The SKX007 ran twenty-three years, from 1996 to 2019, and introduced more people to mechanical watches than any reference from any brand. An ISO-rated 200 meter diver with the unglamorous 7S26 inside, no hacking, no hand-winding, and no pretense, it was the definition of the honest tool watch, and its discontinuation in 2019 turned a permanent catalog fixture into a collected reference overnight.
Its afterlife is unique in this file: the SKX became the foundation of the watch modding hobby, and modified examples now vastly outnumber stock ones on the used market. That inverts the usual vintage problem. Nobody is faking an SKX for profit; instead, unmodified, original-parts examples are quietly becoming the scarce thing, especially with box and papers.
The last of the lineage and the first watch in a thousand collections. Mods are a legitimate hobby and a modded SKX is a fine watch, but it is not the reference anymore; it is a project built on one. If you want the file specimen, verify stock dial, hands, bezel and insert, and expect the full-set premium to keep drifting upward as the stock population shrinks.
Production windows and specifications compiled from documented collector references and period catalogs, cross-checked across independent sources; manufacturer records for this era are approximate by Seiko's own account.