SOLD SOLD SOLD: $750 insured/shipped. Payment methods: Venmo, Zelle, and PayPal G/S ONLY must add 3.5% no exceptions. No trades, please.

For sale here is a white dial Grand Seiko SBGF017 in very good neo-vintage condition. I believe the watch dates from 2009. It will come with the original warranty paperwork, a service booklet, and a Grand Seiko warranty holder. No original box. It will ship in an aftermarket box with a pillow.

Watch was recently serviced but I'm not 100% sure what was done based on the service being performed by a previous owner in Japan. Paperwork is included and photoed. JUST had the battery replaced for a fresh 5-years of battery life.

I took the photos in full lighting to show all the wear marks that pop out under this lighting. In natural light on the wrist, the watch looks very clean.

38mm diameter, lug to lug 44mm. Male end links protrude slightly more than the offered measurement.
Slim (9.5mm), beautifully machined and polished case
Weighs around 115g.
Sporty but elegant design with the crown guards in place.
Textured white/eggshell dial
Solid end links
Links have screws
Very comfortable bracelet with articulated links and a wisely designed clasp
200 Water resistance
Superb visibility and lumed hands and indices
Sapphire crystal with AR on the inside, almost makes the crystal disappear viewing under most angles
Independent hour hand for easily adjusting for time zones / daylight saving without hacking the seconds hand

The movement is the now discontinued 8j56 movement - considered within Seiko to be one of the best quartz movements ever made (apparently more robust and accurate than the 9f but more expensive to produce).

There is an excellent summary of the movement and watch in this thread: https://www.watchuseek.com/threads/grand-seiko-sbgf021-showcase.2991514/

Well then, the discontinued 8J movement, produced from 1997 to 2011 (as far as I can establish), is considered within Seiko to be one of the best quartz movements, much better than the well-known 9F and much more stable and accurate. It was expensive to produce and parts of the design made it hard to fit into thinner cases. The more cost-effective 9F movement on the other hand is less stable, not so resistant to temperature and magnetic fields, and costs about 30 percent less to produce than the 8J. But, importantly, it is thinner and uses more common parts, therefore the frame can be used for several other movements and watches.
However, the 8J is, without a doubt, the most robust high accuracy quartz movement ever made. Even the fact that it had to be thicker works to its advantage resulting in even better thermocompensation performance.
The information coming from internal specs from Seiko in Japanese, on the 8J and 9F movements, is universal, saying the 8J was the last "cost be damned" very robust movement they did. The internal feeling is the 9F is less robust, less accurate, less shielded, and, yes, some of them scoff at the lack of an independent hour hand with which one easily adjusts to other time zones on the 8J.
The very high accuracy +- 5-second twin quartz movements that went before were extremely expensive to produce and were not robust in field use. Their biggest problem was they tended to get fried if worn in hot baths or shower rooms - a real issue here in Japan where the harried salaryman has his watch with him in the after-work Sauna to benchmark the last train. The 8J was the answer to those concerns.

The Grand Seiko SBGF021 harks back to design characteristics of the seventies, for one the shape of the case. It is very reminiscent of Seiko's crazy days, especially in how the crown side is designed. It is just like some King Seiko Vanacs, but more distinguished. Also, the three-dimensional effect of those watches is present here, caused by applying the indexes, the SEIKO, and the GS logo to a stunning effect. The hands are of course baton style, and even the second hand is the pencil of old. What I like about that is the match of these design elements, the hands are at their center about as thick as the hour indices, and where the minute hand meets up with the indices it overlaps just the raised part of it. Just great! The second hand is the same width as the minute indices. The most disturbing and distracting aspect of "modern" Grand Seikos is a mismatch of the aforementioned design choices.

Ok then, no critique? Well, one other defining feature of the SBGF021, the wide brushed bezel, may be more susceptible to scratches and scuffs than for instance the narrower, highly polished one on the SBGX061. But then again I notice the capped seconds hand, which adds to the luster that many of its 9F family members simply do not have.

Brand: Grand Seiko
Case: All original
Calibre: 8J56-8020
Make: Japan
Model/reference: SBGF017
Diameter: 38mm by 44mm.
Caseback: Screw-down style ( threaded )
Water resistance: 200m
Crystal: Good
Bezel: signs of wear as pictured
Dial: black patterned, numbered 8J56-8030R4
Complication: date.
Hands: Silver hands with lume, independently adjustable hour hand, "a timezone feature", capped seconds hand.
Indices: silver with lume
Crown: embossed with the GS symbol, screw down. The first position is for operating the detachable hour hand, which is also used for a non-standard way to quick-set the date. The second position is used to hack the movement and set the correct time.
Date: operational
Accuracy: +/- 10 seconds per year, running within original specs.
Battery: Seiko SR1120SW
Battery life: (years) 5
Bracelet: original SS
Bracelet width: 19mm with a greater taper down to the clasp than modern SBGX-type variant bracelets.
Clasp: pushbutton release

Comes complete with dual boxes and paperwork. The bracelet is sized to fit a wrist of approximately 7". The watch has 6 links plus one half-link on the 12 o'clock side of the watch, and has 4 links plus one half-link on the 6 o'clock side. No additional links are included.