🚨 NWA: Seiko SKX025 🚨

I came across this watch locally on Facebook marketplace at a very reasonable price, and decided to go take a look at it. I have a hard time passing up stuff like this, even if it's not the watch I'm looking for at the moment. When I met up with the seller, I saw that it was in a lot worse shape than her picture led me to believe (She has a lot to learn from some of you WC photographers! 😂). I decided to take a chance and purchase it anyway.

It definitely needs a deep cleaning, to start. The threads on the crown tube were pretty gunked up, so the crown doesn't screw all the way down. I'm hoping it's not stripped. The bezel doesn't budge, but I didn't try to force it yet. I figured I would take the watch apart, and then start to work on it. One of the end links is a little out of whack, and I can see that the spring bar is bent. No big deal, because I would replace those anyway. The crystal has a few minor scratches, but nothing I couldn't live with for now. The pepsi bezel insert has normal wear. The lume looks fine, and I was surprised to find that the watch was still running this morning, and keeping time. I figured a movement swap was inevitable, but I may have gotten lucky. 🤞

She included a black, plastic, puck-style "Seiko Sports" case, which I'm not sure came with the watch originally. Inside were a few spare links to a different bracelet, and a tag for a Kinetic AGS. No worries, because the bracelet is plenty big enough. The clasp also closes nicely, which I wouldn't have guessed considering the way the rest of this watch looked.

My best guess is that this is from September of 2004. I don't think these were still in production in 2014, but if someone knows better, please correct me. She said it was her husband's watch, but there was a bit of a language barrier, so that's all I could get out of her.

You probably won't see this one again for a while, until I get a chance to clean it up, possibly source new gaskets, and hopefully get everything functioning and looking good. I'm excited about it, because it really wears nicely on my 7 inch wrist. From everything I read, they call this the 37 mm diver, but I actually measured it a bit bigger, and it looks perfect. The slimness of it (due to the 10 bar rating, I guess) compared to my Islander 007 clone is a nice change.

If anyone has any advice or tips before I start dismantling this thing, it would be much appreciated. Thanks for looking!