Quartz1970-82

The Astron’s aftermath defined the seventies: quartz went from a hand-built curiosity priced like a small car to mass production, and the industry reorganised around Seiko’s lead, through LCD watches, chronographs and the first television watch.

Yet the era’s collecting icons are mostly mechanical: the 6105 worn in Apocalypse Now, the 6309 Turtle, the 6139 Pogue that flew on Skylab in 1973, and the titanium-shrouded Tuna of 1975 built for saturation divers. Mechanical production wound down through these years, which is exactly why the references that closed it matter.