Grand Seiko SBGM221: specifications and what to check

A travel watch with no water resistance to speak of

The two headline facts sit awkwardly together and a dealer has to reconcile them in writing before the watch ships.

It is a GMT — an independent 24-hour hand, a second time zone, a calendar that follows the local hour hand. Everything about the specification says this is meant to be taken somewhere.

And its water resistance is given as Splash Resistant, with a crocodile leather strap.

There is no bar figure on the page because there is no rating of that kind. Hand washing and rain; nothing else. Combined with a leather strap, that means a watch which should not go in a hotel pool, a shower, or a rainstorm heavy enough to soak the band.

Buyers reach for the opposite assumption because the word GMT sounds rugged. Put the limitation in the listing in plain language, and repeat it at handover.

Ivory is not white, and photographs badly

The dial is specified as ivory-coloured, finished with a lustrous, porcelain-like texture.

That texture is why it is difficult to describe honestly. Under warm indoor light it looks cream. Under daylight it looks closer to white. Under a phone camera's automatic white balance it can look faintly yellow, which is the exact appearance a buyer associates with a degraded dial.

Two practical steps. Look at it under both kinds of light yourself before you write a word about colour, so your description is not an artefact of your desk lamp. And photograph it with a fixed white balance and a neutral card in frame, so what arrives matches what was pictured.

A buyer who was told "ivory" and receives ivory is satisfied. A buyer who was told "white" is opening a return.

The second time zone is read off the dial

There is no rotating bezel on this reference. Grand Seiko puts an Arabic numeral GMT scale tracing the inner edge of the hour indexes, and the blue tempered GMT hand is deliberately made the same length as the hour hand so it reaches that inner ring.

That design has a direct inspection consequence: alignment is everything. The GMT hand must point squarely at its numerals, and it must not be so long or short that you have to guess which numeral it means. Set the second zone to a whole hour and look straight down at it. Any ambiguity is a fault, not a quirk.

Then exercise the calendar-linked time difference adjustment: jump the local hour hand forward past midnight, confirm the date advances, take it back past midnight, confirm it retreats — with the minute hand undisturbed throughout.

Case, back and strap

Grand Seiko describes the case as drawing on the first Grand Seiko of 1960, with lugs that slope and widen toward the tip. Published dimensions are 39.5 mm across, 13.7 mm thick, 46.9 mm lug to lug, 19 mm lug width, and 88 grams.

The back is see-through, held by six screws, so the 9S66 is visible: 35 jewels, and a rotor that will be covering part of the view. Check the screw heads for burring while you are looking.

The strap is a wear item. Look at the underside where it meets the case, which is where perspiration attacks first, and price a tired one into your offer rather than hoping the buyer will not mind.