Category: Other watches

This watch is really rare — Googling it will return a couple of results at best, from old eBay auctions. It’s based on (and the module is 100% identical) to the Citizen 9560, which is a bit more common, but not much. These modules are notorious for having either cracked LCDs or damaged-beyond-repair circuitboards. In…

One of Citizen’s most popular watches in their Ana-Digi series (which still endures today) is The Robot — the 8943. It shares the same circuitboard as the Citizen 8946 and several others in the 89** range, and pretty much covers all the bases for functionality. First up, the time is available via the large analog…

I’ve only seen one photo of this watch, in about 20 years of collecting — on the pocketcalculatorshow.com website. Sanyo made/rebadged a lot of calculator watches in the 1980s, the most common being world-time, telephone directory, and basic calculator versions. One of my favourite calculator watches, the variation of the Nelsonic Grand Prix, Sanyo V,…

Omni made lots of great watches in the 1980s, and this is one of their rarer models, a great-looking digital hands watch. Timex has one with an identical module but while there are other similar watches, these are the only two in this configuration I’ve seen. I’m a  great fan of digital hands LCDs; they…

This cool-looking analog/digital watch dates from somewhere in the mid 1980s and is the epitome of a tribute watch. First the case – it’s a direct copy (in fact it’s so close it might be from the same factory) as a Citizen D060. Functionality and looks-wise, though, it’s a definite tribute (some might say rip-off)…

A Hong Kong module, which looks to be a copy of a similar Swiss design, could be found in a number of digital watches in the 1980s and early 1990s — mostly as promotional/branding watches and have become quite collectable because of it. The module itself, LCA164, has pretty much just one function. An analog…

Sanyo is a name more associated with television and audio products, but for a time in the 1980s Sanyo also made a reasonable number of watches. They had their own radio watch (which can still be found, used but in reasonable condition on eBay these days — mostly because it used an oval battery which…

You wouldn’t believe that a small, innocuous LED watch could bring a company like Sinclair Research Ltd to its knees — but that’s exactly what happened in 1976 after a catalogue of problems with the Black Watch resulted in many of them being returned and replacements having to be sent out for no financial return.…

Nothing screams the 1980s (or maybe 1990s) like Kentucky Fried Chicken; before having the word ‘Fried’ in your name became a bad idea. Not that KFC hasn’t stopped frying chicken, it’s just that now no one can tell that they do. Probably. There was a conspiracy theory that suggested they changed the name, not for…

Melody watches are cool – and Beatles melody watches are even cooler. But this, the Omni Rock Around The Clock Beatles melody watch is the best of the lot. Mostly because of all the front-button Beatles melody watches you are ever likely to find, pretty much all of them will have Hey Jude and Yesterday…

This is an old watch — details are a bit sketchy about exactly how old (there isn’t a lot of information around) but guesses place it around 1976. It was Citizen’s first LCD watch with an alarm, and the extra technology required meant the case is quite thick. It’s not overly heavy though and feels…

All digital watches are cool — no doubt about that. But the ones that you can find in a museum, they are next-level cool! Like this one — the Texas Instruments Starburst watch — the first analogue watch without moving parts, introduced in 1978. You read that right — 1978 — years before Casio’s QW103…

Texas Instruments was a major player in the late 1970s and into the 1980s when it came to producing great digital watches — take a look at the ad at the bottom of the page from this time period: This watch is called, according to the manual, Texas Instruments Quartz Analog Chronograph and on the…

Zeon was, and still is, a UK-based watch importer and distributor who, interestingly, also owns the Ingersoll brand. In the 1980s they were closely tied to licensed brands like Nintendo, James Bond (Eon Productions), DC Comics, Thunderbirds and more. Most (all?) of their watches were manufactured in Hong Kong and included game watches, melody watches,…