Orient Star is marking its 75th anniversary with a run of new watches, and two of them are worth singling out: a skeletonized hand-winder built around a meteor shower and a vintage-inspired dive watch pulled from the brand’s 1964 archive. The releases went out quietly back earlier this year, which is why this is landing later than the news cycle usually allows. It fits a pattern of notable anniversary watches TG has been tracking through the year, and this one deserved a closer look.
Price: USD 3,250 / EUR 3,240
Where to Buy: Orient
A brand built on in-house movements, not marketing
Orient Watch Company was founded in 1950, just after the end of World War II. A year later, it launched the Orient Star line specifically to build mechanical watches worthy of being called “shining stars.” The detail that matters for anyone comparing it to competitors: Orient Star manufactures its movements entirely in-house, at a tier where most rivals rely on modified ETA or Miyota calibres. That commitment to hand-assembly and finishing (perlage, Côtes de Genève-style striping, bevelled edges) is what the brand has built its enthusiast following on, and the 75th anniversary pieces lean into it hard.
M34 F8 Skeleton Hand Winding
The standout of the anniversary lineup is a fully skeletonized dress watch inspired by the Perseid meteor shower, usually visible in mid-July, and it’s actually the second meteorite-themed piece in the 75th anniversary run, following the M34 F8 Date Meteorite that Orient Star put out earlier in the year. The open-worked dial uses a black-and-grey gradation with a matte finish meant to evoke a night sky, set inside a black-plated stainless-steel case and matching bracelet.
Orient Star laser-etched the hand-wound calibre F8B65 with a crystalline pattern meant to evoke a meteorite’s structure, carried through to the exhibition caseback. The movement is hand-assembled at the Akita Watch Studio, one of Orient’s dedicated Japanese watchmaking facilities. The more interesting engineering sits in the escape wheel: it’s a silicon part made using MEMS (micro-electromechanical systems), a process Orient inherited from parent company Seiko Epson’s semiconductor manufacturing, and patented specifically to secure the wheel without screws or glue. The movement is rated for a 70-hour power reserve with accuracy of +15 to -5 seconds per day.
The sapphire caseback carries the same crystalline finish through to the back, and Orient Star went further by coloring the visible silicon escape wheel a Milky Way–blue and shaping the balance bridge with two tails modeled on a Perseid comet streak. The case is sized at 39mm and rated to 50 meters of water resistance. The run is limited to 430 pieces, priced at EUR 3,240 / USD 3,250.
M42 Diver 1964 1st Edition F6 Date 200m
The second piece is a vintage re-edition of Orient Star’s 1964 Olympia Calendar Diver, a watch worth a beat of context since the original launched a year before Seiko’s more celebrated 62MAS, making it one of the earliest Japanese dive watches rather than a footnote to Seiko’s diving legacy. This is also the reissue’s third outing: Orient Star first revived it in 2022 with a black dial (500 pieces), followed with a silver dial in 2023 (900 pieces), and now marks the 75th anniversary with a limited-edition blue-grey gradient dial described as pulling from “the night sky and deep sea,” limited to 700 pieces. It keeps several details from the original: the arrow-shaped hand, three-dimensionally cut indices, a stainless steel unidirectional rotating bezel, sharp-edged lugs, and no crown guard.
Modern updates bring it in line with current dive standards: a screw-down crown, screwed caseback, and 200-meter water resistance, with luminous coating on the hands and indices. A visible power reserve indicator sits at 12 o’clock, a feature rarely found on dive watches, adding a functional counterpoint to the Orient Star branding printed lower on the dial.
At 41mm, it’s powered by the in-house F6N47 calibre, offering a 50-hour power reserve and accuracy of +25 to -15 seconds per day. It pairs with a stainless-steel triple-fold deployant buckle that includes a security latch and diver’s extension. Pricing wasn’t disclosed at announcement and is expected to land closer to the watch’s dealer launch.
TG take
What makes this anniversary release notable isn’t the milestone itself. It’s that Orient Star used it to show off the two things it actually competes on: in-house movement production and finishing most brands at this price tier don’t attempt. The skeleton model is the flashier of the two, but the diver re-edition is the more interesting bet, since vintage dive re-issues are crowded territory and Orient Star is leaning on archive accuracy rather than just a new colorway to stand out.
Price: USD 3,250 / EUR 3,240
Where to Buy: Orient
Both are limited runs (430 and 700 pieces), so neither is positioned as a volume release. If pricing lands where Orient Star typically sits, these read more as enthusiast pieces than a mainstream push, worth watching once regional availability and pricing are confirmed.
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