King Seiko was created in 1961 as an in-house competitor to Grand Seiko, which debuted a year earlier.
Each brand operated in one of Seiko’s two factories, emulating the tight-knit horological rivalries of Switzerland — GS in the Suwa facility and KS in the Daini facility — and they pushed each other to produce some of the brand’s finest mechanical timepieces of the 1960s and 1970s.
As part of its 145th anniversary celebration, Seiko is honoring the prolific early years of King Seiko with the SJE121, a KS1969 adorned with a radial guilloché dial inspired by engraved pocket watches sold by the brand’s founder.
The KS1969 is a reproduction of the King Seiko 45KCM, one of the first watches to house Seiko’s caliber 45 Hi-Beat movement. It is distinguished by an elliptical steel case, similar to the 6306 “Turtle” diver, which it predates by nearly a decade.
The 45KCM has garnered a cult following for being a 5Hz watch that is both affordable and readily available on the vintage market — you can easily pick one up in good working order for under $1,000. Seiko capitalized on this by reviving the design in 2024 with the KS1969 collection.
Visually, it digs even deeper into the King Seiko catalog by using the feathered 12:00 index and spelled-out dial logo from the sub-brand’s initial releases. However, the major difference is that it doesn’t utilize a Hi-Beat movement. Instead, it runs on Seiko’s perfectly mediocre Caliber 6L35 movement, featuring a 4Hz beat rate and a 45-hour power reserve.
