Out of the blue, my dealer sent me a short message that he got allocated one unit of the Grand Seiko Sports Collection Spring Drive Diver SBGA229G (let’s just called it SBGA229 for short). I have been looking at something similar for some time now. The original model I was interested in was the SBGA029. That model was first launched in the market in 2008.
The SBGA229 is essentially similar to the SBGA029. In 2017, Seiko decided to make Grand Seiko an independent brand. Hence, before 2017, the model was called the SBGA029 where the generic ‘Seiko’ tag was still prominent, sharing space with the ‘Grand Seiko’ tag on the dial. From 2017 onwards, only the tag ‘Grand Seiko’ is provided thus the change in reference to the SBGA229.
I quickly took delivery as I heard from the grapevine that Grand Seiko has stopped production for this particular model (can anyone confirm?).
The Series
For the longest time since the Grand Seiko brand was reintroduced back in 1998, the only dive watches under this brand were the SBGA029 and the SBGA031. The former is made out of stainless steel while the latter is made out of titanium. Only after the rebranding exercise in 2017, Grand Seiko decided to introduce a few other dive watches to expand the range. Even so, the original pair continued to be produced under new designations (replacing the digit ‘0’ with ‘2’). Major differences between the two models are the material (stainless steel versus titanium), weight (201 gm versus 137 gm) and price (RM24,300 versus RM27,900).
