Grand Seiko 9F Quartz Guide: 9F62, 9F85, 9F86 Specs, Prices, Buying | Ultimate Watch

We buy and sell Grand Seiko across the counter at 19 West 47th Street every week, and the 9F quartz is the one collectors talk themselves out of and then come back for. Grand Seiko launched Caliber 9F in 1993 as an exclusive in-house quartz movement, built and hand-assembled at the Shinshu Watch Studio in Shiojiri, Nagano. It runs at the standard 32,768 Hz quartz frequency but almost nothing else about it is standard. Rated accuracy is plus or minus 10 seconds per year on the regular production movements, tightened to plus or minus 5 seconds per year on the specially selected examples that wear a small five-pointed star on the dial. That is roughly ten to twenty times tighter than a normal quartz watch, which is spec'd at plus or minus 15 seconds per month. The 9F is the watch you hand to someone who thinks quartz is disposable. It is not disposable, it is a Grand Seiko movement that happens to be battery powered, and the finishing, the hands, and the dial execution are held to the same standard as the mechanical 9S and Spring Drive 9R lines. If you want a Grand Seiko that keeps near-atomic time, needs a battery roughly every three years, and asks nothing of you in between, this is the family. Bring one in and we will show you why the sweep of that seconds hand does not look like any quartz you have handled.