A year after Citizen launched the ‘Crystal Seven’ line, several derivative models using the same base movement were also launched. These lesser known models didn’t all carry the ‘crystal’ badge, presumably because they lacked the hard mineral glass. I featured one of these a few weeks back – the ‘520’ – which has both date and day windows: https://sweep-hand.org/2012/03/20/this-weeks-featured-watch-27-the-520-auto-dater/, whilst other models did have the mineral glass but not the day window and were called the ‘Crystal Date’.
Citizen’s movement numbers often tell us whether day and / or date windows are present – the first ‘2’ in the number means that both date and day windows are featured, whilst ‘4’ means only a date window. So the ‘520’, using the 5203 movement has both windows, and the ‘540’ therefore has only the date, and uses the 5400 movement:
Unlike my 520 Auto Dater, this dial is quite plain. with no ‘7’ logo. A fluted bezel is typical of watches from the mid-1960’s. The 520 and 540 were both launched in 1965/6, and probably had only short production runs. My example is from July 1966:
Here’s the 5400, 17 jewel movement – with the swinging weight rotor that had replaced Citizen’s ‘jet’ rotor seen in their early 1960’s watches:
The movement number is stamped close to the balance wheel, as usual:
The crown has the older ‘C’ style signature – the ‘CTZ’ mark was to replace this at the end of the 1960s:
The advantages of the swinging weight rotor can be seen in the slimness of the case:
The ‘dauphine’ style hands are typical of the era:
Compared to the Crystal Seven models, the 540 and its 520 sibling are relatively unknown, but are interesting models using the same movement in a less expensive package – at the time the Crystal Sevens retailed from around JPY10,000, the 540 from about JPY7,000. You can see the movement ‘family tree’, and seek out the 520 and 540 models here: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/stephen.netherwood/52FamilyTree.v1Secure.pdf
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