Categories: Feel Good StuffGearWatch

Pandas!

That Seiko watch you see on the right, known informally as “The Panda” in watch collector circles, is perhaps the best watch I’ve ever owned. I bought it at the Kunsan AFB Base Exchange when I was a young Army dude in 1975 for the princely sum of $76, which was a bit of a stretch for me. Oh, I had the bucks. The Army didn’t pay us much, but we didn’t have expenses, either, so $76 was eminently doable. In fact, I bought Seiko stainless steel chronographs from the Base Exchange for my Dad and my grandfather, too. Their watches were only $67, but the Panda had the day and the date on the face, and three timing features: Seconds on the main watch face, minutes on the lower subdial, and hours on the upper subdial. It was a beautiful thing and it was all mechanical. I wore it for about 10 years, and then when Ebay started to get popular I auctioned it away. I was quite pleased with the results. The watch that originally set me back $76 went for just north of $200 on Ebay 30 years ago. Today, though, that same watch brings around $2000. I sold too soon. Go figure.

Anyway, being the watch junkie that I am, I was more than a little intrigued by a very similar watch now being offered by Breitling. It is also an all mechanical watch Breitling calls the “Premier.”

I’d call it a Panda, and I’d sure like to own one. But the Breitling MSRP is a lofty $8500. They are just over $6,000 on Amazon, but that’s still way above my pay grade.

In poking around on the Internet looking at the Breitlings, I learned that they offer several versions of their Premier. One is a model that pays tribute to the Norton motorcycle, which has different colors, old school numbers on the face, and a band that, frankly, looks cheap to me. The colors don’t really work for me, either, but maybe that’s because I want my Panda to look like a panda. If I wanted a Norton motorcycle, I’d buy a Norton.

Seiko is back on the Panda wagon, too, as is Citizen and perhaps others with modern versions of this classic watch design. Their prices are way more reasonable, too, being in the $200 to $300 range. But the new Seiko and Citizen Pandas are solar-powered quartz watches.

There’s nothing wrong with electric watches (in fact, their accuracy is astounding), but I’m a mechanical guy. I own a few solar watches and several battery-powered watches. I like them all. But there’s a certain cachet (a fancy word for cool) associated with a mechanical watch, even if you give up a little accuracy. I would like to wear that Breitling just to pretend I’m still a yuppie, but it’s not gonna happen.

Joe Berk