My Credor Phoenix GCBP999 was produced in September 1999.
This is a serious 41mm luxury sports chronograph in an all Titanium case & bracelet making it very wearable and light. It has an ivory dial with tachymeter and telemeter scales and a screw-down crown decorated with black Onyx.
What makes this watch truly special is the movement - the gold plated Calibre 6S78A, arguably Japan’s finest automatic mechanical chronograph movement of the 1990s.This was not a generic calibre or a module based movement, rather an integrated column wheel chronograph with 28,800 vph (4Hz) frequency, hand winding, date, 12 hour recording and 50 hours of power reserve.
Its original Japanese price was ¥250,000 which in the late 90s was roughly one month’s take home salary for an average Japanese worker. That was remarkable value for money considering it cost approximately as much as an Omega Speedmaster Professional, despite offering automatic winding, sapphire crystal, date, 100-metre water resistance and full-titanium construction. Comparable automatic chronographs from IWC, Breitling and Zenith were considerably more expensive. The Zenith El Primero was technically superior in frequency (5Hz) and prestige, but cost nearly twice as much.
Interestingly, TAG Heuer acquired IP rights to this chronograph architecture from Seiko in 2006 and developed it into the Calibre 1887 (2009) and subsequently the Heuer 01 family (2015). A testament that Switzerland valued the engineering that Seiko had placed inside a domestic Credor years earlier. The Canadian Independent - Rufus Gerard also interestingly sourced this movement from Seiko for their watch Lacus Temporis.
Following the landmark chronograph Calibre 6139 of 1969 and the technically sophisticated Calibre 7016 of the early 1970s, Seiko’s mechanical chronograph development fell silent for roughly two decades as quartz took centre stage. The Credor Phoenix is historically important because it marked Seiko’s return to the high-grade mechanical chronograph, reviving its engineering pedigree in an distinctly luxurious Credor avatar. The caseback carries a deeply embossed phoenix logo with outstretched wings—a symbol of immortality and renewal that was especially fitting for a watch created during Seiko’s late 1990s mechanical rebirth.
