coated citizen

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Citizen Custom V2 automatic 21 jewels Blackie


How could Citizen not focus on younger customers? Of course they did! So… around 1970 the company introduced to the public the V2 line of watches. Most of them were black coated and some were even made in a wooden case. The design was fresh and fun.

citizen v2 automatic vintage 21 jewels blackie

This one is not black coated but dark olive green coated. In fact I think it looks better this way because of the golden accents it has: the crown, the hands and the dial itself with golden hour markers. It has a simple design, with barely visible crown when looked at. The day-date window situated at 3 o clock somehow breaks the perfect symmetry.

The case, as well as the entire bracelet, is made of aluminum alloy that is very light and it is dark green coated for a better protection. In fact Citizen claimed that is is even harder to scratch than steel to suit the young life stile of their target customers. You can read about this HERE.

The movement is an automatic (cal. 8200A), with 21 jewels. It can be manually winded too. It displays the time as well as the date and the day of the week. Setting the time is done in the third position of the crown, winding it in the first and setting the date and the day in the second. Turning the crown one direction will set the date while the other way will change the day. Easy enough.

Simple, cool looking watch that suits the purpose: tell time in a fun, fresh way.

Read about another V2 Watch that I like a lot HERE.

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Citizen Blackie – coated watches


Citizen was always innovative and was never afraid of trying new technologies. So, in 1970 they started experimenting black coating their watches. They also coated their watches in a similar dark color, something more like a dark olive green. The reason for coating their watches was the same reason manufacturers are doing it today: it looks really good. They also tried to find ways to protect the case and bracelet material underneath. Most of these coated watches were made of a very light alloy, that is not really scratch resistant so the coating comes as a great addition.

In order for the public to buy them, with great confidence, Citizen promoted this “harder than steel” surface with some samples, where you can get a treated case and a scraping instrument attached to it. You were kindly advice to try it yourself. Scratch it!

The label reds: “New BLAKIE. Try testing hardness by scraping with a coin.”

blackie Citizen vintage watches

So, beautiful and resistant.

As a side note (after seeing a lot of used Citizen coated watches I can tell you that only the NOS and mint ones have really passed the test of time and most of the used ones are losing their coating on the lugs or sharp edges).

Here are a few of my NOS coated watches, black and dark green, side by side, and in the smaller picture is a part of Mikko’s collection. Thank you Mikko! Awesome collection, like always your contribution is greatly appreciated! citizen blackie vintage citizen watches coated

Thank you Citizen for giving us the chance to experience this material too. I love it!

UPDATE:  January 2021

In the comments bellow I received the following info: “The black watches are actually an aluminium alloy with a hard anode oxidized layer caller hardermite. As such it is not a coating, but a surface treatment. The light alloy was marketed as having 1/3 the weight of stainless steel, and the hardermite layer as having twice the surface hardness of stainless steel.

I don’t have any information on the green watches though.

I objected to the term coating, but they in fact do call anodizing a coating. Anyway, I just wanted to share some details about the blackie “coating” since I did the research.” – Thank you so much, it is important to know.

Read about one of the very first Blackies HERE.