hbein2022 mentioned, being a mechanical module it's impossible to reset to zero the chrono hand if and when it will drift away.

The second issue is the 60 minutes limit of the mechanical chrono module. This is one of the reasons why Seiko insist on adding a useless 24hr complication to round its look because it can't have a 12 or 24 hour chrono counter and the module is too cheap to get a split second counter.

The third issue is that it's main advantage, meaning the relatively smooth 5 ticks/second of the chrono hand, already existed in quartz movements without the need of mechanical wizardry, my 7T62 powered Seiko SNA411 (the Flightmaster) has a similar 5 ticks/second smooth chrono hand with the benefit of not being saddled with the useless as f*ck 24Hr slaved hand.

If only they could turn that 24hr dial into a GMT function, it would be worth it.

That's exactly what the old quartz 7T62 movement has, so in principle it's not supposed to be too expensive or complex to add to a meca-quartz, why Seiko decided it was not worth it is probably due to their unhealthy fetish with the useless slaved 24Hr indicator to the point where on the VK64 it takes the place of the small seconds hand.

I find that mildly infuriating. They would sell so many more copies with the GMT.

Under $1k I’d probably stick with quartz (or meca-quartz) for a Chrono. Servicing would cost probably half of the price of the watch and probably not be the most reliable.

Meca-quartz is fabulous, but I'm not sure what the OP wants.

Do you mean a movement on it's own? Or as an additional price on top of a regular quartz watch?

If the former, the movements are way cheaper than all those prices.

People setting budgets for movements and whatnot is something that I struggle to understand.

It's not like the movements are the only difference between watches. Beyond that, cheap movements aren't much worse than more expensive ones. And expensive movements are often equal or better than ultra-expensive watch movements.

Also the movement rarely makes up a particularly huge chunk of the cost except for stuff like under 100€ watches with NH35s and such. If the money is taken from the movement, then it would presumably go to something else, whether it's unique design work, the quality of the watch or whatever else.

All of the in-house movement stuff also isn't better in any way beyond marketing or there just not existing a movement that would work otherwise for a specific watch.

Meca-quartz is pretty much the best kind of movement out there when it comes to purely analog watches. If you gave me a choice between a 10 000€ mechanical and meca-quartz, I would take the meca-quartz and it's not even close. On the other hand, you could give me an ana-digi movement like Casio has in some stuff and it's a whole other discussion.

Possibly up to $200 for a quality chronograph. However, if I were in the market for a chronograph - which I'm not - would probably only look at the Bulova lunar pilot. The insane 262khz quartz can roughly measure 100th of a second.

This was on sale for 160 usd, I got it with a giftcard. It's a pretty cool watch, kinda hard to read at a glance, but really fun to look at. If I had done a bit more research I would've gotten a slightly more expensive but more readable watch thats basically the same. So many cool watches for under 200.

If only it wasn't a Bulova watch.

They do have the smaller version now, but if the original one is a titan, the new one is still a giant. Not a wearable size unless you have a really big wrist.

If they were reasonably sized, I would buy one in a heartbeat as the movement looks cool and the design is really nice outside of the size.

My last VK63 build was $60.00 CDN

Now that build would be fun to see step by step here on watchcrunch, I know that I would enjoy that. Personal builds with an affordable movement like that of a Mecca-Quartz, now we’re talking😜

Can you imagine, the cost savings..🤔

The movement was sourced from Perrin and the dial hands and case from Aliexpress for around $30.00 CDN. The dial kinda snaps on and the hands were placed with sticky-tack. The whole thing is easy. The setting pin is measured with the crown on and cut with wire cutters to length in the in position. Latest ones are gas station cases with Swiss Ronda 505-24 GMT movements. Had to order special hands for them. Most all mods out there are for Seiko. You can find them already put together on Ali for between $70 to $90.00 CDN

As of today the average amount this poll records is $250 just above for a Meca-Quartz watch