Bulova Sea King

I recently acquired a Bulova for a customer, this was a special momentum for them and I was extremely proud to be apart of that. The Bulova acquired was stamped with the Bulova Sea King logo (The Whale) and it got me thinking about these watches and doing some research and I wanted to share what I found.

The Bulova Sea King was introduced as a thin "water-resistant" line in 1959 and it continued into the 1970's. They came in all different styles of labeling on the dial, some will have the Whale, others will just say Sea King, or you can find them with both. I have read that the "rarest" version of this style is with the whale and automatic underneath as pictured above. But that wasn't confirmed and I cant say much to that being fairly new with this style line of Bulova. What I can tell you is that the whale just looks goofy and cool, I mean its a dress watch with just a random whale. That's just cool, you can't get any more unique than that. I love this watch, and its history.

During this time Bulova was in a fight against electric and quartz watch movements. Bulova took the strategy of producing extremely high quality in-house cal. 11 ANAC automatic work horses to compete. Today, these watches are examples of competitive innovation during an interesting and difficult time for the watch industry.

I also found out some information speculating to why Bulova chose a whale to put on their watches. According to the information, The whale logo seems to be a link or a tribute to the Whalers of Sag Harbor, which was the home of the Bulova watch case factory (at Sag Harbor). We only know this to be hearsay, but it seems plausible. The whale logo came out around 1966, which coincidentally marked the 100 year anniversary of a Whaling Festival of Sag Harbor which was where the Bulova factory was situated as well. This seems the most promising explanation which links the two together.

This piece is truly incredible, affordable, and full of history. I will be putting more of them on the shop in the future, and I highly recommend you pick one up.