Grand Seiko And Seiko Will Not Participate In Baselworld 2020

HODINKEE has just learned that Grand Seiko, and Seiko, will not be participating in the 2020 edition of the Baselworld trade show. Seiko has been a participant at Baselworld for several decades, and the departure of the two brands – which, of course also includes Prospex, Presage, and all the other Seiko families of watches – comes at a transition time for the trade show, which like many such shows is working to redefine itself in a rapidly changing media landscape. Fake Watches

The original source for this information was the publication Chronos Japan.

Asked about the departure, Seiko and Grand Seiko have communicated to HODINKEE that the primary reason for the departure is the alteration in the timing of the show. The two brands currently have not shared with us, whether a return in 2021 is a possibility. While Seiko has not yet announced any alternative plans for 2020, Grand Seiko has confirmed that it will hold a separate Grand Seiko summit, in March of 2020.

The second answer is that like any other sort of watch, dive watches say something about us. A dive watch projects, replica rolex watches in its broad-shouldered rejection of the unnecessary, the same trustworthy, here-to-get-work done vibe as rolled up sleeves, a loosened tie, and a (navy blue) jacket thrown over the back of a conference room chair with a devil-may-care disregard of wrinkles. It says that you're a person who, though you might spend the majority of the day warming a desk chair with your posterior, could outside the workplace be a person of physical bravery, if not outright daring, who just might need a watch that will tolerate, say, jumping off the side of the Staten Island Ferry on a muggy August afternoon to save a loved one's errant poodle (it could happen). A thinner, more understated (less overstated?) watch may speak to your sense of sober discretion, or your refinement of taste but these are probably secondary considerations in the minds of most dive watch lovers, who all things being equal would rather be thought of as the James Bonds of this world, than the Thomas Crowns (if you are unfamiliar with the latter film, Steve McQueen wears, at various times, a Patek Philippe pocket watch in gold, a gold Memovox, and a Cartier Tank).
But the third and perhaps most important answer, I think, is that dive watches say something to us. The dive watch, as HODINKEE's most eminent dive watch expert, veteran diver Jason Heaton, reminded us in his Citizen Aqualand story, "Birth Of A Legend, End Of An Era," has been obsolete for decades, from a functional perspective. (He also has mentioned that on at least one occasion he's had a dive computer fail during a dive and was grateful to have a dive watch as a backup, but the general point remains). However in a time when mechanical watches are manifestly something no one needs, and which have for many years often striven for novelty effects in order to get attention, the purity and simplicity of dive watches is more appealing than ever.

A dive watch, in its most classic iterations, doesn't particularly feel designed at all, so much as made simply and purely to suit a particular purpose and that purity of intent has long outlasted the intent's actual relevance, in either diving or everyday life. In short, dive watches feel authentic – they project an air of necessity which other categories of timepieces simply fail to match, on many levels. In a world full of timepieces whose designs seem more or less arbitrary, or at best present in order to appeal to highly subjective vagaries of taste, the dive watch, we feel, looks the way it looks for a reason. This solid grounding in reality that the best dive watches have, this absence of arbitrariness and subjectivity in their basic features, is I think the most substantial reason for their enduring appeal.