[medinfoto]

Found a neat looking Ricoh in a second hand store today. It has a cal 680 movement that I have never seen before, featuring a "second clear" function where you can depress a button to sync it up with another time source (when it hits 0 you push it and then the second hand waits X seconds to start running again so it's in sync). Supposed to have 7 or 9 jewels and seems pretty well built. However little information about it appears to exist, so I wonder if anyone here might be familiar with them.

 

[GeneralPatton]

I have experience of a Ricoh 580 and the 680 appears to just be an updated version that appeared around 1981.

Bought it as a neglected spares/repairs watch and it had loads of movement issues... The donor I found (same movement was used by Rotary) was equally bad! Eventually managed to combine the two movements in one working watch.

Really frustrating but learned a lot in the process and the end result looks great. No complaints about the case but let down by fragile movements.

If it's cheap and working go for it. If it's got faults you might have a long wait for a donor.

A technical PDF is here:

http://www.awci.com/wp-content/uploads/watch-tech-guides/ricoh/Ricoh-680.pdf

 

[medinfoto]

Thanks for the info! I did buy it for 50 SEK (4 GBP / 7 USD) and it seems to work perfectly fine. Was trying to figure out what it might be worth but was unable to find any other 680 based watches on the 'net...

 

[GeneralPatton]

Although Ricoh quartz watches are rare (automatics are very common) they're not popular or valuable. The Ricoh tuna divers (which I believe are 580/680 based) are worth a lot but only a few have been seen in the wild.