How to spot a Fake Vintage Seiko Watch?

How to spot a Fake Vintage Seiko Watch?

ooking at a vintage seiko watch (online) right now, but not sure if it is an authenthic Seiko watch, or a fake / replica Seiko?


Nice to meet you, I'm Robin! I've been collecting (Vintage) Seiko Watches since 2015, and I estimate I must have purchased and sold well over a thousand Seiko watches now. Of all those purchases, 99% of them were purchased from collectors, marketplaces, auctions, from all over the world. I've also worked for Europe's Biggest Auction House for over 3 years.

I started documenting every watch I purchase & sell in a Notion Database in 2023, and the counter is already on 402 unique watches.

I like helping other collectors too, sharing the fun is part of the hobby, an with every research you learn more that you can use the next time. So it's became a bit of a hobby too, to check potential seiko-purchases for befriended collectors.

I'll share with you some must have bookmarks and, a list of red flags to look out for, a step-to-step checklist to reference old catalogs, some guidelines and this ended up becoming sort-of a buying-watches guide online in general ;-)

After reading this article, you'll be able to tell with much more confidence and certainty if your Seiko Watch is real or not, let me know!

There's 4 types of "Fake" Seiko Watches;

Fakes, Replica Watches, Bogus, Not Authenthic, Redials, Mumbai Specials.. In my opinion you could categorize fake Seiko watches in 4 categories.

1. Cheap-knock offs. China didn't even try. This one should be the easiest to spot. Cheap, 30 euro fake watches from China, normally attempting a modern or even Grand Seiko. You can literally google the watch and tell in 2 seconds it's fake. Example: This beautiful SARB033 from Wish.

 

2. "Mumbai Specials" - These can be a bit trickier, when you read "Mumbai Special" this often refers to Seiko Watches that has been altered/redialed/changed and are sold from mainly India. Very often they use genuine scrap/spare Seiko parts, like the case or caseback, or sometimes the movement, but everything else is done. This is mainly done with Seiko 5 watches, because of the sheer millions that have been produced and the thousands of models. Watch out with any 6119, 7009 or 6309 Seiko.

They foten don't even try to imitate a specific model, they're more fantasy builds based on Seiko parts, so they can sell it as Seiko on eBay.

You should be able to catch these, if you follow my Easy Red Flags! We have a great green Fantasy "Worldwide" Seiko Here:

3. Seiko "Mods" - This is the newest category, and it didn't even exist really when I started collecting, but now you can't search for Seiko watches online without being thrown to dead with "Seiko" Mods. Basically, these are replica watches of popular models, like the Patek Philippe Nautilus or Rolex Datejust, Submariner, etcetera.

But instead of putting "Rolex" or "Patek Philippe" on the dial (and thus easily seen as fake) they put the Seiko Logo on the dial. 

I embrace modding Seiko watches. It's one of the reasons, many collectors love Seiko Divers, it's a real niche in watchmaking and some aftermarket part producers have been able to produce fantastisch parts, things oppertunity.

I think that it's awesome. It's how many collectors grow into watchmaking.

But ordering fake watches made by replica factory that has not a single Seiko part in them it in, but does read Seiko, is just as bad as purchasing/selling replica watches in my opinion. No Excuses.

Example: Seiko Nautilus "Mod"

4. The real "fakes" - often intentional, sometimes not.

This is where it gets really hard. This is mainly on popular watches that are being "faked" - or rather, they swap, alter, modification, change a watch with the goal of;

- Change it to a more desirable variant (i.e.; putting in a yellow dial in a 6139, and calling it captain pogue) that sells for more.

- Replace detoriated parts by aftermarket parts, re-paint the dial, re-lume the hands or indexes, re-polish or swap the case, with the intend of selling it like it is in genuine, great condition.

Great examples are once again the 6139, or a 7002-7000 Diver watch, which is near impossible to find unmolested today.

Remark: We will not be able to cover the last category in full. There is complete studies done, written and documented on specific models or series, that you can use for research if you're in the market for those.

My aim is to learn how to spot the majority of the not-genuine Seiko's, so you can stop wasting time and scroll further to interesting, genuine vintage Seikos :)

9 Red Flags & Rules to catch 80% of the Fake Seiko's & Scams.

I can nowadays pick out most fake seiko watches in a few second based on the first picture of the listing.

This is because many of the fake seiko watches are really poorly done and they don't seem to be correcting these mistakes. It's much scarier to compare high-end Replica's to Genuine Products oftenwise, than to catch modern-fake Seiko's. Vintage on the other hand is a mine field, but there's a few things that you can ALWAYS check and keep in your mind:

1. Bright colour Dial, Hands or Inserts.

Yes, I know tiffany blue is a popular color, but there is no vintage seiko ever produced in tiffany blue...

Now, Seiko in the 70s was known for its colourful and well-designed dials, but if it is a bright, matte, flat colour, it is most likely fake.

Purple, Yellow, Bright Red, Tiffany Blue, Banana Yellow. Scroll on straight away!

1. No/Wrong 8 Digit Caliber-Dial Code on 6 o clock

Can you find a caliber code - dial code on the bottom of the dial? (under, or next to 6 o clock).

Every Seiko has this at 6 o clock. Very often to fake a Seiko, someone takes a genuine seiko case and/or caseback and puts in their own dial. These dials normally don't contain the code, or something generic like "JAPAN MADE" 

This is an easy red flag to look out for. No code? Scroll on.

2. Hands too short, too long or scratching the dial

Hands are relatively easy to replace, and sometimes hard to spot at first glance on the looks. I don't start with the look, but normally at the specifications of the hands. 

- The minute hands should touch the minute markers, if they are there. Is the minute hand super short, or touching the corners of the dial almost? There you go.

- Same goes for too short. This is hard to describe but trust me, the length of the hands should be in balance with the size of the dial.

If they are short, it makes it hard to read the time from or be aethestically pleasing, and therefor most likely replaced.

- Last and least, if the hands touch each other, or even touch the dial and leave scratches, this is often a bad sign.

Now, it could mean that the hands are genuine, but perhaps the watch dropped and the hands need to be relaligned, but generally speaking it is bad business either way, and enough for me to click away.

4. The watch looks brand new, RARE, NOS, MINT, UNWORN

Now, there is always a chance you are finding the diamond in the rough and you came across a genuine 6105-7001 sold by someone who doesn't know what it is, but 90% of the time, if a watch looks NEW, it is STUFFED with aftermarket parts.

Same goes for hype title-advertisement like RARE, NOS, MINT or UNWORN. They are 99% of the time wrong. Apparently it works, otherwise they would stop doing it.

So be smart, don't click that "NOS RARE DIAL WORKS PERFECT SEIKO"

5. Divers: No recessed bezel pip and/or Green Lume

Divers are a niche on it's own and there's great buying guides on 6309 Turtle's and 7002 Divers. In general I check two things:

- Is the lume pip recessed, and slightly inwards, or is it either FLAT or even OUTGOING. The last two options are always aftermarket parts. Normally, bad news, stay away.

Left: Genuine 7002-7000 Courtesy to Fratello, you can see the recessed lume pip

Right: Modded/Aftermarket Insert. Flat lume pip, same level as the insert. There's more wrong with that watch, btw ;-)

- Lume detoriates over time, and ages depending on sunlight, humidity, usage, etcetera. Especially with the old lume. If it ages naturally, it will slightly discolor, break - but evenly.

Left: Original 70023-700J, great example: you can see the lume has cracked a little bit and has evenly "faded" in color to a grey-brown-ish lume color

Right: Aftermarket dial, flat, straight white/green.



It can age nicely and slow, or hard and ugly, but if you are spotting green lume like it came out of a store yesterday, stay away, it's an aftermarket dial or someone butchered the dial and/or hands.

6. ANY 7002-7000 Diver or 6139 Chronograph is suspicious!!!

- Ok, this one is tricky, but these watches are so often altered, adjusted, faked and modded that you will most likely fail ultimately trying to figure this one out. If you are relatively new to collecting (seiko) watches, just stay away from these models because they are a mine field.

I've done quick test to back this up: I've searched for "Seiko 7002" on Vinted, an European Marketplace for second hand goods.. There is 47 listings that pop up when searching "Seiko 7002". This contained:

  • Mods, Contains (mostly AM parts) or simply Mumbai Specials: 28
  • Knockoffs: 1
  • Genuine models: 7 (3 of them being a less-sought after 7002, not a 7002-7000 diver)
  • Not even a 7002 in general; 11

Interesting side note: Even after filtering on "highest price first", the first 8 watches are not one of the genuine ones. This brings me to another red flag ;-)

Note 2; I still apply this rule today on any rare/expensive watch. All older Seiko Divers, Chronographs, Special/Limited Editions, Military or made-to-order references require one of three things in my opinion:

  • Knowing the watch/model/series and being able to evaluate its authenticity yourself
  • Buying the seller (by reputation, or asking questions)
  • Knowing where, or who to ask to do the evaluation for you. The internet is a nice place.

Golden tip:
SCWF, Seiko Passion on Facebook and r/Seiko or even r/Watches are GREAT places to get 2nd opinions, and also a great place to learn.

You can't google everything, so much specific knowledge still exists with certain collectors, you just need to get out there and have them share this knowledge with you :)

7. Price 

This one does come with a bit of experience and knowledge - in general with buying on the internet - reading the situation/seller and I often just follow my "gut" but very often, price does say alot about intentions. A very low price "too good to be true" or a high price "cashing in on a super rare ultra nos condition never worn" are often red flags enough.

8. Unsharp pictures, "From inheritance" or vague descriptions are NOT an opportunity to find a diamond, it's the fastest way to get burned.

Yes, I've found some real gems for absolutely no money because pictures were bad, descriptions were terrible, people had no clue what exactly they were selling and so on.

But this is where in general, as a newer collector, you need to buy the seller!!! The more details and information, the better.

Collectors often research(ed) their own watches, and describe parts that might have been replaced, are aftermarket, or mention where they got it/why they are selling, or how the movement is running.

Enthousiasts write their watch description/listings like they would like to buy it themselfs.

  • Extensive description? Good sign.
  • Short description, almost no info, no picture of the caseback? Bad sign.
  • "Collectors know what its worth" descriptions. Come on, you know better.

9. 90% of "Watch Lots" are fake or a setup

Practically the same as with Red Flag 8, skip the watch lots with an assortment of watches thrown in a box, or advertised on a pile and vaguely photographed.

It's 2024, people know how google works, they do google what it's worth first. In general, the times that you find vintage gems in a Goodwill, Pawn shop or Marketplace are over.

It's also a common practise to get rid of your spare/repaires and trash watches. They put in one or two "nicer" brands, casually make sure they are very visible on the pictures making it look promising, and the rest is vague, nobrand, defunct watches.

Same rules apply here; yes, people do post "watch lots" and you can find gems and unicorns there, but you need to know exactly what you are buying for this to be a succesful strategy.

In general, even today, I tend to stay away from Watch Lots. My rule of thumb is that I need to be able to make my money back out of one watch that is in there, or if there is multiple watches that are interesting as they are shown, so for parts (bracelets, movement, crystals, etc) for me to put a bid out on a watch lot.

Writers Note; I don't have any issue with job lots. I do sell job lots too, which consist of a bunch of watches I don't have time for, are too expensive to fix or just not worth it. As long as it is properly described as that, these can be great opportunities to pick up some Seiko's that you can restore and get great deals out of, or flip for some profit, but in general you're gonna be losing.

So, now that we've established some ground rules. Let's dive in:

Vintage Seiko Catalogs

Seiko made an enormous amount of watches, variations and models and i'ts impossible to know them all. I still discover new models every week. You don't have to know every model out of your head, but it is import that you know where to find correct, proper information that you can look it up.

If you don't have Vintage Watch Hunter and Plus9Time bookmarked yet, go do it right now. Together they have posted PDF files of all vintage Seiko Catalogues. In Those Catalogs, you can find the seiko releases from that specific year, release in Japan, and there's some export catalogs too.

Later in this article, I'll get further in depth of how to age / determinate the approximate production year of a watch, because ofcourse you need to know through which catalogs you need to go.

How to use Vintage Seiko Catalogues in your advance and check any Seiko this way.

The Vintage Seiko Catalog's offer us invaluable information on all JDM models. This is important, because most of them are the catalogs for watches released in Japan. It does NOT mean that if a watch is not in the catalog, it is 100% fake. There were many overseas, export and other models. We'll get to that later, too.

We are able to figure out;

  • How it was released by Seiko (Leather strap, Bracelet, what dial color)
  • What the caliber of the watch was
  • What the case code and dial code of the watch are
  • What the correct bracelet code is
  • What the original price, series it was released under, and other specifications of the model in question like the case material, or water resistance.

Let's say that you came across a sale post for this datejust-looking Seiko Chronos:



Below we can find the corresponding catalog image, Seiko WJP010 in the 1985 Catalog.

  • In blue you can find the model reference: WJP010. Next to it, you can find the original MSRP (Most Suggest Retail Price)
  • Straight under the model reference is the material reference. Again, Plus9Time has a list with all material case codes, and what they stand for. Normally either the material reference, or just fully written out the material, is to be found on the caseback of the wach (see green arrow)

At the bottom there is 4 codes that are important, and you can reference these with the watch that you are looking at.

  • 7433 - The caliber code. This is the movement in side of the watch. You can also find this digit as the first 4 digits on the caseback of the watch, where the red arrow is pointing.
  • 701 - The first digit after the ( is the case code. You can also find this digit as the last 4 digits on the caseback of the watch, where the blue arrow goes.
  • 702 - the last digit after the - is the dial reference. You can find these at 6 o clock on the dial of the watch, as the last part of this digit (the first part is the caliber code, again). This is where the yellow arrow is pointing.
  • The digit in the rectangle is the bracelet reference. Depending on the bracelet, but normally this can be found either at the legs of the end link or on the last end link itself on both sides of the bracelet. This is where the pink arrow is pointing at.

Now that we've deteriminated that all the data on the actual watch matches with the vintage seiko catalog, this doesn't mean it is absolutely perfect. The hands, or crown could have been swapped. The crystal replaced. The movement switched even!

But we have now established that it has the dial and caseback that match the configuration that you were looking up.

In most cases, even without ever having seen a seiko model before, but if all these things match up and you can visually compare the vintage seiko advertisement versus the actual watch advertisement, this is a very safe way of assumping the watch is correct.

But... How do I know what year catalog to check, and there's 100's of models per catalog!

Yes, and this is where knowledge comes in. This mainly comes down to placing the watch that you are researching in the correct time period.

If you have acces to a picture of the caseback, this sets you up for 80% succes. You can read my article on how to decode the serial number on the caseback and how to age it that way here or use this simple Seiko Age Calculator from RetroSeiko.

In around 80% of the cases, the decoder will tell you the exact year. Sometimes it gives you two potential years, or even a wide possibility of years with common caliber that had had a long production run.

Then we have to look at other signs and marks to place the watch in a certain decade.

I normally start with the movement itself! Sometimes the calculator doesn't know exactly. Another must have bookmark is Mizeni Seiko Movement List which has pratically any caliber, it's approximate production start time, sometimes end time, and normally also the brands or series the caliber came in.

Let's take the 7433 as example again, if we look that up with Mizeni we see production started in the 80s, so that could only make our Seiko Chronos from 1983.



This narrows down our search alot! You can now use the serial number on the watch. I would start with the 1993 catalog.

If it's not there, check the next year. Sometimes watches produced in 1993 only appeared in the 1994 catalog. For some years there is a V1 and V2 catalog. This could mean a watch was only released in the second half, and therefor does appear in V2 but not in V1.

Another trick I use is to check if there is a factory stamp to be found on either the dial or caseback of the Seiko watch.

Read my article about the Suwa and Dainy Factory here. We just have to look for either the Suwa Swirl or Daini Lightning Bolt.

Up until around 1990 every watch containes one of these symbols. This is an very easy way of telling if a Seiko is pre-90s or younger.

Even without getting very specific, just with the bookmarks and checklist above I'm certain you will be able to pick out the easiest fakes.

Redial or not?

One of the hardest parts of a determining if a seiko watch is genuine, is mostly the dial. Even when the dial code match that of the catalog, there is often various variations of a specific dial, someone could have tampered with the lume, switched the hands, painted the dial, or repainted text on the dial. 

I find it hard to write out on paper how to tackle that. Personally, this is something that builds up.
By now I've had so many Seiko's in hand that often I'm able to tell if certain hand-styles, bracelets, markings are time-correct for a watch or not, purely based on previous Seiko watches from the same year, the same serie, or even that exact model perhaps.

Internet is your friend. Try finding proper, reliable sources when looking up a reference. Watch Dealers, Forums and Blogs are normally good, because they have a) reputation to withhold b) collectors will call it out on a forum if it's n good.

Just googling a reference can sometimes be more confusing then helping, because you have absolutely no knowledge if what you see there, is correct.

Assessing lume

I find assesing lume the hardest of them all. Especially when buying vintage, preferably you don't want incorrect hands that were later replaced, or even relumed. 

On the other hands, a proper relume on hands that are detoriated too much can make it so that it can be worn again, but does loose some of it's originality value.

This is partly a preference and collector's will never stop not being in agreement on that topic.

As a rule of thumb, Seiko started using Lumibrite in 1994 (Basically, just before the SKX007 was released). Every lume previous is promethium, tritium or even radium, and all these lume-types do detoriate over time.

Note; Sometimes the type of lume is marked with a abbreviated stamp like 'R' or 'RAD' for Radium.

How Lume discolor and fades, depends on loads of factors. Temperature, exposure to sunlight, humidity, etcetera.

Another good practise is to compare the detoriation of lume on the hands v.s. indexes. There's many examples where the colour ends up not being the same, but the "level" should be somewhat similair.

Untouched hands and wabi-sabi brown index means tampered.

Besides the colour, it could also be a good tricky to flash that UV-light and see if the "glow" that it gives differentiates. I've caught replaced hands that way before that visually I wasn't able to spot.

Does my watch have the correct variant dial?

Assessing a dial, and in particular, of a specific dial-variation is the correct one for a watch is a hard topic, because not always this is an exact knowledge. In general, collectors agree on the vague production periode a dial or case switched, and you should match the variation with the build year of the caseback. 

This gets complicated quickly if you start in calculating the fact replacement parts exist, that Seiko kept and used in repairs, 

Some variations are more expensive then others, and also over the years, bad-condition dials have been swapped out for good-condition *other variant* dials very often. Visually it might not matter to you, but it does matter in terms of the value of the watch.

Yes, looking at you, 6139 Sports, proof, resist, Speedtimer 6139-Variants.

 There's always exceptions - Build your own knowledge, and find those that also have knowledge!

Story Time! Everybody knows that Seiko '5' stands for the 5 essential features of the Seiko 5; automatic, day-date, 3 o clock, water resistance, solid case/strap.

That means that any quartz seiko is an easy red flag. Me 5 years ago was thinking that that means every quartz seiko is fake.

Until two collectors seperately showed me a Quartz Seiko 5 with Caliber 8123 like this example sold by The WristWatcher, and other examples could be found online after research.

I've never been found out how that exactly happend, what the story is and why they exist but purely by observing, and knowing other collectors (and value their opinion) I know for a fact these are genuine Seiko models, albeit a bit of an unicorn.

Collecting watches is not like mathematics. Seiko made country-specific watches. Seiko produced watches for companies. They made limited-runs. Stuff was lost in history, translation, by language barrier, or are simply not very well documented.

But isn't that part of why we love watch collecting, and in particular, the hunt for that next watch gem, diamond, purchase?

Other Valuable Seiko Bookmarks

— Robin Wijsman
Tagged: authenthicate seiko genuine seiko how to spot a fake seiko how to spot a replica seiko how to tell that my seiko is real is my seiko real
Older articles Back to Seiko Information