The Citizen models like the one above had an ultra-stealthy look — just the single word “CITIZEN” on the dials. Aside from the detailed case polish there was no hint the watches were special. And they had plain casebacks. But these were high-flying birds, with the most accurate quartz movement in regular production beating in their chests.

Four years ago the simple design changed. The first generation was discontinued and a second brood hatched. It’s the current production model, and features flashier hands and hour markers with the word “Chronomaster” on the dial in cursive script. And the caseback is fanciful. Nested there is a raised-bird-logo with the letter “C” on its breast.

A vintage Citizen from the late 1960s is the ancestor of the second generation. One sold last week on Yahoo! Japan Auctions for about $500. It’s also called the “Chrono Master,” and had an almost identical bird logo on the caseback.

The vintage Citizen Chrono Master was in competition with ’60s-era Grand Seiko and its gold-lion-logo caseback. The decision in 2004 to use the word “Chronomaster” on the dial of current The Citizen watches, and to use the bird logo on the caseback, continues the rivalry.

The Citizen is a favorite of our friends over on the High-end Quartz Forum because of +/- 5 seconds per year thermo-compensated-movement accuracy and classical styling. The original Chrono Master mechanical movement watch is a rare bird, so after it flew the auction coop, GMT+9 captured pictures here to document the genealogy.

Download a The Citizen catalog for more.

Photos:

1. Watch-Tanaka

2. asaitokei/Citizen Japan

3 & 4. explorer1_1968

5. Citizen Japan

###

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 22nd, 2008 at 4:00 pm and is filed under Citizen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.