The Spy Who Loved Me is only a few minutes old before James Bond gets an important message via his stylish digital watch, hereby welcoming Seiko to the Bond franchise.
The first of the Seikos to adorn 007’s wrist was the 0674-5009, to be followed by the M354 (Moonraker), H357 (For Your Eyes Only), and G757 and T001 (Octopussy).
While it wasn’t the first non-analog watch to feature in a Bond film (that honour belonged to the Pulsar P2 in Live and Let Die) it heralded the arrival of LCD watches to the mainstream – earlier LCD watches had been prohibitively expensive and produced in small numbers – like Seiko’s 05LC and 06LC.
So to the 0674-5009 – in the movie, Roger Moore receives a ticker-tape message from the top of the watch ordering him back to London – unfortunately I wasn’t able to make mine do the same thing…perhaps it was out of tape?
The watch in the movie has quite a few marks and scratches – indicating it wasn’t fresh out of the box when they shot the scene, which was unusual for a product placement of such magnitude.
Mine (pictured above with the yellow background) was bought as part of a retiring watchmaker’s lot, which is where I seem to find most old digitals these days. Unlike many of these finds, where a new battery is all that is required to bring them back to life, this one needed a new LCD panel and I was fortunate to find a NOS one. So with a new panel and a bit of a polish it is ready to give another 33 years of faithful service.
Not to me, though – I sold this watch to a nice bloke in the US who had been looking for one for some time which enabled me to purchase one of my much sought-after watches, the Casio DB-1000.
This was the first nice watch I bought for myself. I was 18 years old at the time and I loved it.
My 4 year old son got a hold of it and smashed it, I was sad to have lost this watch.
Do you know where I can get one of these in good condition?.
They appear on eBay from time to time (today, April 2012, there are three) but command very high prices — USD950-1800 so you’d have to really have loved the watch to want to replace it. If it weren’t for the James Bond tie-in though, you could probably buy them for less than USD100.
My husband that was purchased in Port Headland Western Australia in early 1971. It was bought from a crew man on a bulk carrier that had come from Kobe.
It is in excellent condition on the case are 67 4 5000 and below it is marked 674516 do you know if some where produced to test the market ?
Pam.
Hi Pam, I’m not aware of any prototypes of this model. Send through a photo (front and back) and we’ll see if there’s anything unusual about it compared to the other 0674s of the era.