The Vintage Watcher

Here’s a watch sold to the domestic Japanese market only that you don’t see too often for sale in the US.  Alba is a subsidiary brand of Seiko, where they seem to take a few more stylistic risks. Called the Alba Riki AAAA101 (thank Seiko’s naming system for that), it is a watch designed by a famous Japanese Industrial designer named Riki Watanabe. This watch owes a lot to its Bauhaus influence, with its uncluttered, clean modern look, and understated legibility. This is the stark black and white model, I prefer the brown and tan version myself.  However, I always admired this watch for its legibility and design sense, like the small hour hand that perfectly matches the inner circle, the longer minute hand that matches the outer circle, and the hour markers that just intrude into that circle.  I like the wideness of the hour hand as well, just enough for us to tell at a quick glance which hand is which.  The crystal protrudes a bit from the bezel, which picks up the hour markers and gives the illusion of extending them, as can be seen in the 6:00 area of the first photo. The movement is largely undecorated, which you might expect for a Japanese watch, but still nice to have an exhibition caseback anyway. I’m sure the in-house 21-jewel Japanese movement runs quite accurately as you would expect from Seiko. Looks like poor lume on this watch, only a minor quibble. The only reason I have not bought this watch is because the case width is just over 36mm, a bit small for my tastes. It can be ordered online new for over $200, so this one is a bargain at $150 from the watchuseek forum.