Any watch fanatics here? Wondering about a discontinued Citizen model I just bought

Factual Questions
1

I sort of splurged last night on a gift for myself. I’ve been needing a new watch for a long time, and yesterday found one that I thought was pretty attractive. It’s a Citizen chronograph that supposedly is semi-solar powered, called Citizen Aspec Eco-Drive Duo. The only thing I can find at all was a brief mention on Wikipedia: “In the rare and discontinued Eco-Drive Duo series, the solar power was supplemented by an automatic quartz power source.” But all of the current “eco-drive” watches I find online are under an imprint called “powermaster” or something like that; the only references to “Aspec” are on one or two Japanese language message boards.

Main reason I’m wondering, I guess, is it’s one of the biggest impulse buys I’ve had so far: around the equivalent of US$260, and that was supposedly 50% off. Also, I was idly wondering if a “rare and discontinued” solar watch would have any collector’s value.

Anybody ever hear of such a watch, or know of a place online where I can get more info?

Thanks,

Koxinga

2

Not sure, you’ll probably have more luck finding an answer at a message board devoted to watches. Timezone.com is a good one.

3

Do you have a model number?

4

Is it any of these?

That didn’t work properly. Type “Aspec” into the model number search box.

5

Mass produced watches (including Citizen) are rarely collector’s items, and the ones that are tend to be limited-edition commemoratives.

6

Strongly disagree here. Many mass produced watches are highly sought collector items. Older Seiko mechanical divers, Seiko tech watches, some Casio G-Shocks, certain LED watches, etc. etc. the list goes on and on. I’ve made a fair chunk of change over time picking up used mass produced (but interesting) watches from various sources putting in batteries and selling them to collectors.

Re the Citizens you reference, as far as the eco-drives go I haven’t really noticed a eco-drive fan club or a big collectors market for them but these things can develop over time. I own 4 eco-drives myself. The funny part is that I used to collect early Seiko kinetics 7+ years ago as I was convinced they would maintain value over time, but that all turned to crap when the capacitors in the “10 year minimum lifetime” early kinetic mechanisms started dying in 1-2 years. Almost all my Seiko kinetics are DOA at this point while my early eco-drives are clicking along.