Hello i found this near mint, 1971 Bulova ladies yesterday at a flea market..i don't think this watch was ever really worn...I bought it for a very nice price, $8 ,which if it wasn't a sea king i probably wouldn't have bought it.... The watch is running and running strong, three winds and it started right up.,today i moved it around it started ticking...after a good polish,crystal, and a service on the movement,it will put this little sea king(or should it be queen???) top shelf....the movt. is 6CLC 17 jewels...i am not sure about the band being original,since the band is made in Hong Kong.the crown is signed on this watch too..Where they making bands for these watches,in Asia???? maybe by the 70s they were...I didn't have time to check the ads,but if i find out before someone else does..i'll let you know.the back has no dents,just some glue from a price sticker..the watch will be for sale after i service it,if anyone wants one for their wife, or wants to a gents and ladies pair.....Anyway here are the pics...
Thank You Greg - an interesting forum post on the Bulova Whale: http://www.mybulova.com/node/4290
Then what makes a sea king a sea king????? also it seems that a watch can be a sea king,with another name.. http://www.mybulova.com/vintage-bulova-watch-ads ...the one ad has a watch that says Sea King on the dial, but then the name of the watch is a golden clipper...
In 1959, it was introduced the thinnest 17J waterproof watch Bulova ever made, and did not have the whale on it. That evolved in the mid 60's and had something to do about not advertising them as "waterproof", but rather "water resistant"
Here is a link to one of those discussions http://www.mybulova.com/node/2123
I refered to the balance complete because when I first mentioned it about 5 or 6 months ago you said maybe I could get some one to make me some for about 200 bucks and it seemed you thought my idea of a hair spring kit was funny. I didn't know if you knew about the "kit" of balance complete or not so I thought I'd mention it to you so maybe you could benifit from the information.
As far as I know if the dial says Sea King it is one. The ones with the whale only and no notation on the dial would be the waterproof and later water resistant watches. It is still a great find and definitely worth much more than the $8.00 you snagged it for. Nice pickup.
In reply to Both descriptions are by DarHin
Probably. We see those ads for La Petit specifically saying "precision" and I've yet to see one that I think is "original" w/o the six position adjustment on the movement. While it was almost smoke and mirrors in terms of accuracy, they were making the movements in USA now and could avoid import duties on earlier Swiss movements which has such verbiage (almost typed garbage, which may not be the wrong word, as I'm not sure these "unadjusted" watches, on a whole, kept time much different than the precision- in application, if not theory).