A Can Of Worms

First I went to the Salvation Army Thrift on my way home from a work meeting on Tuesday. I had spent the previous hour talking watches so I felt that if I stopped by the Sally Ann, something cool would manifest. It’s not a rational notion, but I felt it in my bones.

And lo and behold, I found this disco era mechanical Citizen awaiting me. For me, part of the thrill of the hunt for vintage watches is going home and researching them after purchase. I knew from the serial number that it was made in 1976. Using this info for Google fuel, I tracked down a Japanese catalogue listing its original price as ¥18,000.

It’s an interesting design — the watch is intergrated into a flexible steel strap with a rubber backing. There’s a tiny scratch on the acrylic crystal but otherwise it looks brand new—no cracks in the rubber and it still has a sticker on the case back.

The online catalog also contained these images of a line Citizen produced for Pierre Cardin. This was well after the Cardin/Jaeger LeCoultre Espace collaboration. So I fell into a deeper internet rabbit hole looking for an example. No dice.