Citizen age determination by case back code

One of the advantages of collecting vintage Citizen watches is the ease of dating. This is important for any collector. It's always nice to find a watch made in the same year you were born.

And you know what? With Citizen watches, it goes even further! You can even date them by month!

How does that work? Well... it's a combination of different clues:

First, we turn the watch over and look at the case back. There we usually find a lot of information about the case model, the watch model, the material, and—very important for dating—the serial number.

 This serial number usually consists of eight digits. These eight digits indicate the year and month.

The first digit indicates the year. The next two digits represent the month.

In the example below, the first digit is 6. So it can only be a year ending in 6, such as 1956, 1966, 1976, or 1986.

Dating a Citizen Watch 2. The "waterproof" marking indicates that the watch was manufactured after 1972/73, as the designation before that was "Parawater." This allows us to narrow down the date to 1976 or 1986. You can find out more about "Parawater" here: https://vintagecitizenwatches.com/2013/12/26/citizen-parawater-citizen-parashock/

After determining the serial number and possible year, we delve deeper into the matter. We examine the model and the movement.

Certain models and movements have a specific time period, making it easy to determine the exact year.

We know that this model was not produced until 1986, so it dates back to 1976.

The next two digits are 07, so the month is the seventh – July 5. By combining all the information, a vintage Citizen watch can be dated this way. The watch shown here was manufactured in July 1976.

Source: vintagecitizenwatch.com