Back when Douglas Adams was poking fun at us, Casio, Citizen and Seiko were crushing it. Innovative and beautiful designs in steel and glass proliferated, before the industry settled into a more humdrum cookie-cutter state a couple of decades or so later, in which very little remains of the original charm. In a half-hearted nod to old-school cool, Casio for one has its boring Vintage line, largely consisting of inferior re-issues of some of its less interesting models, abandoning fans of legit bangers to go digging through the used market, while Seiko does the occasional really interesting watch for a price that feels like a punch in the guts.

Presented here is a small selection of some of that nerd catnip, mostly liberated from the insular Japanese domestic market. Your intrepid watch-herder has sifted the far reaches of inscrutable eastern ‘junk’ listings, sourced rare spare parts and performed painstaking repairs, overhauls and modifications, to breathe new life into many of these wonderful artifacts of a time before everything came second to shareholder dividends. Wearing one of these delightful old gadgets is not only disproportionately satisfying, but represents a defiance of entropy, and an invitation towards those in the know to share our love of retro tech and passionate Japanese engineering.

Beyond merely a vintage digital watch emporium, this site serves as a repository of enthusiasm for this interest. Although boasting a smaller collection than comparable sites, the aims include providing comprehensive information on each model in the collection, sharing techniques and ideas for restoration and modification, and even to offer a place for those who share this hobby to collaborate, perhaps even ultimately pooling resources in order to have some rare parts remanufactured, such as bleeder LCDs… watch this space.