Birth year 7a38-6020

[Piraus]

Always searching for a 7a38 from 1985 I founded this one that is also produced in my month so it would be quite romantic

https://www.vinted.it/items/7756807436-seiko-7a38-6020

But I am not enough expert to be understand if the price is fair, the watch has some scratch and also the seller told me he never serviced it (for sure since he owns it)

Thank you in advance for sharing your thoughts

[Seiko7A38]

Salvatore.

There is more to purchasing your first Seiko 7A38 than finding one having the right birth year / month serial number. That should be a secondary consideration. The stainless 7A38-6020 is a very different watch to the 7A38-701B 'Vulcan' that you were previously considering. It is a lot bigger for one thing. The seller on Vinted has incorrectly cited the size as being 30 - 38 mm. Wrong. This is the biggest Seiko 7A38 at 43 mm diameter. I suggest you take an hour or so to read through the 5 pages of the 7A38-6020 SAA041J model specific thread on the old archived forum.

Note the variation in condition of many of the examples shown. The good news, for you is that although quite rare, the 7A38-6020 seems to turn up in Italy more than elsewhere. My two best condition examples originated from Italy. As far as the example on Vinted goes, I would pass on it. Although the photographs don't help much, it doesn't appear to be a particularly good example, especially not for the asking price of €389.20 Euros. The (once red) dial printing has faded to off-white. The bezel markings have also faded badly; the bezel inlay is split through the triangle pip and if you look at the photo below, it appears to be delaminating.

7A38-6020-(Divers)-Stainless-BlackFace-Vinted-Jan2026-5.jpg (89.42 KiB) Viewed 4144 times

[Seiko7A38]

Here is my best condition example of the 7A38-6020 SAA041J. Although the bezel inlay numbers / markings have faded slightly, it's otherwise almost mint. I bought it from an Australian eBay seller in January 2022, although it originally came from Italy. If you read through that thread I linked above, you will see quite a few references to it on page 4.
It is serial number 510799. Sorry, it is not for sale, at any price.

rsz_p1800094-crop.jpg (244.4 KiB) Viewed 4141 times

This is my other one that came from eBay Italy in March 2020, that I refurbished with a NOS bezel, dial ring and dial.

rsz_p1790034-crop.jpg (244.87 KiB) Viewed 4138 times

That one also has a 51xxxx case-back serial number - 510833. Regrettably it is not for sale, either, before you ask.

[Piraus]

I understand your point. However, I’m not ready to start collecting them yet; for now, I just want to have one with my year and month of birth.

That’s also why, from an aesthetic point of view, I recognize that very different models can be equally interesting—this explains why I was looking at this one or the Vulcan.

So, considering everything, at this stage the year/month is the priority, followed by the model, its condition, and the price.

Another important aspect right now is that I would like to invest no more then 700€, (the curiosity around vulcan is more related to understand if it was genuine and there were also some watch produced later on) and this specific sell on Vinted could actually go for 260/270 (the seller is already available to reduce the request to 300, so he maybe can reduce a bit more) but the overall condition where not the best plus it's very hard for me understand if it is possible to replace some parts (like the bezel) and at which cost so maybe I will follow your suggestion and skip this and keep searching for 51xxxx.

With your knowledge of the market if you have some specific model to suggest to look after I would thank you, I immagine that there are some model less request from the market so that the price is quite lower ...

[Seiko7A38]

Then I'd suggest you keep looking for a better example of 7A38-6020 SAA041J with a 51xxxx serial number. Buy the best condition that you can afford, because you're unlikely to be able to find a NOS replacement bezel or dial nowadays.