Well, this is bananas. Casio somehow got a master craftsman to hand-hammer the finish of 500 G-Shock watches.
These G-Shock MR-G watches are made of DAT55G, an ultra-hard titanium that’s notoriously difficult to machine. The tsuiki (hand hammering) expert, Watanabe Kazuya, had to constantly resharpen his punches during the batch production process; he relied on sound to tell him when the tool had dulled. “The more you hit the edge of the [punch], the more it is worn down,” he explains. “If you make a difference of 0.1 or 0.2 mm, the sound and feel of the hammer will change.”
The bezels and the wristband links all received the same painstaking care.
Among the G-SHOCK models, the MR-G series strives for the pinnacle in materials, structure, and finish. The fusion of this with traditional Japanese craftsmanship is not merely decorative; it is an act of reexamining the very essence of “monozukuri” (manufacturing).
The limited edition watch runs ?935,000 (USD $6,335) a pop.