Citizen moved into quartz technology in a big way in the early 1970s, and their early quartz models are high quality pieces, designed to be serviced, and used for many years. They are collectable things as a result and a few in particular have extra features that make them a little more desirable. And today’s piece is one of them – with the 8600A movement inside it is a ‘blinker’ – a small LED lamp at 12 o’clock flashes every 60 seconds. Rather like the Cosmotron Special, the button at 8 o’clock enables accurate time synchronisation and with a +/- 10 seconds accuracy per month this was of course far more accurate than any mechanical piece at that time. As well as the nice applied CQ logo, my example is marked ‘QUARTZ’, so it’s an early one, since from around October 1974 they were marked ‘Crystron’. It was produced in August of that year, and is running very well, including the LED flashing every minute: