Perhaps the quintessential vintage Casio, this one serves as a prime example that they don’t make ’em like they used to. The odd-looking late 70s style with the LCD placed low probably isn’t missed by many, but the forward-firing diaphragm speaker playing tunes out of a stainless steel case is vintage digital gold. The single-line display somewhat lacks utility, with a button press necessary to see the day and date, but that’s not enough to have prevented this from becoming my favourite vintage watch, capable of delighting small children at the press of a button.

The daily alarm has a different tune for each day of the week, the date alarm has a choice of two tunes (one of them the wedding march; doubtless this has prevented many forgotten anniversaries), Happy Birthday (licensed?) and Jingle Bells for Christmas. The date, birthday and Christmas alarms go off every hour. As you switch through the modes (five of them are for setting alarms, listed across the top, above the musical staff where their corresponding indicators are), there are rising note pairs, with the notes running all the way back down upon returning to the time, it’s just gorgeous. But one of the niftiest things about this module isn’t even about the alarms – the last mode is an old-school 1/10s stopwatch (which I really like, because finger-actuated hundredths is just a stupid concept), with a hidden twist – if you hit the adjust button it becomes a timer, with 1 second resolution! And not only that, but when the timer runs down, the stopwatch automatically starts! And! The stopwatch beeps every minute! Thoroughly unique and wonderfully useful.

This module was available in a number of models, but this was one of the nicest, with a stainless steel case with a (very tight) snap-on caseback. This particular example must have been owned by a welder, given the sad state of it, with pitting all over the glass, and a very tired bracelet with a broken folding clasp. I managed to crack the crystal, thanks to the pitting and the huge force required to snap the caseback on, and miracle of miracles, was able to find a NOS spare, so took the opportunity to freshen up the case. The bracelet links were painstakingly tweaked back into shape, and another folding clasp cannibalised to restore this one. The polariser adhesive had gone brown, making the display quite hard to read in low light, so that was replaced, unfortunately making a previously barely visible rainbow patch more prominent. The display is far easier to read now, although the light was still nearly useless, so that’s been replaced with a warm white LED (which, unboosted, conks out when there’s still about a quarter of the battery’s life left).

The price probably shouldn’t be more than $380, but I’m rather attached to this one – only someone sufficiently keen on this particular unit can take it off me 😉

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