Citizen's GS killer (on paper)

I got into collecting because I was looking for the perfect high-accuracy quartz watch. So now that it's arrived in the mail, am I ready to go back to being a normal person now? Let me explain...

No I didn't pay JPY 385,000 for this

Rationale

In the last few months I've started going to a lot more post-covid business events, and it made me a little more conscious about my appearance. Yes, the only thing you really need for success is a winning attitude, but I'm 40 years younger than my average customer and I have a bunch of weird physical tics, so anything that can close the gap is helpful. So I wanted the perfect watch to impress old guys in agriculture and the civil service, the two sectors I'm closest to.

...and that meant Japanese quartz. Farmers have plenty of subtle ways to signify that they're loaded, but they use machinery and property improvements for that. So Citizen is, by far, the most popular brand I see at farm events. Civil servants, meanwhile, should never be seen to be making money, and also tend to go for subtle flexes. Both of these tastes are fine by me - I'm not a lawyer. (It's always the lawyers at these things who have the Tudors, Omegas, and Rolexes.)

One of the paradoxes of status signaling is that, even though it's intentional behaviour, you need to look laid-back and nonchalant about it. That means pretending like you bought your expensive watch because of its world-beating specs or "good value". With my background in the physical sciences, I decided to step into the fascinating world of high-accuracy quartz, where - excitingly - the very highest end of the market is relatively attainable (the world's most accurate quartz calibers all cost less than a used car).

GS or Citizen?

The most famous Fancy Quartz brand is probably Grand Seiko and that was what caught my attention first. So I visited an AD and tried a bunch of them on. But I couldn't stop reading old forum posts, so it wasn't long before I discovered that Citizen has a nearly identical line of high-polish quartzes... but they're Japan-only. Hmm! (I even posted about it here.)

I don't think I can deliver a completely fair compare-and-contrast until I own one of each, but: GS is a more popular brand with more designs and better international service; Citizen is barely known in the "luxury" space but has the edge in accuracy and solar charging. Citizen also advertises a superior grade of hardened titanium, another plus for me (I prefer titanium over stainless). Yes, they both use the same zaratsu machines, which are not indigenous to Japan in any way.

What made the final difference? Honestly, it came down to aesthetics... knowing that I prefer a dressy look, I was looking for an interesting dial pattern combined with a little touch of gold. Grand Seiko does provide both of these things, but not in its entry level quartz range.

These are the three designs that I was considering, but none of them checked all the boxes, and if I'm paying over $1,000 then that's unacceptable

Citizen fills the gap with a unique series of paper dials - a translucent material perfect for solar charging. These look awesome, have an interesting engineering purpose, and come much cheaper than a GS Snowflake. The brand's biggest weakness is that I don't particularly like their chicken mark, and I think lume looks distracting on a zaratsu watch, which limited my choices to...

Arranged on a scale from boring to blingy. If you thought GS product names were uninspiring...

Process of elimination: I thought the gold-less model was too boring, and the gold-leaf dial was a bit too fancy for me (plus, it would arrive in Canada without a strap). With this, I was ready to start shopping.

Shopping for JDM Watches

Okay, fine. You've read this far into this post. You deserve to know my secret source of Japan-only watches. There's really nothing to it.

https://buyee.jp/yahoo/auction

Because of a strong U.S. dollar, Japanese sellers openly list watches for 20-25% more on our auction sites and you can get huge discounts by finding their Japanese-language domestic listings. This is not a joke, most of the listings I considered were cross-posted onto eBay, usually for something like an additional $500. If you're a comics nerd and have a basic proficiency with katakana (the simplest of the three Japanese alphabets), you will score on Buyee. I'm only giving this away because I already found a lightly used Alpinist for $470 and now I need to stop buying Japanese watches for the next few months.

If you want your own - Citizen has recently had a transition on whether this line is called the "Chronomaster", or just "The Citizen" (many Japanese companies are fascinated by our English definite article). The newer models are "The Citizen"-only, but I strongly prefer the cursive "Chronomaster" branding.

Of the two models I was looking at, I lost a couple auctions fair and square (I thought I was clever by adding 1,001 yen to my first sniper bid - until someone else came in with 2,002), before finally getting a little impatient and buying out a lightly used AQ4024-53Y for CAD $2,180 (USD $1,600).

For Sale, Luxury Watch, Used Twice

So, is it worth buying your first "luxury" watch used? My brief answer is yes, absolutely. I'm so satisfied with my Citizen that I would encourage every frugal GS buyer to go looking for similar sources.

First of all, watch collectors are insane. So the average "used" listing has been babied a hilarious amount. As with a new car becoming a used car, all of the value is lost in the first kilometer. Just eyeballing it, I would guess most of these things were worn maybe 10 times. A $1,000+ discount and you don't have to stress about being the first person to ruin all of those high-polish surfaces? Sign me up.

Mine was serviced under warranty because... from reading the listing, it was stored in a dark box, discharged fully, and the owner noticing no other issues decided to send it in for a service just because it was free. Of course, they found no problem with the damn thing. Glad it got that service, though, because the 10-year guarantee evaporates as soon as the watch leaves Japan.

Biggest piece of damage it arrived with: the first owner was clumsier than me at sizing the bracelet and left a tiny scar. Honestly, this is super affirming (I thought I was the only person who was bad at using a spring bar tool). Uh, I know it's barely visible in any photos but it feels bigger in real life.

In particular, zaratsu-finished Citizens and GSes tend to pick up hairline scratches very easily on the mirror-polished bezel. Many honest sellers take photos that focus on these scratches, and the resulting photos look terrible, even with very little wear. So I was really curious how much I would care in real life. The answer - they disappear unless you're actively trying to stage a photo with them. The complex reflections on the bezel in real life are much more noticeable than the tiny scratches are (which is presumably why these brands do something as silly as high-polish the part of the watch that's designed to pick up the most scratches).

It's also possible to spot some washi-paper Citizens where the paper looks noticeably patchy and inconsistent. In my experience, this is very dependent on light - there is one particular angle of artificial lighting that makes the paper look the most imperfect. But some listings look much worse than mine ever appears under any conditions, so I would avoid these.

Second Owner, First Impressions

My first thought? Well, my first thought was actually mild disappointment... I'm 6'3" but I still have a smaller wrist than the Toyota middle manager who used to own this thing. Damn. Resizing Citizen's titanium bracelet requires operating two screwdrivers simultaneously, so my thoughts for the next hour were mostly unprintable. Don't scratch it: I believe Citizen charges something like $500 for a replacement.

But my first thought after fitting it: ohh, this thing is sparkly. I thought it would be "understated"... maybe even "stealthy". The CITIZEN name certainly isn't the most evocative. But the polishing is attention-grabbing as hell. It looks like a cut gemstone. It's frankly distracting.

This is apparent in macro photos, but the logo and indices sit on top of an invisible protective layer, so they appear to be hovering just above the paper. Personally, I love the look - it's the perfect subtle piece of design flair that I want to see on my otherwise conservative three-hander. The depth effect looks gorgeous in all lighting.

I had a little panic attack when I thought I saw a jagged, rough surface on the edge of one of the hands. Nope... it was just reflecting the tiny leaves off the tree out my window. I had a second panic attack when it reflected the shadows on my venetian blinds. Don't worry, I have calmed down by now.

As for this level of gold finishing: it works! The bezel is so reflective that it... doesn't actually look very yellow. Since my biggest concern was that the gold plating might look way too blingy in real life, I'm very satisfied.

Specs and Feelings

Even if I had bought a complete lemon, this would be the part of the post where I convinced myself that it was a life-changing purchase. But yes, wearing a high-end quartz feels very special. Let me barf some features at you.

• Accuracy: Loses less than 5 seconds a year. Honestly, this makes me fidgety to think about. I've actually already set the correct time more than once because I don't like thinking that I won't touch the crown again until 2024.

• Jumping hour hand: I originally really wanted a Grand Seiko GMT, but the jumping hour matters way more to me than the actual GMT hand does. Really fun to operate and makes perfect sense on a watch where the second hand is always right.

• Eco-Drive: One day of regular wear and it's already charged to last 5 months. It will be difficult to buy a Grand Seiko after this!!!

• Perpetual calendar: Sadly I'll never get the joy of setting it myself. Probably for the best, I'm terrible at following instructions.

• Midnight date change: Exactly as advertised... it's kind of creepy. The date window is really deep because it sits under the solar panel - I like the look but it's definitely unusual.

• Crystal: Might as well be invisible.

The hairspring in a mechanical watch is just a special piece of metal that's made to oscillate exactly a few times per second. The quartz crystal inside this thing is... just a special piece of rock that's made to oscillate exactly a few million times per second. Maybe it's my physics education sucking all the wonder out of the universe, but if I had to pick one type of movement that feels "magical", it would certainly be this one. (I like my mechanical watches because they don't feel magical. As far as I'm concerned, this thing is powered by little demons.)

My only complaint is that... I won't need to set it for months, possibly a year? That's it? It even knows leap years?? It's a little uncanny. I'm a little worried that with no excuse to play with any of the settings, I'll somehow end up feeling malnourished. I keep checking the power reserve just to have an excuse to touch the damn thing.

Also, Citizen puts a display back on its newest ultra-precise Eco Drives and I think it's a hilarious flex - I wish mine had the same, but sadly it does not.

Overall

Well, buying any watch over $100 is unnecessary, so I really hesitate to call anything at this price point a "value proposition" but... for what you get, it's a real stunner. The finishing is just unbeatable and I think the fact that it glitters like a diamond ring will catch a lot of attention (as much as I planned this to be an undercover purchase that would be mistaken for its cheaper brethren). Out of all my purchases, this really is the one that I can't stop looking at. The fact that it's essentially a laboratory-grade instrument is just an extra thing to fixate on.

This was a windfall purchase, so it's quite possible that I never buy a watch this expensive ever again - but I think the Chronomaster really is a good pick to be the only expensive watch in a collection. (Of course I think that... I bought it.)

There's only one downside: in the post-apocalyptic world where the time antenna in Fort Collins has been toppled, the GPS system has been taken down by the Space Force, and spare batteries are worth their weight in Wasteland Premium Hyper-Gasoline... I still won't have an excuse for getting out of social engagements. Damn it!