Editorial: the Seiko SRPG17 Land Tortoise, Outliers, and Collection Coherence

Watch collectors who have been in the hobby for awhile know there’s a certain pleasure in looking in the watch box, or across the flat surfaces in your home where watches are scattered, whatever, and seeing a group of watches that make sense. If you believe a collection is a reflection of your personality and taste, it follows that the watches in the collection will be thematically linked in some way, and just kind of work together. Instead of a watch box that has exactly one watch from each key genre, you see a box of watches that defy easy categorization, but somehow are obviously the product of a core collecting philosophy. I don’t know if I’m quite there yet, but I’m getting closer. But there’s still one watch in my collection that’s a clear outlier, one that will never quite fit. It’s the runt of the litter, the redheaded step-child, and ugly duckling, all wrapped into one. My Seiko SRPG17 “Land Tortoise” just doesn’t belong. 

The Land Tortoise, so named because it shares a case shape with the much-loved “Seiko Turtle” divers but is equipped with a compass bezel rather than a typical dive timer, is an outlier even among Seiko sports watches. When we think sporty Seikos, proper dive watches are the ones that inevitably come to mind for most of us, but this is a dive watch in a costume. From the outset, it’s resisting its own nature, rejecting its heritage. It refuses to wear the uniform.

I like dive watches and own a few, but they don’t operate as centerpieces in the collection, and typically possess some distinguishing feature that tilts them just left of center somehow. My Seiko Monster is a personal favorite for the way it shrugs off the classic diver case lines, a profile that is shared by the Land Tortoise that I’ve never been all that fond of (I know, I know, this is blasphemy). My Tudor Black Bay is admittedly pedestrian, but exists in my collection as a reminder of the time period I entered the hobby in earnest, when vintage inspired designs were beginning to become prominent. Also, it has a red bezel, which in Tudor terms is downright rebellious. 

 

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The Land Tortoise, to me, feels like a watch that could have been designed by an artificial intelligence. “Make a Seiko diver without all the diver stuff” could be the prompt. Another way to put it might be to ask for a watch without the inherent charm of classic Seiko divers. There’s something kind of generic about the SRPG17. Black dial and bezel, gilt accents, familiar and oft repeated case. It feels a bit like an assembly of parts, and not so much a watch that was thought through as a design object. 

And yet, there it is. The Land Tortoise, in my watch box alongside indie and micro brand favorites, watches that I’ve chosen for very specific reasons or have come to mean something to me over time. The SPRG17 doesn’t mean anything to me. When I look at it next to my Arcanaut, or my James Lamb, or my Louis Erard, it feels out of place. It’s incoherent, and in a collection that I’ve become genuinely happy with, it should bother me. 

But, weirdly, it doesn’t. It’s a watch that I put on maybe twice a year. It’s a palate cleanser of sorts, and a very different experience than anything else in my collection. When I do choose to wear it, it’s on a NATO strap, another strange decision for me, and probably the only time I feel like I’m really pulling off the NATO strap “thing” that seems to come so easily for everyone else. And the watch itself is comfortable and easy on the wrist, a little thinner than a full fledged dive watch, and compact at a little under 40mm in diameter. 

Sometimes I think we can get too caught up in the idea I outlined at the top, of owning only watches that fit together nicely and tell a linear collecting story. The thing is, life isn’t linear. And while I want my watch collection to reflect the taste I’ve developed over time, it’s OK that it also reflects the bumpy road to get to that point. An outlier, a watch that breaks that collection coherence, is a reminder that mistakes are made, tastes can change, and the little diversions from the mean are where character is developed.