Citizen Diamond Flake (Citizen Cal. 0700)…

Having already written about many vintage Seiko watches on the blog, it’s a watch from their compatriots this time, a Citizen Diamond Flake.

(Click pictures to enlarge)

Much like Seiko with their Goldfeather, Grand and King Seiko models, Citizen also had high-end models in their vintage line-up including the Jet and Diamond Flake series’ and the high-beat Leopard and Highness models.

First introduced in 1962 the Diamond Flake was Citizen’s entry into the competitive ultra-flat watch arena. As evidenced by the advertising at the time the cal. 0700 movement inside the Diamond Flake was the thinnest three hand calibre in the world. With a thickness of just 2.7mm it beat the current record holder, Seiko’s cal. 60M by 0.25mm.

Like Seiko’s Goldfeather (an example on the blog here), the resulting watch is a simple yet elegant affair. At just 7mm the watch is certainly thin and though it is only 37mm in diameter which is quite small by today’s standards, having a thin bezel and large dial it ‘wears larger’ and sits very comfortably on the wrist.

After the launch of the time-only Diamond Flake model, the series was expanded to include a model with a date, the Diamond Flake Date, and also later in the production run a slightly lower spec model called simply Flake. Though all the watches in this post are in stainless steel cases, gold plated models were also available.

(Picture:  Vintage Citizen Watches)

Opening the watch it’s obvious that this is of a higher quality than Citizen’s standard vintage fare as the movement is rhodium plated, has filled engraving and has 25 jewels which is a high jewel count for a time-only calibre (though the calibre was also available with an even higher 31 jewels.)

As you can see in the picture above the jewel count is boosted by all the train wheels being capped with the exception of the fourth wheel. On the dial side of the movement, the train jewels are capped too and there is also a jewel in the mainplate for the lower end of the mainspring barrel arbor, another sign of quality.

The movement was still in good order, needing no more than a routine service and as the watch has no lume or paint on the dial or hands, there was no cosmetic work needed at all this time. As you may have spotted in the first picture, the crystal was damaged so that needed to be replaced, so when the case had been given a thorough clean in the ultrasonic tank and light buff to restore the shine the watch could be rebuilt.

On a personal note, this blog post represents the 10 year anniversary of The Watch Spot blog. It’s been quite a journey in which I’ve covered a wide variety of vintage watches and I hope visitors have found it both useful and interesting.

I’d like to thank everyone for their on-going support and a special thanks to all the owners who have given me permission to write about their watches over the years.

Rich.

** Many thanks to Mathieu R. for letting me feature his watch on the blog. **