seamaster quartz question
Discussion
A quick question for all the watch experts on ph.
I have just offered a 2003 quartz seamaster with box & papers in very good condition for just under £1000. My question is it a risk to buy a quartz of that age and does the internals have a shelf life or is it a watch I could keep for life ? Or would I be better off buying a later one of the bay for a small amount more buying one of eBay or dealer?
Thanks for any help.
I have just offered a 2003 quartz seamaster with box & papers in very good condition for just under £1000. My question is it a risk to buy a quartz of that age and does the internals have a shelf life or is it a watch I could keep for life ? Or would I be better off buying a later one of the bay for a small amount more buying one of eBay or dealer?
Thanks for any help.
No reason at all for avoiding a quartz watch of that age. I'm currently wearing my father's Adina (with ETA quartz movement) that he bought new in 1977 in Australia. I've serviced it twice in that time and it's still good for a couple of seconds a month.
The mechanical side of quartz watches suffer far less wear than mechanical watches because they're subjected to much lower loads - in fact for about 99.9% of the time the train is under no load at all because they get moved by a roughly 1/1000th second pulse once a second and the rest of the time the train is unloaded.
The electronics tend to either fail early in their life or carry on until they're damaged by careless battery fitting, water ingress or a leaking battery. Apart from those 3 (user caused) faults, if they work for more than a year two from manufacture they'll just keep on working.
There's still a very small statistical chance of them spontaneously failing, but theres also a similar chance of a fully wound mainspring breaking at its centre and ripping teeth off the barrel and centre wheel on a mech. Statistically, neither are worth worrying about. There's a far greater chance of you dropping a mech and damaging the balance
The mechanical side of quartz watches suffer far less wear than mechanical watches because they're subjected to much lower loads - in fact for about 99.9% of the time the train is under no load at all because they get moved by a roughly 1/1000th second pulse once a second and the rest of the time the train is unloaded.
The electronics tend to either fail early in their life or carry on until they're damaged by careless battery fitting, water ingress or a leaking battery. Apart from those 3 (user caused) faults, if they work for more than a year two from manufacture they'll just keep on working.
There's still a very small statistical chance of them spontaneously failing, but theres also a similar chance of a fully wound mainspring breaking at its centre and ripping teeth off the barrel and centre wheel on a mech. Statistically, neither are worth worrying about. There's a far greater chance of you dropping a mech and damaging the balance
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