I don’t know if it’s a 100% marketing trick or they were actually considered practical at the time. The first product of Mitsubishi ‘Pentimer’ line released in 1980 priced at 30k yen(was later lowered to 24k), with no other functions except showing time. Its secondary flagship, simply replaced golden with silvery, however, the price dropped to 12k yen.
But since then, probably due to technological iterations, their pricing has basically dropped to around 6k yen, and some added alarm clock or hourly chime(with beeping or several melody)
Is there any clue? Platinum released ‘Writing Watch’ in '80, Pilot released ‘Quartz Pen’ in '82. Their clock part doesn’t looks identical, as for the supplier of this part, I don’t know
edit later: Pilot released Digital Quartz Pen at the end of 1979, priced at 20k/18k
Pentel had several in the ¥10K+ range in that time period, culminating in 1992 with the AYP301 Aya.
PXE105 ¥10K Silver Plated
PXN105 ¥10K Silver Plated
PXE155 ¥15K Silver Plated w/ Gold Trim
PXE205 ¥20K Gold Plated
PXN205 ¥20K Gold Plated
AYP301 ¥30K Intertwined Gold and Silver thread
I don’t have any of these, but I do have the accompanying pen to the AYP301, which I am calling the AYB301.
Look at the lower portion of the barrels on both—etching/processing is identical. Platinum didn’t do this on any other Pencil, but Pilot certainly did.
Hence, I think Pilot—or else a mutual white-label manufacturer like Ohirra—was responsible for these pieces.
Just for referance, I haven’t seen one related offical catalog, this is from a 3rd party magazine
(Don’t take the price mentioned here seriously, sometimes it’s just a dealer price)
These magazines shown here were mainly published around '80 to '85. They’re quite cheap and not hard to find on the market today, but I won’t expect them to be of much research value, they are more of entertaining readings. Next time when I buy pens from Japan, maybe I’ll take some.
Looks like I’m once again visiting one of those landing pages from the now-defunct Leadholdercom website: wherever I look, I find pencils I want — or didn’t know/had forgotten existed.
